MENU UNDER CONSTRUCTION

MENU BACK ONLINE, BABY!

Monday, August 12, 2019

Microstory 1166: The Officiant

The Hundemarke is a special temporal object capable of creating a fixed moment in time. While active, it will prevent any time travel that could interfere with the events as they occur around it. Humans, in their incessant drive for violence, generally use this device to kill someone completely dead, so they can never return in some other reality. They fail to see its other applications, such as the protection of life. In the year 1829, a seer predicted the birth of a woman who would come to be known as The Officiant, and went by no other name. She had the strange ability to detect love; more specifically, love between soulmates. Now, for the most part, emotion is not a characteristic of time or space. It’s important, and it’s definitely real, but it bears no impact on the way things work on the quantum level. The Officiant’s proverbial sixth sense did not appear to be a time power, except that she could sense this love across time, and draw herself towards it at will. It was something different; something special, and perhaps even unique in any universe. The seer realized how vital the Officiant could be, and he didn’t want to see anything interfere with that. She wasn’t at more risk of being erased from history than anyone else, but if that were to happen, it would have worse consequences than it would for someone else. He sought out, and ultimately found, the Hundemarke, and used it to hold the Officiant’s birth and early life in place. She needed to live long enough to understand her own power, and mature enough to use it wisely. Once that development was complete, she was free to live her life as she pleased, though of course, he knew what she would do with her gift.

She became ordained as an administer of marriage. She did not do this through some religion, some human legal body, or any recognizable institution. She did not even have it done to her by some other individual. She simply declared to time itself that she was the Officiant, and had the authority to canonize a marital union. While time is not a conscious entity, it does enjoy more control over reality than anything else, including light and gravity. No one could dispute her power; not that anyone would want to. The danger the seer worried about didn’t have anything to do with some nefarious time traveler who purposely went back in time to try and erase the Officiant before she was born. The danger was in the butterfly effect; in minor or unrelated changes preceding her birth that could alter the course of events enough to as to incidentally change the outcome. The worst of the worst temporal manipulators had no problem with her. She never went up against them, or really even expressed distaste for them. She wasn’t exactly unbiased, but she was not concerned with their activity either. Her job was to oversee all marriages between people like her, and it was the only responsibility she had. It’s unclear how old she was before she died, but she did die. Anyone wishing to enter into a marriage would have to seek her out within her own personal timeline. They don’t always realize that they’re doing it. She sometimes just shows up, and doesn’t explain that she’s not just your average minister, or boat captain. Fortunately for her and her need to breaks, marriages involving time manipulators aren’t extremely common. It’s not that it doesn’t happen at all, but since so many of them spend so much of their time on the go, their chances of meeting someone, and settling down, are just that much lower than for a normal person. Still, she kept herself busy, and the work never felt tedious.

No comments :

Post a Comment