Reversed

[Otto's POV]

Jack took her to a little house further down the stream. It was a beautiful little stone house, bordering at the river, complete with a little stone bridge and a water mill.

"You're awfully quiet all of a sudden," Jack remarked.

"I've been looking at the scenery," Otto said vacantly. "Everything is really beautiful here. It's all so breathtaking. As if I've walked into a painting."

"Is it?" Jack asked as he tilted his head to one side to look at the scenery from a new perspective and shrugged. "I wouldn't know, I've been around this type of scenery my whole life."

That's when Otto noticed a field next to the little house. There were three peculiar looking dolls hovering around the field.

"What are those?!" Otto asked in amazement.

"Those are Shabti dolls," Jack explained with a smile in his voice. "The Egyptians used to bury their dead with them, to serve the deceased person in the afterlife."

"And they actually work?!" Otto asked flabbergasted. Jack laughed at her surprise.

"They do. Amazing isn't it?"

"Yes, it truly is! These days only the most personal of objects get buried along with the deceased, but we don't expect them to actually work."

"That would explain why so many people arrive empty handed lately," Jack mumbled to himself. "Well those Shabti dolls have arrived here thousands of years ago, they've served their owner until he was reborn. Then I claimed them and they've been working for me ever since."

"Thousands of years?" Otto thought to herself. At first she felt like he was exaggerating, but those Shabti dolls really did look like little floating sarcophagi with arms. Otto wasn't exactly sure when the Egyptians lived, but she assumed it was before Christ, so he couldn't have been that far off. She wanted to ask Jack how old he was, but she felt that it might be a personal landline to him.

"What are they doing?" she asked instead.

"They're planting spoiled grain, so they can make bread with it later," Jack explained with a note of amusement in his voice. It reminded her of the way Jasper spoke when he knew something she didn't.

"Spoiled grain?" Otto asked confused. "Those can't be very tasty?"

"They don't stay spoiled! Let's see how well you can keep up," Jack laughed and guide Otto inside the little house where a table stood by the window.

"Living being's come into this world by dying, live a reversed life here and get reborn into your world, the living world. So for crops that means, coming into this world when they are spoiled, and they revert back to a seed over time."

"Hmm, I see," Otto mumbled in thought as she took a seat at the table and watched as jack rummaged through some cupboards and drawers. "So this world undoes what has been done in our world? A Yin to our Yang."

"Oh! Very good! You're very open minded," he praised as he set two plates, some bread, fruits and jam on the table. "A side effect for creatures like humans and animals, is that they don't need to eat anymore. In fact, they can't even if they tried. They can still chew and swallow, but sooner or later they'll hurl up anything they've eaten. It's because their body has been set on releasing all the energy they've gathered in the other world since they've arrived here."

Otto watched Jack as he cut a slice of the bread, pasted a thick layer of jam on top of it and took a large bite from it.

"Will you be ok if you eat?" she asked doubtfully. "You don't have to eat just to accompany me."

"Do I look dead to you?" he asked as a mischievous grin split his face. Otto's face flushed bright red in an instant.

"Oh! No! Of course not! I just assumed that-" she stopped her nervous rambling when she noticed he was laughing.

"Calm down!" he laughed in a way that reminded her very much of Alex. "I'm pulling your leg. Your assumption was right; there are no living creatures here. Except for me. Well, and you, since very recently."

Otto stared at him. A few pieces of the puzzle clicking together in her mind. A living creature in heaven? But how can this be? He was hinting earlier that he was over a few thousand years old?! Why wasn't he old and grey? Why hadn't he died? Or wait... that was it, wasn't it? People came here by dying and left by being reborn. But he couldn't be reborn because he hadn't died yet!

"Don't look at me with so much pity in your eyes," he remarked grimly. "Come on, fire away. I know you've been wanting to ask me several questions ever since we talked about the Shabti dolls. Prize yourself lucky. I usually don't answer that kind of questions. But since you're in the same predicament as I am, I'll take pity on you and share the knowledge. Look at it as a reward for taking my feelings into consideration. But keep in mind that if your dear boyfriend doesn't show up, we'll be stuck here together for a very long time."

"How old are you?" she asked thoughtfully, ignoring his lame joke and noticed the sun had started setting, dipping everything in a warm orange hue. Funny, it looked like it was setting in the west too. Jack took a deep breath as he thought.

"Honestly, I've lost count," he said as his brow wrinkled in thought. "What year is it in your world now?"

"It's the year 2020 after Christ," Otto answered, unsure if her answer was of any help to him.

"Well, that makes me about 4000 years old. Give or take. I'm rounding the number to the thousands for my own convenience," he said nonchalantly. She'd guessed as much though.

"That's very old," Otto said. "Why don't you look old and grey?"

"Because of this place," he said as he gestured around him. Otto thought for an instant that he meant the house, but then realised he meant this world. "The way I've come to understand it myself is... uhm. Think of it this way. My time is going forward, but this whole place is designed to reverse time. And because I live here, it has effect on me too, you know? So, taking the two effects into account, it equals to my own time standing still. However, I do think the reversed time is a little slower than the normal one. I've definitely aged a little bit in those 4000 thousand years."

Otto listened intently to his explanation as she ate, but all she could hear were the words of a tortured boy.

"I can see the pity in your eyes again," Jack warned. "I want you to know I've never been lonely. I've always been surrounded by friends who I was close enough with to call family."

"But still," Otto said, "being the only one who doesn't age must have been terrible! You must have seen so many loved ones come and go..."

Her voice faltered as she felt tears burning in her eyes. His face hardened, but he didn't say anything to counter her argument.

"How did you even get here in the first place?" she asked, feeling really frustrated. "Does your blood related family know you're here?"

"My family?" he asked after a while. "I doubt they're still around. And even if they were, they've probably forgotten all about me."

Otto watched Jack press his lips in a taut line as he wanted to continue but couldn't seem to find the words he needed.

His truth was a bitter pill to swallow. A single tear rolled over Otto's cheek as his words sank in. She quickly wiped it away before Jack could notice.

"My mom had died while giving birth to me," he finally said. "My dad just loved her so much, he couldn't cope with the loss, saying things like I had robbed her from him. So he searched high and low for a way to get her back. He'd already quickly come to the conclusion that there was no way to undo someone's death, and he seemed to know that dying himself didn't necessarily mean he'd get to see her again. I think I was about sixteen years old when he managed to make his way here. Me and one of my older brothers foolishly followed him. I've been here ever since."

Jack had been lost in thought while he told the story, but then he suddenly looked straight up at her and said: "The worst part was that my dad had made a crucial mistake. Because, you see, there is more than one path a soul can take when it departs. And my mom had never even been here to begin with."

"That's awful!" Otto cried, tears properly flowing now. "What an awful person! How can you neglect a child like that! Simply awful."

"I wasn't neglected," Jack said with a gentle smile as he reached across the table to wipe the tears from Otto's cheeks. "While we where still on earth, my uncle and his wive had raised me. My father may not have cared for me, but I was never uncared for. Until he and my brother vanished, of course. After that, I had to fend for myself."

"What do you mean, vanished?" Otto asked as she sniffed and Jack handed her a tissue. It was a comfort to know that Jack hadn't been abandoned since birth.

"Yeah," Jack said as he trailed off and retracted his hand slowly. "I don't think they planned to though. I was off, playing somewhere with my friends, like teenagers tend to do and suddenly there was this big explosion. And when I say big, I really do mean massive! The shockwave I felt when you arrived here was big, but that explosion was at least ten times that. And I haven't seen my father or my brother ever since."

Otto was quiet for a while as she chewed on her bread.

"I know that story was meant to reassure me, but I can't help but feel that your father is a jerk! Not even saying goodbye as he left. It's basically the same as forgetting your child in a locked car. It's inexcusable," Otto complained. She was met with a gentle chuckle.

"Honestly, I'm not a hundred percent certain what you're talking about. But it sounds to me like you'd be a great mom," Jack laughed.

"Really?" Otto asked, taken by surprise.

"Yeah," he said, still smiling. "I've never known my mom. But if I had, I'd want to believe that she would be as warm and caring as you are."

Otto blushed. She didn't know what to say to that.

"Oh? Have I rendered the ever critical Otto speechless?" Jack laughed wholeheartedly. Once again he reminded her of Alex, but this time a painful stab shot through her heart as she thought about him.

"Let me light up some candles. It'll be really dark once the sun has set completely," Jack said and stood to rummage through another cupboard. He came back with a large portable chandelier. There were three candles burning brightly inside them.

"You know?" Otto said as she stared at the dancing flames. "I was kind of expecting there to be no fire here because it is something that we have in our world too."

"Ah, but that's were your world is the anomaly. Because what these candles do is release energy into the world," Jack explained. As he set a large picnic basket on the table and started to load it to the brim with leftover bread, fruit and jam. "I'm glad too, because without fire, there's no way we would be able to make bread here. Now, I'm sorry to rush you, but we do have to get back to the inn before it gets dark completely. It might not be far, but travelling through the dark isn't exactly a good idea."

"Ok," Otto said. "I'm done, we can go."

"You carry the lantern, I'll carry the basket," Jack said and they took off.

They talked all the way back. It felt as if they'd been friends there whole life. They'd barely made it back to the inn before the last light of the day disappeared.

"Do you sleep here too?" Otto asked, pretty certain he had planned on leaving her here when he'd first brought her.

"I can sleep wherever I want," he said as they stood together on the porch before going in. "But I usually don't sleep here. Come on, I'll ask Annabelle to show you your room."

But as he said it, a large gust swept over the land, making all the little hairs on Otto's body stand on end.

"What was that?" she asked as she hugged herself to get rid of the uncomfortable feeling. Jack, who had turned around to look in the distance, looked back at her with a mixture of regret and amusement playing on his face.

"The wind," he said, with an innocent smile, promptly handed her the picnic basket and took the lantern from her. "I remembered just now that I have somewhere to be tonight. Can you go in by yourself?"

"Oh! Sure no problem."

"I'll be back with more food," he said as he turned and started to walk away.

"Ok," Otto said as she waved him goodbye. But she couldn't help the feeling that she wouldn't see him again.