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All characters are the property of Thomas Harris, used herein without permission but with the greatest admiration and respect.
Parallel.
The thought stopped him, sudden and still, even as he moved to cross the glowing wooden expanse of floor that separated them. It suspended him in time like the drop of Chateau d’Yquem that he saw there, glistening in the warm firelight, quivering in space.
He saw himself reflected in her jewels, in her eyes… he felt a need, stronger than it had been in many a year… a tenderness that shocked and moved him… a surprise that gratified and inspired him…
He looked at this woman, who could have been his student, his daughter, his lover. This mad orphan, rebel child, halved, broken, melted, forged. She’d risen and fallen to a pattern he knew well. It was the course of his own life, shifted in time and space. He strained to move and could not.
Parallel. Uncrossable.
The teacup had shattered and remained broken. No new whole coalesced, no arrow reversed. And the fabric of the universe still was woven of warp and weft, flowing over and above, under and below, creating a pattern as binding as any cell. Their threads could never twine or knot, but instead be doomed to run side by side into infinity. Identical but for one variable, a single value defining the difference, and the distance.
Perhaps parallel lines can intersect when teacup pieces come together. Perhaps Hawking would know a way. It could be interesting to try and figure it out.
In the meantime, perhaps the distance could be narrowed, the fabric folded. He thought about tesseracts as he bent to her coral and cream in the firelight his dark sleek head.
