Dreams Transcribed and a Coin in a Puddle

After the wedding, Teresa and Erick went for a walk. Old willows stood sentinel, their boughs swaying gently, spilling fragmented shadows across cobblestones that gleamed faintly in the moonlight.

Erick held out a pocket watch. “This belonged to my great-grandfather. When I was a kid, he’d say that it held the heartbeat of the universe.” He paused. “He was a poet, not a scientist.”

"Does it still keep time?" she asked.

“In a fashion,” Erick answered. He flipped open the stopwatch and an ethereal orange-pink light illuminated the area around them. “It only glows like that when I am on the right path in life.” He paused briefly, considering. “I was afraid to open it when I was with Anna.”

Teresa peered at the watch, uncertain if Erick was teasing her. “What makes it tick?”

“No idea,” he admitted. “My great-grandfather only gave it to me when he said he was certain I wouldn’t try to take it apart like I did so many other things.”

Erick smiled. "How about we take it on our journey to Niagara? It’s more compass than watch. We can choose our journey by moments that matter, instead of by maps.”

Teresa smiled and shook her head in disbelief. "That’s wildly romantic and I don’t think I could have dreamt up anything better." She glanced at the watch again. "Where did your great-grandfather get it?"

Erick ran his thumb around the rim of the watch. “He first showed it to me when I was a kid,” Erick began with warm nostalgia. “Said it had been given to him by his father, who’d been given it by a stranger.” He paused, looking back up at her. “My great-grandfather was told to only give it to his great-grandson. He passed before I was born and my Dad kept it for me. Dad never considered it his.”

“One of those mysteries that nudges you onto the path you’re meant to take,” she murmured.

Erick tilted his head, studying her. “Did you have anything like that? A nudge? Something that set you on your path?”

She nodded. “Nothing like a glowing pocket watch, which I honestly hope is not radioactive. But when I was about seven, my grandfather gave me a book about Madame Curie. That’s when I was first inspired to pursue science.” She laughed. “I wanted to win a Nobel someday like her.”

“I wouldn’t feel bad about not getting a Nobel yet. Stick with me and maybe we’ll share one with this dimensional portal technology,” he said.

Erick gently closed the watch, ending the orange-pink glow, and put it back in a pocket. They left the chapel and the willows behind, for his car and the road ahead. As they both wished, there was no wedding reception.

Teresa and Erick stood on the observation deck, taking in the thunder of Niagara’s cascading waters.

Teresa leaned closer to Erick. “Imagine all the whispered promises between lovers who stood here before us.”

“And imagine the physics that powers it all,” Erick replied wryly.

“I don’t think fluid dynamics quite stirs the soul in the same way,” she observed.

“Well, the falls are poetry in motion; physics writing the world an epic love letter,” Erick replied.

“You know,” she said, “I think you could romanticize anything.” She smirked. “If you think about it, the term fluid dynamics is doubly apt for Niagara considering its popularity as a honeymoon destination.”

“There must be a hidden saucy side of you,” Erick said with surprise.

She laughed. “I think you are forgetting the Irish cream incident!”

Erick nodded. “How can I forget that” he replied, smiling. The first time they had made love it had started with her passing a sip of Irish cream to him when they kissed.

Later, they sat in a restaurant perched near the falls. Above were crystal chandeliers casting light onto the white linen spread across the table.

Teresa looked through the window. She was wearing an emerald-green dress that caught the glimmer of the chandelier. Dressed sharply in a navy suit, Erick gazed at her with quiet wonder, as if the view inside the restaurant was as awe-inspiring as that outside.

Their waiter sported a warm smile, and an accent Erick couldn’t quite place. “Good evening. Can I suggest the pan-seared scallops; this evening’s special?”

Teresa’s face lit up. “That sounds lovely. We’ll share a plate of that,” she said, glancing at Erick for confirmation. He looked surprised that she had picked exactly what he would have wanted, but he simply nodded.

Erick leaned back, with an easy smile. “And a bottle of your best Chardonnay with that,” he continued, his voice low and even with the ease of a man taking his time.

After the waiter left, their conversation turned to the day’s adventures, the sights, and inside jokes.

“Sharing our dinner leaves room for dessert,” Teresa pointed out.

When the scallops arrived, they were a perfect golden color and rested on a bed of vibrant greens. A delicate saffron sauce was splashed across the dish. Teresa gave a satisfied sigh after taking her first bite.

Teresa speared a scallop with her fork and offered it to Erick. He chewed it and smiled. “It’s good!”

They clinked glasses as the server poured the Chardonnay. “To us,” he toasted.

“To us,” echoed Teresa, clinking her glass with his. “And to many, many more adventures,” she added with a hint of promise in her voice.

On one of their walks around Niagara, they found a small, weathered stand perched on the edge of a marketplace. It had a hand-painted wooden sign which read: Dreams Transcribed. Behind it, an older woman sat on a wooden stool. Countless vials were on display.

“What are these?” Teresa asked quietly.

“Dreams and memories, my dear. Bottled, preserved, and waiting to be shared,” she replied.

Erick’s finger touched the edge of one shimmering vial. “May we…?” he asked.

The woman nodded. “Try it.”

He removed the stopper from the vial with a pronounced pop. The smell that wafted up reminded him of the leather-bound books he read as a child and the dust that floated in the sunlight that peeked in through the curtains in the study.

The woman handed Teresa a vial, which Teresa opened with its own pop. She sniffed the vial, which seemed to unfold in like layers or aftertastes– each one triggering a different memory.

The shopkeeper watched Teresa as she moved from vial to vial, taking a whiff from each. Each reminded Teresa of something different; a forgotten joke or a song.

“It’s amazing how something as simple as a scent can conjure up memories like this,” Erick commented.

“I doubt there’s anything simple about them.” Teresa smiled. “I look at them as reminders to hold onto this moment. Because soon enough, we’ll be back to the daily grind.” There was no regret in her tone, only a quiet urging to savor the present.

Erick nodded, his hand falling to the vial Teresa had lingered over the longest. He lifted it carefully, along with one that he picked out. The exchange of cash felt oddly ceremonial to him. He gave Teresa her vial.

As they wandered off to explore the market, the last rays of the sun touched the falls below them, turning the mist the colors of fire and amber. The vial in Erick’s pocket seemed to weigh more than it should, heavier than just the swirling liquid within. It was a piece of this day, of this inexplicable and transient magic, to be uncorked at some later date when they would need to remember.

As the sun began to set, they walked hand-in-hand back to the sanctuary of their hotel suite.

A crystal pineapple rested on the coffee table in their suite; the most interesting of their wedding gifts. Its many facets caught the ambient light and scattering rainbows across the suite. Teresa picked it up, the cool weight of it balanced in her hands. The crystal refracted the light and painted her in fleeting shades of color.

“Pineapples symbolize hospitality,” she said as her fingers traced along its edges.

“Or maybe it symbolizes us,” he said.

“How so?” she asked.

“Complicated but sweet at the center.” He smiled.

Teresa glanced at him. “That’s either terribly profound or you just called me prickly on the outside.”

“Why can’t it be both?” he countered.

“Make sure you don’t turn it upside down,” she stated.

“Why, is that bad luck or something?”

“It depends on how you feel about swinging,” she said, giggling.

“In that case, maybe I’ll put some crazy glue on the bottom so it can’t be flipped,” he proposed.

The next day they took a boat ride that carried them close to the falls. they finished the day with a moonlit walk where the shadows stretched long and their intimate conversations stretched longer.

“Niagara feels more like a passage or a threshold than a normal place,” Teresa observed.

“To what?” Erick asked, though he knew the answer. It was in every look exchanged, every brush of fingers, every laugh they somehow pulled from the air between them.

“To whatever comes next,” she replied.

“Whatever comes next,” Erick echoed. He took out his pocket watch and noticed the orange-pink glow. He took a few steps in one direction and glow diminished. He went in a different direction and the glow grew stronger.

“Looks like you’re getting warmer,” Teresa commented.

The pocket watch was glowing quite brightly when he came to a puddle. He laughed. “What is this?”

“A puddle, I assume?” she quipped.

“No, this is unusual. I mean why would the pocket watch bring me here,” he asked.

“I’m just glad that the watch glows salmon-colored, because I’d be more worried about radiation if it was blue,” she joked.

Erick crouched by the puddle. He passed the pocket watch over the puddle and noticed a slightly brighter glow to it over its middle. He caught a slight metallic glint. He looked closer and reached toward the source. His fingers gripped something metallic, mostly buried in the mud. He swished it around in the puddle to rinse the mud off.

It was tarnished and looked about the same size as an old 50-cent piece, except that it was hexagonal, not round. The face on the coin was unfamiliar and the date-if it was an actual date-said 2070.

He handed the coin to Teresa.

“2070?” she questioned. She examined the coin on both sides. “Neo-Athena? Well, the watch didn’t lead us to a destination, so much as an impossible object—while we were thinking about dreams, memory, and the future,” she stated.

“I guess what I said earlier holds-this is a journey defined by moments, not maps,” Erick replied.

“This coin suggests that the future is not abstract anymore,” Teresa postulated.

“I doubt it’s from our future; but it could be from a parallel world where it was 2070 before this coin was dropped here,” Erick replied.

They stood next to the puddle, looking at the coin. “Let’s keep it,” Teresa suggested, putting the odd coin in her pocket.

Erick nodded, watching the pocket watch’s glow slowly fade. He realized once again that the pocket watch pointed to moments that matter. The vials from Dreams Transcribed preserved memory but that coin hinted at the future. The watch would mark the path between the two.

They continued walking together, not understanding the mystery, but knowing that they would face such mysteries at each other’s side and that their brief honeymoon was no ending but just the prologue for the adventures to come.