Staring at the sea for too long had made them witness the dots of light flying in zigzag lines. There is a bar not far from the bench. This bar was open and the tables were on the white sands. The music was playing with a vinyl record with a crank. There was only the owner of the bar playing his music alone. When the two came in, he nodded and started to take their orders.

Nolan sat on the table with Ashia. The winds swayed the chime on the crossbeam. There were paper decorations on the beams. A crystal lamp was on the table. Nolan leaned on the table while buttoning up his coat. He had forgotten about buying clothes. All he had in his head was how to make sure that everything is fixed with this woman.

She twisted on the chair. She adjusted her clothes and leaned back. She eyed him with her brows furrowing. Her lips were quite red and he saw an annoyed face.

“I noticed that your clothes aren’t fixed.”

“I was planning to buy some. Have to entertain you.”

She nodded. “I hope you don’t use your power. People cling to those who have power. No need for me to tell you that, I guess.”

“People want power. This power is for self-defense. I will only use this to defend myself. I worry about your students. They might think of me as an evil that needs defeating. I hope that you take care of that in hopes that there would be no misunderstanding. I do not wish to kill any of your students or hurt them. I hope we have an understanding so that we can move on with our lives.”

Nolan taps his fingers on the table. She looked at him and nodded. The scent of the owner’s cooking drifted in the air. She leaned with her head slightly tilted. Behind her was the rolling mountains with the trees blinking with light.

“I had done that. I have told them of your existence. The Lady was nice enough to support my claim. What did you do to make her so eager to help you?”

“She’s a dragon that rules time and space as well. I am sure that she could understand my plight.”

“Would you mind me asking what the world you came from was?”

“It was a world of death and battles for the right to survive. Dalia should have told you that it was the same event. However, this time it seems that there is a difference. This is not a dependent world. This is the sole verse and there is only one here.”

Nolan produced a tree with fruits on it on his palm. “It was a tree realm that consists of many branches. When the fruits fall on the ground, the sprouts grow into another tree that contains a realm. Each realm consists of worlds. Think of the world that I came from just another fruit. It is like a tree that grew realms we called baubles. I live in one of the realms. However, what we called the world tree had caused the death of it. Those who mastered the powers guard each of these realms. They are a council of lonely beings that had grown strong enough to know the world they lived in. Each of these worlds would die because of the shadow cast upon the world tree itself. The world tree itself is not evil itself. It simply had cast shadows for it was the biggest tree to grown on that bauble.”

“Then what made you come here in this world?”

“I was in one of the baubles. The darkness arrived and the world was dying. We thought of killing the overlord of the demons would make it all go away. However, we were ignorant to the point of stupidity. We misunderstood and fought the wrong enemy. When we should have planned an escape, we fought not knowing what a child we were. One day I awoke back to where I first arrived. Nevertheless, it was a world where a savior had realized the futility of her efforts. Can you imagine a world that could not be saved? A world where you have to violate the laws of time just to find the answer to the question that bothered you. This savior had done everything to the point of madness. Then she learns the truth and madness came in. She wanted to leave the world. Use the powers she had amassed to save who she could save. Nevertheless, that only made those liked the status quo mad. Her ascendance was rocky and the more she traveled the more she realized that every world was dying. Therefore, she ascended more and killed more. She had become a blood-soaked savior. She saved worlds in the hope that they could have that little time. So, she traveled and reached the main tree only for those who wanted her gone to try to break her. But she did not easily break. She sought more time. The whole of them took her away.”

“So you witnessed all of this?”

“Not all of it. But the being that had tried to send me back home had given me some of the vision he saw. He wanted to make me understand.”

“I see.”

“The look on your face says it all. I am nobody. Just a survivor who had lived long enough to have seen things you would not believe. I do not dare to tarnish the lives of braver men who were willing to offer their lives.”

“It surprises me that you can still say things like that. Or do you not want to be different?”

“You could say that,” he said, taking the wooden tray from the owner whose smile reaches up to his ears. He raised his pewter cup and nodded at the owner.

“I have already dealt my delusions of being special. I am just among the many travelers. I do not feel special compared to the teacher of great people that had changed a world for the better.”

She smiled wearily. “It bothers me that some of the details of the world you mention seem to resemble this world.”