This short story takes place in the not so distant future of the Pangaean history.
(Copyright 2018 by Melanie Nashland Warren. No part of this story may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the author.)

 ALTERNATE REALITY

WAKING UP IN A HOSPITAL room in a state of confusion is, to put it mildly, unsettling. Machines made beeping sounds and the disinfectant smell was distinctive of a medical environment.
      There was a window to the left with a view of the city outside. Taking a deep breath, Skye tried to reason why she was here. Raising her hand to her forehead, she tried to think. What was the last thing she remembered? Gazing around the room, she tried to piece together what led to this.
      Her arms and legs seemed to work and nothing hurt so nothing was broken, but this was definitely a hospital room. The head of her bed had been raised to a semi-sitting position. She shifted her body to a more comfortable position and studied the room. She was alone. There were sounds outside the closed door. Probably nurses or doctors on their rounds. But why was she here? And where was her family? Where was Tristan and the twins, Angie and Raylen? She wondered why she was in her former world. She had no memory of an accident or an illness. Strange.
      The door opened and Elayne Talbot walked in with a surprised smile.
      “Honey, you’re awake!”
      “Mom?” Skye looked at her with confusion. “What am I doing here?”
      Elayne pulled a chair over close to the bed and sat down. She grasped Skye’s hand and squeezed it.
      “Now don’t panic, sweetie,” Elayne said, trying to avoid distressing her daughter. “You’ve been here for quite a while. We’ve been so worried about you. I thought you would never wake up.”
      “Wake up? How long have I been here?”
      Elayne squeezed her daughter’s hand again. “Now, don’t get too excited, but you’ve been here…three weeks.”
      “Three weeks! Mom, why? What happened? Where’s Tristan and the kids?”
      Elayne looked at her strangely. “Tristan’s in London, but what kids are you talking about?”
      “London? Where is this?”
      “We’re in Portland.”
      “What?” Skye tried to sit up straighter, but the angle of her bed made it difficult. “What are we doing here?”
      “We live in Garden Glenn, remember? Portland is the nearest large city with a decent hospital.”
      “How did I get here?”
      Elayne patted her arm. “Calm down, honey. You were brought here after the accident on the ship.”
      This didn’t make sense. Accident on the ship? “What are you talking about?”
      Taking a deep breath, Elayne tried to find the right words. “Skye, you were struck by lightning on the ship.”
      “I know I was. That’s when Tristan and I were transported to Pangaea.”
      Elayne’s eyes went wide. “Transported where?”
      “Pangaea. Mom, what is going on?”
      “You and Tristan were struck by lightning on the cruise ship. Both of you were rendered unconscious. They sent Tristan back to London and I had you brought here.”
      Skye shook her head. “No, that’s not right. That’s not what happened. When Tristan and I were struck by lightning, we were transported to Pangaea.”
      “Skye, I don’t know what Pangaea is. I’ve never heard of it.”
      “You’ve been there. That’s where you met Tristan’s dad, Regis, and eventually married him.”
      Elayne’s face froze with shock. “Married? I’m not married, Skye. I haven’t even had a date since your father abandoned us when you were still a little girl. What are you talking about? And what kids were you talking about?”
      None of this made any sense. This had to be a bad dream. Surely, she would wake up shortly and find that she’d been asleep and having a nightmare. She looked around the room again trying to find some flaw in the scene. Something that would prove that this was all just a dream.
      “Skye? What do you remember?”
      “I don’t know.” Skye rubbed her temples. “Something is very wrong here.”
      “I think I’ll go find the doctor.” Elayne got up from her chair and squeezed Skye’s hand once more before she left the room.
      “What is going on?” Skye said to no one. She rubbed her head and tried to remember her last memory. She had been in the gathering hall with Kimber and Jonica helping to set up for the next public meal. Raylen was in school, Angie was on duty in Tot Watch. Next thing she knew, she was waking up in this hospital room. This didn’t make sense.
      After a while, Elayne came back in with a middle aged man in scrubs. He walked over to the bedside and studied the readings on the machine that sat to Skye’s right of the bed. Then he turned his attention to Skye.
      “How are you feeling, Miss Talbot?”
      She stared at him for a moment. “Confused.” Miss Talbot? She was Mrs. Granleigh.
      “That’s to be expected. Sometimes victims of lightning strike suffer some confusion, even amnesia, but it shouldn’t be permanent.”
      “I’m not having amnesia,” she told him. “I’m confused because I shouldn’t even be here.”
      “You were lucky, indeed,” the doctor told her. “Lightning strikes can be fatal.”
      “No, I mean I should be in Pangaea with my family.”
      “Honey, your family is right here,” Elayne told her.
      “Tristan and the kids are here?” She started to feel some excitement. “Where are they?”
      “Not Tristan. He’s in London. I mean your brothers and sisters and me. You don’t have any kids.”
      Skye was close to tears. “I have four kids, Mom. The twins, Sebastian and Jaron, Angie, and Raylen.”
      Elayne and the doctor exchanged confused glances.
      “Mom, why are you looking at me like that? What is going on?”
      The doctor smiled at her. “I’ll come back later. You’ve just woken up. Perhaps after a while you’ll be able to think more clearly.” He patted her arm and left the room. Elayne sat back down on the chair.
      “Skye, you’re not making any sense…”
      “No, Mom, you’re not making any sense. I’ve been married to Tristan for nearly forty years. My son Jaron is King of Pangaea. All of them except for Raylen, who it only fourteen, are married with kids of their own.”
      Elayne closed her eyes for a moment, then she looked back at Skye. “Honey, you’re only twenty-three years old. How could you be married for forty years? That’s almost twice your age.”
      “That’s the Dal Effect.”
      Elayne was becoming convinced that the lightning strike had affected her daughter’s sanity. She was talking nonsense.
      “Why don’t you get some rest, sweetie,” Elayne said, rising from her chair. “I’ll come back when you’re feeling better.” She squeezed her daughter’s hand and gave her  a hug. “I’ll see you later.”
      Skye watched her leave the room and felt more confused than ever.

LATER IN THE AFTERNOON, Elayne peeked her head in the door of the hospital room and smiled.
      “Hi, honey!”
      “Mom, when am I getting out of here?”
      Elayne walked in and came close to the bed. She smiled and looked mischievously at her daughter.
      “I have a surprise for you.”
      Skye sighed. “Surprise, I’m going home?”
      Elayne ran over to the door and opened it. After a heartbeat, she swung the door wide and Tristan walked in. Skye’s eyes opened wide with shock.
      “Tristan?”
      “Hi, love.” He smiled and walked over to her bedside. He set a small white box with a red ribbon onto her bed table. Reaching for her hand, he held it and looked at her for a moment before speaking again. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
      “It happened to you, too, didn’t it?”
      “Actually, yes. I just got out of hospital a couple of days ago. As soon as I could, I phoned your mum to see how you were.”
      Skye was unable to speak for a  moment. “Can I ask you something that might sound really strange?”
      “Yeah, certainly. What do you want to know?”
      “What does Pangaea mean to you?”
      He stared at her for a moment, then he shrugged. “I’m not sure. It sounds familiar. Something about continental drift, I think, if I remember my school geography classes.”
      Skye’s face fell. “What about Varon, Rowan, Cam, and Kimber?”
      Tristan shook his head with a shrug. “I don’t know them.”
      “What about Sebastian, Jaron, Angie, and Raylen?”
      “My great grandfather was Sebastian,” Tristan said.
      “I know.”
      Tristan cocked his head at her in a questioning look. “How would you know that? Did I mention it on the cruise?”
      Skye took a deep breath and let it out slowly as a tear trickled down her cheek. Tristan became alarmed and he leaned over her.
      “Are you all right, love?” He pushed his arm under her shoulders and lifted her into a hug.
      Skye lost it and began to sob and Tristan glanced over at Elayne in confusion. There seemed to be no way to console her. She continued to cry while Tristan held her close to him.
      Elayne shook her head at him with a shrug as he pushed the guard rail of the bed down. He sat down on the edge and held her close to him for a long time, rocking her in a soothing way. After a while she began to calm down.
      “I’m sorry,” she apologized through her tears. “This is just all wrong.”
      “What’s wrong, Skye?” Tristan asked, holding her by the shoulders and gazing into her tear filled eyes.
      “This. Everything. I don’t know why I’m here.”
      Elayne leaned over the other side of the bed and placed her hand on Skye’s shoulder. “Honey, you were struck by lightning on the cruise ship.”
      “I know that,” Skye answered with impatience. “But we didn’t end up in the hospital. It transported us to Pangaea.”
      Tristan glanced at Elayne with one eyebrow raised.
      “Honey,” Elayne said, squeezing her daughter’s shoulder, “you’ve been right here since the lightning strike. We had you brought back here immediately. They brought a Life Flight helicopter to take both you and Tristan ashore and transported to a hospital. It was a life or death situation. Both of you were unconscious. Both of you stopped breathing for a short time. We had to get you into the hospital right away.”
      “No,” Skye argued, “that’s not what happened. I woke up on a dirt road with Tristan unconscious nearby. Varon found us and took us to his cottage.”
      “As soon as your vital signs were stabilized, you were flown her to Portland. Tristan’s family was alerted and they had him flown to London. His situation was all over the news.”
      Skye leaned back and looked at Tristan. “No. That’s all wrong.”
      “When I woke up, I was in a London hospital,” he told her. “I was apparently in a coma for over two weeks.”
      “It’s been three for you, Skye,” her mother told her.
      “No!” Skye shouted. She pushed back against the pillows and look back and forth between Tristan and her mother. “That’s not what happened. We ended up in Pangaea. Varon took us to his cottage in the Wester village, but we were taken by the Patrol and put in the prison before we escaped and traveled across the continent to find the Harborage. Tristan, doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
      Tristan shook his head and shrugged. “Sorry, love. I don’t know anything about that.”
      “I think,” Elayne said, “you had a very elaborate dream while you were in your coma.”
      “This was not a dream, Mom! I lived in Pangaea, married Tristan, gave birth to five children, the first was stillborn. We suffered numerous nightmarish traumatic occurrences.” She looked at Tristan. “We’re grandparents four times over!”
      “I’m only thirty,” he told her.
      “We were in our sixties, Tristan, but then we were exposed to the Dal Effect and we were rejuvenated back to the ages we were when we first met.”
      This sounded like science fiction, or the rantings of a delusional mind.
      “Where are my children?” Skye said, and a fresh stream of tears ran down her face. “I miss my friends and my children.”
      Elayne held her daughter’s hand. “Honey, we’ll sort this out. Don’t worry. It might take some time, but we’ll sort this out.”
      “You’ll help?”
      “Yes, sweetie. We’ll get this straightened out.”
      A young nurse entered the room and approached the bed. “We need to do some tests,” she told them. “If you could come back later…”
      “Certainly,” Tristan said softly.
      “Oh my gosh!” the nurse said. “You’re Tristan Granleigh! The Tristan!”
      “Yes,” he told her with a slightly embarrassed smile.
      “Oh my gosh!” She gazed at him as if she had just been introduced to royalty. “What are you doing here?”
      “I’m here for Skye,” he told her.
      Before either of them could say anything else, the doctor strode into the room and stopped at the foot of the bed. He glanced at Tristan with a questioning look.
      “Are you…”
      “Tristan!” the nurse said with a beaming smile.
      The doctor cleared his throat and smiled. “Yes, well, we really need to do some things here, so if you two don’t mind…”
      “Certainly, doctor,” Elayne said. “Tris, let’s go. I’ll get you settled in our guest room. Skye, we’ll be back later.”

ELAYNE HELPED TRISTAN bring his bags into her home and showed him to the guest room where he would stay while he was in town.
      “The bathroom is across the hall. I’m sure you’re more accustomed to a lot more luxury than this. I understand you’re family lives in quite a spectacular place.”
      “Thank you for letting me stay here, Mum,” he told her and gave her a little hug. He had become so familiar with Skye and her mother during their month-long cruise that he had begun to affectionately call her Mum. He adored her the minute he met her. She reminded him of his own mother who died when he was fourteen. “And this is just fine, thanks. I’m not big on luxury. Some of my London flats and my LA condo have been quite small and nondescript. This is quite nice actually.”
      “Go ahead and relax, honey. Freshen up if you want to. I’ll be downstairs. We can talk more.”
      “Thank you.” Tristan smiled. When she left the room, he unzipped his bags and pulled out something to change into after his long flight from London.

SHOWERED AND CHANGED, Tristan felt much better after a long trip. He came downstairs and found Elayne in the kitchen fixing lunch.
      “I hope you’re hungry, Tristan,” she said with a smile. She was making sandwiches.
      “Yes, thank you,” he said. Then he sighed as Elayne brought the sandwiches to the table. She invited him to sit down and picked up on his slightly down moment.
      “Are you all right, honey?”
      Tristan smiled and nodded. “Yes, I’m fine, thank you, Elayne. This looks delicious.” He bowed his head and gave thanks for the food.
      “Amen,” Elayne said with a smile when he was finished. “Now, what was that sigh a moment ago?”
      Tristan took a bite from his sandwich and swallowed. “Just seeing Skye like that felt…”
      “I know. There’s something very strangely wrong with her. Where would she get that story? All that detail.”
      “The lightning strike must have affected her in some way.”
      “Yet, it didn’t affect you that way. You don’t have any strange ‘memories,’ do you?” She made air quotes on the word memories.
      “No, none. I have no memories other than the cruise up until the lightning strike. As soon as we were hit, I blacked out and didn’t regain consciousness until I was in a hospital bed. I wasn’t sure where I was, but I have no memory of another life in a strange place.”
      Elayne munched on her sandwich for a moment. “I would like to hear her tell us more about this. Is she having a very massive delusional episode, or what? Maybe it's from a book she read or something.”
      “Are you supposed to be at work?” Tristan asked with concern. “This is Thursday.”
      “I work for myself here at home. I have an online business. I flex my time whenever I need to.” She pointed to his sandwich. “Go ahead an eat, honey. You need to keep your strength up, too.”
      They finished their lunch and moved over to the living room. There was a short silence until a sound was heard at the front door.
      “Oh, that should be Ginger,” Elayne said. “She’s my eldest. She's lives here with us since her divorce.”
      A young woman in her late twenties came into the room and stopped suddenly when she saw Tristan sitting on the sofa. Her eyes widened with surprise.
      “Ginnie, I told you Tristan was coming."
      Ginger stood with her mouth open, gaping at their guest. The international superstar singer/actor/musician was sitting in her front room as if it were just any ordinary daily occurrence.
      “Come on over here,” Elayne told her. “Ginnie, this is Tristan. Tristan, Ginger.”
      Tristan stood up and held out this hand. Ginger came out of her momentary freeze and reached out to shake his hand.
      “Nice to meet you, Ginger,” Tristan said with a smile. “Skye talked about you and her other siblings when we were on the cruise.”
      “Only good, I hope,” Ginger said with a grin.
      “Of course.” They both sat down.
      "Ginnie, Skye’s been having some strange memories that Tristan doesn’t have.”
      “Strange memories?”
      Elayne shook her head. “I don’t know, something about being in another world for forty years and having children and grandchildren with Tristan.”
      “Wishful thinking?”
      “She seems to have names of people she knew and other details. It’s very strange.”
      Ginger turned her attention to Tristan. “And you don’t know anything about this other life?”
      “No, nothing.”
      “I’m hoping she’ll be released soon and we can talk with her.” Elayne said. “I want to know where these ideas came from.”

IT WAS THREE MORE DAYS before Skye was released. She got a clean bill of health. No unusual physical issues from the lightning strike other than the odd memories. Elayne and Tristan went to the hospital to bring her home, but when she entered the house, she looked around as if she hadn’t seen it in years. Elayne had to nudge her farther into the room and away from the front door.
      Tristan took her by the hand and led her over to the couch where he seated her, then sat down beside her. He kept hold of her hand as she gazed around the room.
      Elayne sat down on a plush chair facing the couch. “Welcome home, honey.”
      “This just feels wrong,” Skye said, looking around the room.
      Tristan squeezed her hand. “It’s been nearly two months since you’ve been here. You were on the cruise for a month, then the lightning strike put you in the hospital for nearly another month.”
      Skye shook her head. “No, it’s more than that. I…we…had a whole life in Pangaea.” She looked deeply into Tristan’s eyes. “Are you sure you don’t remember anything about that?”
      “Nothing.”
      Skye slid her hand free of Tristan’s and rubbed her temples. “I don’t understand. Mom, it’s been years since you lived in this house. You moved to London when you married Regis.”
      “Regis?” Elayne shook her head in confusion.
      “That’s my dad,” Tristan told her. “Regis Granleigh.” He turned to Skye. “Your mum married my dad? How can that be? They’ve never met.”
      “They met in in Varonia when they were brought there for Angie’s birth.” She looked intensely at Tristan. “You actually kidnapped them and brought them over to Varonia for the birth.”
      “Kidnapped?” Tristan looked curiously at her.
      “Skye,” Elayne said, “where is this Varonia place? I thought you said Pan-something.”
      “It’s a walled city on Camlin Island off the southeast coast of Pangaea. “It’s where we live.”
      “But this Pan…what did you call it?”
      “Pangaea, Mom. It’s a continent. The largest continent. The other two are Gondwana and Laurasia.”
      “I’ve never heard of them. Show me on a map.” Elayne reached to the side table and grabbed a tablet. She turned it on and tapped on a map icon.
      “No, Mom, it’s not on any map. Not on a map of this Earth, anyway.”
      Elayne looked up from the tablet and stared at Skye. “Not on Earth?”
      “Where is it, then?” Tristan asked.
      Skye let out a breath of frustration. “It’s not in this Earth. It’s across a dimensional barrier. It’s a parallel Earth.”
      “Parallel Earth,” Elayne repeated quietly. “That sounds like science fiction.”
      Skye looked back and forth between Elayne and Tristan, then shook her head. “It’s real. Tristan and I lived there for decades. We raised four children there. Tristan was the King of Pangaea until an accident and Jaron took it over.”
      Tristan shuddered next to her. “Accident? Fatal?”
      “We thought so at first,” Skye said, “but no. You revived, but Jaron kept the throne.”
      “I don’t think I want to know what kind of accident,” Tristan muttered.
      The door opened and Ginger walked in with a young man. Elayne looked around and smiled at them.
      “Tristan, you’ve already meet Ginger, but this is my second son, Peter.”
      “Gin said Tristan was here,” Peter said. He came forward and extended his hand toward Tristan, who shook it with a smile.
      Elayne gestured for them to take seats and she explained to them what they had been talking about up until they came in. Both stared at Skye with confused eyes.
      “You don’t believe me,” Skye said meekly.
      “Well, honey,” Elayne said, “this is a little difficult to grasp. You have such minute detail, names of people, specific incidents and situations, but I don’t know how all this could have taken place in only three weeks while you’ve been in a coma.”
      Skye looked at Tristan, close to tears, and he reached his arm around her and pulled her close to him to reassure her.
      “Well,” Elayne said, standing up and hoping to change the subject. “I think we should have some dinner soon. I’ll get it started.”
      Peter was invited to join them for dinner and he was glad to stay, hoping to hear more of Skye’s story. After the meal, they sat together in the living room for a while and tried to make small talk, but Elayne could see Skye was becoming tired.
      “Get some rest, sweetie,” she told her. “We’ll talk some more tomorrow.”
      Skye nodded and gave everyone a hug before heading upstairs.

SKYE WOKE UP ABRUPTLY and sat straight up in bed. She looked around and saw dim dawn sunlight coming in between the heavy drapes on the cottage windows. She looked around and found the familiar furniture of the Granleigh cottage. She got up and padded out into the front room to find Tristan sitting at the table with a pot of tea.
      “Welcome back to the living, love,” he said, offering her a cup. “Tea?”
      Skye sat down and stared at Tristan with startled eyes.
      “What’s wrong?” Tristan reached over the table and grasped Skye’s hand. She was shaking.
      “I don’t know. I think I had a nightmare.”
      “What did you eat last night?”
      She shook her head. “I don’t know, but…” She shook her head, “This was so strange. I dreamed that we never came here to Pangaea. I woke up in a hospital after a coma that I was in because of the lightning strike that sent us here.”
      Tristan tilted his head at her. “What brought that on?”
      “I don’t know, but it terrified me. I thought I’d lost all my friends and my children, that none of them ever existed. I felt so cut off and alone. Mom still lived in our old house in Garden Glen. You were in London, but you came to see me. You didn’t know anything about Pangaea or our kids or having been king. Nothing.”
      “Well, I’m right here with you now,” he assured her, squeezing her hand. “I’m as real as I’ve ever been.”
      “It was so frightening and frustrating. No one believed me. I felt like I must have been going crazy. And you didn’t seem to have the pendant or even know about it.”
      Tristan smiled at her. “Get dressed and go on over to the gathering hall. Maybe when you get into your daily routine, the dream will fade.”
      Skye let out a sigh. “Maybe.” She got up and headed to their bedroom to change from her nightgown into something presentable.
      Kimber and Jonica were in the gathering hall kitchen preparing for the public breakfast. She related her disturbing dream to her friends who listened carefully to the strange story.
      “It’s only a dream, Skye,” Jonica told her. “You’re awake now, and we’re all here. Tristan is here and your children are here. Everything is normal.”
      “I guess. It was just so disturbing. Where could that have come from?”
      Kimber smiled. “Just stresses of everyday life, I suppose.”
      “Maybe.” She picked up a potato and began to peel it for the hash browns.
      The rest of the day, the dream kept replaying itself through Skye’s memory. The more she thought about it, the more disturbed she became. It had been so realistic. She could see and hear and feel in her dream as clearly as she did in real life. A shudder ran through her, fearing to fall asleep the coming night in the event the dream recurred. Would she repeat it all over again, or would it pick up where it left off? She dreaded the night coming on.
      All too soon, the day came to an end and Skye dreaded going to sleep. Tristan finally coaxed her to come to bed, that he would be there if she was afraid. She couldn’t remain awake forever. She finally went to bed.

SOMEHOW SHE HAD FALLEN ASLEEP. Waking up, Skye looked around the room. With a breath of relief, she found herself in her own bedroom in the Granleigh cottage. She woke up in Pangaea and Tristan was asleep next to her. She needed to use the privy, so she quietly got up and headed down the hall to the back door. Once finished with her business in the privy, she came back inside and washed her hands at the washing station inside the door. As she headed back up the hall toward her room, Tristan came out the door.
      “There you are,” he said a bit groggily.
      “Nature call,” she told him.
      He stopped before her and looked down at her. “Did you dream last night?”
      “I don’t think so. If I did, it was just typical stuff. Thankfully.”
      “Good.” He eased past her and headed for the rear door and exited for the privy. A few minutes later he was back inside, washed his hands, then headed to their room to dress.
      Skye dressed after Tristan and headed for the kitchen to start breakfast. Raylen was already up sketching something on a pad while he waited for breakfast. A very normal morning. Hopefully, the nightmare was behind her. Seeing her family there before her eyes was reassuring.
      She made it through another normal day. The dream was beginning to fade. She still got a slight chill when a fragment of it recurred, but she was able to push it into the back of her mind.
      After a week, she believed she had conquered the demon dream. Meeting with her friends in the gathering hall, she sat around a table with them and chatted.
      Jaron came in and passed her chair. He reached an arm around her and gave her a hug.
      “Morning, Mom!”
      “Morning, sweetie.”
      Normal. So far.
      Made it through another day. Then it happened again.

SKYE WOKE UP AND glanced around the dim room. Something was wrong. She looked around behind her and Tristan wasn’t there. The room was all wrong. Throwing the covers back, she lowered her feet to the floor and stood up. This was not the Granleigh cottage in Varonia. This was the Talbot house in the Great Northwest.
      “No…”
      Turning all the way around, Skye looked at the room. She moved over to the mirror at the vanity table. That was her reflection looking back at her. This couldn’t be happening again.
      She rummaged through her closet and found a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and threw them on. Pushing her feet into a pair of flip-flops, she headed out the room and over to the bathroom door. Grasping the knob, she started to turn it, but the door opened suddenly and she came face to face with Tristan.
      “Tris!”
      He smiled. “Good morning, love. Feeling better?”
      She stared at him for a moment then shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’m back here in this world.”
      “Back? Where have you been?”
      “I spent at least a week in Varonia with my family. And you.”
      “Was I good to you?”
      Skye didn’t know how to answer that. What a strange question. What a strange conversation.
      “No?”
      “Yes. You’re always good to me.”
      Tristan smiled at her again and moved aside. “Great! Your turn.”
      Skye moved into the bathroom and closed the door. Turning around, she looked in the vanity mirror and stared at herself.
      “Why is this happening? How is this happening?” She pinched her forearm and winced. It hurt, so this had to be real. Something very strange must have happened when she and Tristan were hit by that lightning bolt on the cruise ship. Somehow it split her into two lives and she was living in different worlds. It didn’t make sense.
      Time was not running parallel as it always had before. This time, her former life had advanced barely two months, but her life in Pangaea had spread over forty plus years. Her appearance in the mirror didn’t look any different, thanks to the Dal Effect and her rejuvenation back on Camlin Island. But this split life was not running in a parallel timeline.
      She used the toilet and took a quick shower. Dressing back into the jeans and tee, she headed downstairs where Tristan sat with Elayne, Ginger, and Peter.
      “Well,” Elayne said with a smile. “Another country heard from. Good morning, sweetie.”
      Skye sat down at the table and gazed around at the faces.
      “Did you have a good night?” Elayne asked.
      “I don’t know.” She flipped her hair behind her shoulder. “I just spent at least a week in Varonia. I thought this had straightened itself out, but I guess not.”
      Elayne placed a breakfast casserole in the middle of the table and sat down. Tristan led the family in a blessing, then they dug in. Skye wasn’t hungry. She took only a small amount and pushed it around her plate.
      Her mother pointed at her plate with her fork. “Skye, you need to eat something, honey.”
      “I’m not hungry.”
      “It’s delicious,” Tristan told her, trying to encourage her.
      Skye looked at the faces around the breakfast table. “I want to go home.”
      The others looked around at each other.
      “Skye,” Elayne said, “you are home.
      A tear escaped and Skye swiped at it in frustration. “No, this used to be my home. This isn’t where I live now. I miss my kids. The twins and Angie and Raylen.” She sniffed and made a weak attempt at a smile. “Raylen is quite an artist. He’s a lefty. They say that brings out the artistic side in people.”
      The others listened to what sounded like nonsense to them, but no one said anything about her supposed other life.
      “Skye,” her mother cut in, “I think once you’ve gotten back into your regular routine and back to normal, things will straighten out for you.”
      “I’m not crazy, Mom,” Skye told her.
      “Honey, I didn’t say you were—”
      “But you’re thinking it. Look, I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t know why Tristan doesn’t remember any of this because he was a part of it, but it’s all real. All of these things have actually happened to me. I swear it!”
      Peter set his fork down. “Well, maybe there is something to it. We don’t really know what goes on with people who are in a coma. They claim they can often hear everything that’s being said around them. How do we know, while you were under, that you were actually living a life of some sort somewhere else?”
      “That’s science fiction, Peter,” Ginger said. “That doesn’t happen in real life. You read too much sci-fi.”
      “I’m only speculating, Gin.”
      “Actually,” Tristan put in, “maybe Peter has something there. We don’t really know what goes on in the human mind when people are in a coma. I was in a coma, like Skye, right after the lightning strike, but I didn’t experience anything. That doesn’t mean something didn’t happen for Skye. Perhaps she was in a deeper coma than I was in. It took her longer to come out of it than I did.”
      “You took the direct hit from the lightning,” Elayne said. “I would think something like that would have happened to you rather than her. She only got the residual shock through you.”
      Tristan shrugged. “Maybe we have different constitutions. She’s smaller than I am. It may have given her a stronger jolt. We were touching at the time.”
      “Do you have a scar from the jolt?” Peter asked.
      “As a matter of fact, I do,” Tristan said. “It’s called a Lichtenberg figure. It looks like a bolt of lightning.”
      Peter’s eyes double in size. “Cool! Can I see it?”
      “Peter!” Elayne scolded.  “Tristan is our guest and we’re at breakfast.”
      “I don’t mind,” Tristan told them. “After we finished with breakfast, in the lounge.”
      “Cool!”
      Ginger jabbed Peter with her elbow. “You sound like a ten-year-old. You’re twenty-five. Grow up.”
      After breakfast, the family moved to the living room where Tristan took off his shirt to show them his scar. The family looked with awe at the lightning shaped scar on his back between his shoulders. Skye reached up and hovered her hand close to it.
      “Will it hurt if I touch it?”
      “No,” he told her. “it’s pretty much healed up now.”
      Skye gently touched it. It was oddly beautiful, even though it had to hurt when the lightning first struck him.
      “It looks almost like a tattoo,” Peter said as he studied it.
      “I can’t see it,” Tristan told them. “I have to stand between two mirrors or have someone take a picture of it so I can see it.”
      “Here,” Peter leaned over and picked up his smart phone. “I’ll get a picture of it.”
      Tristan had already seen one, but he let Peter take the picture. He passed the phone around for the others to see. Tristan looked at it and smiled.
      “It’s weird, isn’t it?”
      “Over in Pangaea,” Skye said, “that didn’t actually show up for years, until after you had been struck by lightning two or three more times.”
      Tristan turned around and gazed at her. “Am I a magnet for lightning or something?”
      Skye smiled. “I guess so. It actually didn’t show up until that day on the beach when Dal sent his DNA charged energy wave out over all of us on the island. There had been lightning that day and one of them struck you. Nigel Erickson told us what that scar is called.”
      Tristan turned around suddenly and stared at her with shock. “Nigel Erickson?”
      “He’s a doctor from this world.”
      He stared at her for a moment. “He was my doctor when I was admitted to the hospital in London.”
      “What?” Elayne looked dismayed.
      “Well, at least my doctor’s name is Nigel Erickson.”
      “The Nigel we know in Pangaea is from London,” Skye told him. “He’s treated our kids a few times. When Jaron’s appendix burst, you took him over to this world and Nigel did the surgery. He also treated Jaron’s broken arm after he fell off a log on the beach.”
      “Jaron has a curse on him,” Peter quipped with a laugh.
      “Nigel has been our family doctor for things that Shayne’s herbs can’t treat,” Skye said. “He was there on the beach the day of the Dal Effect. He’s rejuvenated now, too. And so are you, and you, and you.” She looked from her mother to Ginger to Peter. “You were all there that day for Tristan’s and my anniversary celebration, so you all got the Dal Effect. You were all much older at that time, and it rejuvenated you to what you look like right now.”
      This once again sounded like science fiction.
      Tristan put his shirt back on and they all sat down.
      “What is this Dal Effect you’ve mentioned more than once,” Tristan asked.
      “Dalthamis is our mortal enemy,” Skye explained. “He’s been after us for decades. It started when he wanted your diamond pendant.”
      “I told you, I don’t own a diamond pendant,” Tristan said.
      “No, not here. Gavron gave it to you in the cavern. It’s an advanced micro computer mounted in a diamond pendant that you wear. It’s how we travel between worlds or from place to place. After your near drowning, Sebastian started wearing it and uses it to take Jaron and Rowan to Cascadia everyday so Jaron can do whatever it is he does as King of Pangaea.”
      Ginger rolled her eyes. “King?”
      “Tristan was king, but after his drowning, Jaron took it on. Cascadia is the capital of Pangaea, but it’s a couple thousand miles from Camlin Island. Sebastian transports him and Rowan there everyday via the pendant, so he can hold audience with the people of Pangaea.”
      “Too much fantasy novels,” Ginger muttered under her breath.
      Peter jabbed her with his elbow. “Shut up.”
      Skye let out a long sigh. “Look, I know this all sounds like nonsense, but I swear, it’s all true.”
      “As I mentioned a while ago,” Tristan said, “we don’t know what happens in the human brain when people are in a coma situation. Perhaps Skye was mentally tied into some other existence. You’ve heard of ‘out of body’ experiences where people who are near death have been able to see things that are going on around them while in a state of coma. What if there’s an altered mental state where we can actually be living another life somewhere else?”
      “Do you read science fiction?” Ginger asked him.
      “No, not really. This idea just came to me.”
      Skye shifted uncomfortably on the couch next to Tristan. “Whatever it is, it’s totally real. There are actual people that we know there. You can’t remember them, Tristan, but I do and they’re a very real part of our lives. There’s a whole story behind our lives there.”
      “Tell us about it,” Peter said.
      “How much time do you have?” Skye asked him.
      She launched into the entire story, beginning with Tristan’s and her transport to the Wester village in Cascadia. There was so much to tell, she went into the late evening. Elayne stopped her when it got close to midnight and insisted that everyone go to bed and get some rest. They could resume the next day.
      “Skye was more than willing to go to sleep, hoping to wake up on the other side and find herself back in Varonia.

THE SUN CAME THROUGH the slit between the drapes and Skye blinked at it. Cottage. She was back home again. This was beginning to wear thin. How many times was she going to bounce back and forth between these two lives?
      Tristan was already up, so Skye got up and dressed. A visit to the privy out back, wash up, then into the main room of the Granleigh cottage where she found Tristan at the stove fixing breakfast. She smiled. He was such a helpful husband. How many other men would bother to do anything around the house? And Tristan had been raised in a wealthy family with servants. He had lived the life of an international show business superstar. Yet, here he was, standing at the big cast iron wood stove, flipping pancakes.
      He smiled at her as she walked over to him. She wrapped her arms around his waist and gave him a tight hug.
      “Love you Tristan Granleigh!”
      He set the skillet down and wrapped his arms around her. “Love you Skye Granleigh!”
      “What’s this? We haven’t had pancakes for ages.”
      “I thought it was about time.”
      Skye gathered three plates and silverware from the shelves, then set about arranging them on the table.
      “I’ll get Raylen up.” She headed for the boy’s bedroom and tapped on the door.
      Raylen stumbled groggily out into the main room and looked around with an enormous yawn.
      “Sleep well, sweetie?”
      “Yeah,” Raylen said, rubbing his eye and he headed over to the table.
      His shirt hung loose and the lacings were untied. He dropped into a chair and waited for his breakfast.
      “Go use the privy and wash your hands before we eat, kiddo,” Skye told the boy.
      Wordlessly, he got up and headed to the back of the cottage. After a few minutes, he was back, looking a bit fresher.
      The three of them ate their breakfast, making small talk. Raylen gathered his school bag and headed off for the school across the town green next to the gathering hall.
      “I’ve had another dream,” Skye told Tristan.
      “How long were you there this time?”
      “It’s hard to tell. This time, maybe only one day. When I mentioned Nigel Erickson to you, it got you thinking that maybe I was telling the truth. You said that Nigel was your doctor in the hospital after the lightning strike. You also had that Lichtenberg figure on your back that you never had until that day of the Dal Effect out on the beach.”
      “Are you sure I never had it before then? I can’t see my own back.”
      “It wasn’t there. I’ve seen your shirtless back countless times and it never showed up until that day. When we first came here, Varon noticed what appeared to be an old scar, but it was only a slightly reddened spot between your shoulders. Not a bolt shaped figure like you have now.”
      “Hmm.” He remained silent for a moment. “I guess things are different in that other world.”
      “Tris, I want to find out what this is. Am I just having a very detailed dream, or am I actually experiencing a real thing? Is this some other parallel universe, separate from our original one we came from? Am I somehow tapping into some other dimension?”
      Tristan’s eyebrows arched upward. “That’s a thought. I wonder if Nigel and Will have any thoughts on this.”
      “Let’s ask them.”
      They headed over to the gathering hall. Most of the people in Varonia spent some part of the day at the gathering hall. Cam, Laird, Timmony, Gillip, and Shayne were gathered around one table. Tristan and Skye glanced around at the other tables, but they didn’t see either Nigel Erickson or Will Morton.
      “Shall we try Nigel’s cottage?” Skye asked. “If they’re not there, then we’ll try Will’s. I really want to talk to them.”
      Tristan nodded and he led her out of the building.
      Nigel’s cottage was on the third row back on the west side of the town green. Nigel answered the door with a smile and ushered them inside. As they had hoped, they found Will Morton, a psychotherapist from their world who had moved permanently to Pangaea. They were having a late breakfast together, discussing patients, before starting their day.
      “I sort of thought we would find you here, Will,” Skye said with a smile.
      “We were colleagues back home,” Will said, returning Skye’s smile. “We often consult with one another.”
      “We have a question for both of you,” Tristan said and they took chairs around the table after Nigel gestured toward them. He set two more cups on the table and Tristan and Skye helped themselves to some tea.
      They laid out their idea to the two doctors, who sat listening with interest. After they were finished with the description of Skye’s dreams and the idea they had about them, Nigel spoke up.
      “Interesting thought. Before you brought me here, I would have sent you to consult with Will here.” He laughed. “But after living here for several years now, and crossing over between two different worlds, I’m willing to accept almost any theories.”
      “Yes,” Will Morton agreed. “As a psychiatrist, I shouldn’t say this, but when you brought me here for the first time, and until I saw that pteranadon fly over me, I thought you were all crazy. But when I saw the animals here that have been extinct in our world for who knows how long, I now believe there can be other worlds. How can I deny it?”
      “So,” Skye said, “what do you think? Could my dreams actually be glimpses into an alternate life of mine?”
      “With our world, there aren’t identical counterparts to us,” Tristan mentioned. “We cross over between two parallel worlds. But can there be other worlds where we’re actually existing, but our lives following different paths?”
      Nigel sipped his tea. “I think anything is possible. The things I’ve seen here would get me laughed off the planet over in our home world. The Dal Effect is science fiction over there, but it is very real here.”
      “And to make that even more intriguing,” Will added, “I wasn’t here when Dal caused that effect on everyone on the island, yet it appears I’m becoming affected by it. I’ve been here for, what, fifteen years now, and I don’t seem to be aging.”
      “It could be,” Tristan said, “that the Dal Effect absorbed into the island itself and anyone coming here will have the Dal Effect. We eat the food, drink the water.”
      “I’ve had the same thought,” Nigel said.
      “Tristan,” Skye said, turning her attention to her husband, “do you think there’s any possibility Sebastian could transport us over to that other world. I’ve been thinking that my other self might be holding on to me.”
      “Holding on to you?”
      “Yeah. She’s so emotionally broken up being separated from this world and our kids and friends. I wonder if we can go there and talk with her. Maybe convince her that she never was here, but that somehow she’s tapped into my thoughts.”
      A disgusted expression crossed Tristan’s face. “Maybe Dal is responsible for this. Could he be attacking you in some way?”
      Skye shuddered and rubbed her arms as if cold. “Don’t even think that, Tris.”
      “He could be right,” Nigel said. “He’s evil enough. And he’ll use anyone who is close to either Tristan or Sebastian to get that pendant. And if nothing else, just to get revenge on Jaron for beating him in every conflict.”
       Skye shot a terrified look at Tristan, who rubbed her back for a moment.
      “Let’s talk to Sebastian,” Tristan suggested. “We’ll see if he thinks it’s possible.”
      Skye nodded, but the worried expression didn’t vanish from her face.

THE TWINS SHOWED UP at the gathering hall together. Sebastian’s arm was slung over Jaron’s shoulders as they strode in. Tristan and Skye waved them over to their table.
      “What’s up?” Jaron asked as both brothers sat down opposite their parents.
      “What time do you need to be in Cascadia today?” Tristan asked.
      Jaron grinned. “I’m not going in today. I’m taking the day off.”
      “Good for you, honey!” Skye said with a smile. “You need to take more time off.”
      “Kings can’t afford to take time off, Mom,” Jaron reminded her. “But once in a while, I just need to get away from it.” He looked at Tristan. “I don’t know how you did it for so many years, Dad.”
      “It wasn’t easy.”
      “So, what’s up? Do you have something in mind?”
      “Actually, yes,” Tristan said, and he explained the situation with Skye’s dreams and her theory of another parallel universe.
      “Whoa,” Sebastian said. “That’s a load.”
      “What  we’re wondering is,” Tristan continued, “can you take us to that other reality so we can confront the other Skye?”
      Sebastian sat with a blank face for a moment, then he shook his head as if clearing his thoughts. “How would I do that?”
      “With your pendant,” Skye said, pointing toward Sebastian’s chest. He placed his hand over his shirt where the pendant was hidden beneath.
      “How do we know we’ll get to this other world?” Sebastian asked. “I need to be able to visualize where I’m going.”
      “I can visualize it,” Skye told him. “I’ve been living this other world. I think that other Skye somehow tapped into my mind when she was struck by lightning. Somehow, our minds merged when your dad and I were transported to Pangaea. She’s living in grief because she thinks she’s separated from you guys and all of this.” She held her hands up to indicate the gathering hall and the Pangaean universe. “She misses all of you and she thinks she’s losing something. In her world, she and the other Tristan never came here to Pangaea. It’s a different time stream or something, and their lives took a different path than ours did.”
      “Wow,” Sebastian muttered. “This is deep. Are you sure you can lead me to the right place?”
      Skye nodded. “I think I can. I’ve been living in that world during my dreams, which I don’t think are really dreams at all. She thinks this is her world, but I don’t think it is. She’s a different Skye Talbot. She hasn’t married Tristan. At least not yet. He’s there. After the lightning strike, he came to visit her because they got so close during the cruise. He was concerned about her, so he came to see her and was staying at Mom’s house.”
      “This sounds dangerous to me,” Jaron said.
      “If that pendant has many other functions, not just warning of danger and transporting us back and forth between our world and this one, maybe it will take us to that other Skye and Tristan.”
      Sebastian looked at her with a worried face. “What if I get us lost?”
      “You accidentally sent yourself and your cousin Betsy to a whole different time, just on a sneeze, to thousands of years in the past. That gem obviously does many things. And you managed to get both Tristan and Varon out of their death-like states with it.”
      “Mom, this is much different,” Sebastian said. “This is taking a wild chance.”
      “We need to convince the other Skye that she was never a part of this world. She can still have a memory of this world as a dream, but she was never a part of it. She just got a glimpse of it, like a movie. We need to convince her that she’s not missing anything. Her story has just begun.”
      Skye spent the next half hour hashing over all the details. She was convinced that this was fixable. Convincing Sebastian to take them there was another matter. Finally, she was able to bring Sebastian around. He reluctantly agreed to give it a try.
      Sebastian stood up. “Okay, if you’re sure about this.”
      Tristan and Skye stood up and came around the table to stand next to Sebastian.
      “Wait a minute,” Jaron said, standing up. “You’re not doing this without me. I’ve got to see this.”
      Tristan gently pushed Jaron aside. “Absolutely not. You’re the King of Pangaea. We can’t be risking you.”
      “So you think there is a risk,” Sebastian said, stepping away from his parents.
      “No,” Skye said with force. “There’s not a risk. I know exactly where we’re going. I can tune in on the exact people.”
      “This makes me nervous.” Sebastian held his hand against his chest where the pendant was hidden under his shirt. "What if we get stuck there?"
      “Please, Sebastian,” Skye pleaded. “We have to do this so I can stop this.”
      “You have no guarantee that these so-called dreams will stop,” Sebastian argued.
      “I think it will. I think the other Skye is hanging on to this place too strongly. If she’s convinced that this is not her reality, I think she’ll let go. Otherwise, I'm stuck going back and forth between two worlds.”
      Shaking his head, Sebastian stepped back closer to them and sighed.
      “You’ve done far more dangerous things,” Tristan reminded him. “You’ve stuck your head through unknown walls and structures where you could have become fused with it.”
      Sebastian rolled his eyes and sighed again. “Okay. But, Mom, you’d better darned well know exactly where you think you’re going, because I don’t want to be responsible for another hot mess.”
      “It will be fine, Sabas.”
      Taking a deep breath, Sebastian placed his hands on the shoulder of both parents. “Think strongly of this other place and the people there.”
      Before they could blink out, Jaron jumped over and grabbed onto Sebastian. In the next moment they were standing in the living room of a house. Five people were sitting around the room, gaped with disbelief on their startled faces at their unexpected guests.
      The four who appeared in the room had equally startled expressions as some of them saw duplicates of themselves.
      “What the…” Peter jumped up from his chair. He looked back and forth between the two sets of Tristans and Skyes.
      “I’m sorry to frighten all of you,” Skye said. “I didn’t know any other way to do this.” She looked over at the other Skye. “You and I have been exchanging worlds. I thought I was going crazy when I was told I had never been to Pangaea. I want you to know that it’s not a delusion. There really is a Pangaea. Tristan and I are married and have had children and grandchildren.” She turned to the twins who were still looking around the room startled. “These two guys are two of them. Sebastian and Jaron.” She gestured to each one. Both twins gave a feeble wave and identical half smiles to the other people.
      “How…?” the other Skye finally said. “I remember everything in Pangaea. I was there.”
      “You and I are not the same person,” Skye told her. “Or rather, we are but we aren’t. We exist in two different parallel realities. In my reality, Tristan and I were thrown into Pangaea via a portal that opened up when the lightning struck us.”
       “Wait a minute,” the other Tristan spoke up, “this is crazy.”
      “Not so much,” Tristan said. “We’ve been transporting back and forth between dimensions for years. You, on the other hand, have not.”
      Skye stepped back in. “What I wanted you, Skye, to know is that you’re not going crazy. Your memories, however, are not really your memories. They’re mine. I believe that, when we were struck by lightning on the cruise ship, somehow your thoughts got merged with mine for a short time, possibly when I was transported through the portal to Pangaea. Somehow, we crossed and a bit of my memories merged with yours, even though my memories of Pangaea had not yet happened. This was probably when you were unconscious. I can’t explain that, but somehow your mind linked with mine and you felt those were your memories.”
      “No, those are my memories,” the other Skye argued. “This can’t be happening.”
      Skye looked at her with sympathy. “Those were not your memories. You accidentally tapped into mine. Your life is here. And I hope that life includes Tristan, because we,” she put her arm around her Tristan, “have been so happy together. There’s a special bond between us. And who knows, maybe these characters,” she indicated her twins, “may also become a part of your life one day, too.”
      “I was never there?” the other Skye said sadly. “No, I won’t accept that.”
      Skye looked sadly at her and shook her head. “No, you weren’t. I’m sorry.”
      Elayne looked across at her Skye with a soft smile. “Honey, don’t worry about this. It’s totally unbelievable, but I think she’s telling you the truth. There’s some sort of scientific paradox happening here. We may never be able to explain it.” She looked over at the visiting Skye. “I can only imagine what your world must be like.”
      “It has its ups and downs,” Skye said with a smile. “But you’re also a part of it.”
      Elayne returned her smile. “I’m glad to hear that.”
      “Skye, don’t grieve over a loss. You never lost any of this because you never really had it. It was a fluke that we swapped lives for a short time, but I think that will stop now. Live your life to the fullest. Don’t grieve for something that you never had. You’ll have your own memories. Hopefully with that guy.” She gestures toward the other Tristan, who reached his arm around the other Skye and pulled her close to him.
      “I think that will be a yes,” he said and pulled her tighter to his side.
      The other Skye looked back at the mirror image of herself. “I don’t know if I like this, but I guess I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”
      Skye shook her head and smiled. “No. But you have your own life, so enjoy it.”
      “I don’t know if I can. How do I let go?”
      “Life will take over and you’ll have your own memories that will take over.”
      “Ready to go back home?” Tristan said.
      “Grab on and concentrate on the gathering hall,” Sebastian told them. The others laid their hands on Sebastian and the four of them blinked out of the room, leaving the other people looking around the room at each other.
      “Was that real?” Peter asked, pointing to the place where the others had stood only a moment before.

BACK IN VARONIA, the four materialized on the front porch of the gathering hall. All four of them glanced around, checking that there was nothing different or out of place.
       “Looks like this is the right place,” Sebastian muttered.
      “You did well, Sabas,” Tristan told him and gave him a fatherly hug, surprising Sebastian.
      “I actually did something right?”
      Tristan laughed. “Yes, you did something right.”
      “Now,” Skye said, taking a deep breath. “We’ll see if those dreams return.”
      They went inside the gathering hall and headed for the table where their friends were gathered. They spent the rest of the afternoon explaining what they had done. Nigel and Will listened with interest.
      “If I was back in our home world,” Morton said, “I would be writing an article about this for some psychology journal.”
      “No you wouldn’t,” Nigel said with a laugh. “You would be pegged as mentally unbalanced.”

THREE MONTHS LATER, Skye hurried into the gathering hall to help with the public meals, feeling completely refreshed.
      Kimber chuckled. “You look positively…positive!”
      Skye grabbed a sack of flour. “I am. So far, it’s been three months and no bizarre dreams. Just typical ones where I’m out in public with curlers in my hair or something, but nothing with that other Skye and her family.”
      “I hope that continues,” Jonica told her as she broke eggs into a large mixing bowl.
      They worked in the kitchen silently for a while. They brought the dishes out to the buffet table for the citizens of Varonia to help themselves. Then they put their own plates together and sat down at a table together to eat.
      “It’s so good to be back to normal. I was so scared that Dal was somehow involved with this.”
      “Dal? Seriously?” Kimber asked.
      “When bizarre things happen, there’s always the possibility that he’s involved in some way.”
      “And you’re sure this was just some sort of fluke?” Jonica asked.
      Skye nodded as she buttered her toast and took a bite. “I’m Pretty sure things are back to normal.”
      “Normal,” Kimber said with a laugh, “whatever that is.”