Marie continues to watch the water try to escape gravity, but inevitably
fall back down. All of the sudden, a hand touches her shoulder, and she
breaks out of it to find Kivi next to her. They’re not in the water, though.
They’re somewhere else in the middle of the woods. “What happened?”
“You were in there for two minutes. I worked up the nerve to go in after
you.”
“Then you dragged me out of the water, through the woods? To what end?”
“I dragged nobody nowhere. You must have teleported us here.”
“I did no such thing!” Marie insists.
“Okay, then the time gods did it. I’m sorry, I don’t know,” she defends.
Marie composes herself. “No, I’m sorry. I think there’s something weird
about that water. I was not in there for two minutes. Rather, that’s not
what it felt like. And right now I feel agitated, and angry at you for
taking me away from it. It’s not fair. I want to go back there. I know that
I shouldn’t be so...invested, but there’s something drawing me to it, like
an addictive drug.”
“Maybe it’s an actual drug,” Kivi reasons.
“Yeah, and maybe drinking it turns you into an asshole.”
“Are immortals assholes?”
“Ya know, I’m not sure if I’ve ever met anyone who drank all the waters. I
know of some people who were, to various degrees, immortal, but for other
reasons. Mateo once told me of one guy, though. He was an asshole, but I
don’t know if this was why.”
Kivi nods. “We need to figure out where we are.”
“I don’t suppose you brought the tablet with us, or anything from our bag?”
“You got naked, I got naked. I didn’t think anything else should get wet.”
“Take my hand.” Marie tries to jump them back to the spring, and then back
to Kansas City. Finally she tries to return to the Springfield airport,
where they left the car, but nothing. If she was the one responsible for
teleporting them before, she can’t do it again. “Ugh, I wish I had just kept
my watch on. That would have been good enough.”
“We have to find help. We can’t just sit here. No one knows where we are.”
“Agreed.”
They get up, and start walking through the trees. They don’t have to go far
at all before they see a huge body of water before them. They’re definitely
nowhere near the Fountain of Youth anymore. They keep walking, until they
get to the beach.
“Do you know where this is?”
Marie squints, and looks around. “It couldn’t be...” She steps into the
water, reaches in to get some on her hand, and sticks it in her mouth. She
tries to spit it out.
“Ocean water?”
“No. The salinity is much too high for that. It’s the Dead Sea, otherwise
known as the source of Energy water.”
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