Ash and Memory - In the Time Before - Inkwell Prompt 231

In the year 2142, time travel is strictly used for non-intrusive historical observation. Historians, “Temporal Archivists”, are trained to never interact. But Historian Elias Vonn violated the code. During a sanctioned mission to 1849 St. Louis, he fell in love with a local schoolteacher.

He stood on the lip of the gateway, the hum of the chrono-field vibrating in his chest like a second heartbeat, one that had stopped the day Clara died.

“You're late,” said Dr. Halberg, her voice sharp above the containment chamber’s whine. “You had six months, Elias. The window narrows in fourteen minutes. If you don’t go now, the Authority will close the case.”

“That’s the point,” Elias muttered.

Halberg sighed, adjusting the digital journal slates in her hand. “You left the 1849 file corrupted. Half the fire index is missing. The logs are all fragmented. Your field notes stop mid-sentence.”

“So do most lives,” he said.

“This isn’t a rescue mission. You’re there to finish the record, not break the Continuity Preservation Code again.”

But it was. At least in his heart, it was.

In the time before, before the fire, before Clara’s hand slipped from his in the smoke, Elias had been a disciplined observer, a model archivist. He’d never breached containment. He wore the neural dampeners. He never touched the past.

But Clara had been... impossible.

She was history with a pulse.

“You have twelve minutes,” Halberg said. She pressed the slate into his palm. “Finish the record. Then come home.”

The chamber door slid open. Pale light shimmered where air tore around the temporal fissure. Beyond it, the heat of summer in 1849 curled at the edges, Missouri sun, brick dust, and woodsmoke from a city yet to burn.

Elias stared at the gateway. The past was a wound that still bled through time.

He stepped forward and vanished into it.

---

The air hit him. A punch of heat and horse smells. His boots crunched down on sun-baked cobblestone as the shimmer of the transit faded.

St. Louis. May 1849.

He staggered forward, pulse still synced to the chrono-field’s aftershock. The street curved ahead just as he remembered, the uneven bricks, gas lamps dark in the daylight, canvas awnings flapping on the dry wind. A black dog nosed a broken crate in the alley.

The fire wouldn’t begin for six hours. He had that long. Six hours to complete the record. Six hours until the White Cloud, a paddle steamer laden with hay and whiskey barrels, caught fire at the levee and took the city with it.

Six hours until Clara died.

He ducked down Market Street, his coat brushing against passing figures. The neural suppressor implanted behind his ear pulsed faintly, pinging his mission parameters, Observation Mode, but he tapped it twice, dulling the feedback.

The Authority would monitor his vitals. But they wouldn’t hear his heart break again.

He found her schoolhouse three blocks down, a squat red-brick building tucked behind a dry goods store. The door stood open.

Her voice spilled through it like a forgotten melody.

“Very good, Thomas. And can anyone else tell me what ephemeral means?”

Elias stood outside the frame of the door, afraid to enter, afraid to leave. She was alive. Unburned. Untouched by smoke and ruin.

He knew exactly when she’d turn. She always did, drawn to movement, to energy, to him. And right on cue, she turned.

Clara looked up, her eyes narrowing at the figure in the doorway. Recognition hadn’t bloomed yet. Not fully. But her smile crept in anyway, cautious, curious, kind.

“Can I help you, sir?” she asked.

He wanted to say her name. Just her name. He wanted to let it catch in his throat and stay there forever.

“Just… observing,” he said.

“Then come in. I won’t bite.”

For a heartbeat, he almost did. He saw the way the light caught in her hair, the dust motes dancing around her like ash from a fire that hadn’t yet happened.

But instead, Elias backed away.

“Another time,” he said.

She tilted her head, puzzled. “Suit yourself.”

He turned down the steps and walked into the street, her voice echoing behind him as she returned to her lesson.

This time, he would follow a different path.

Even if it led to the same fire.

---

It was 4:31 when Elias saw her step out of the grocer’s.

Clara balanced a basket against her hip, full of bread, onions, and soap flakes wrapped in paper. She paused to tuck a stray lock behind her ear, then turned east toward the narrow lanes that wound toward the levee and her building, a crumbling tenement stacked over a cooper’s shop.

He followed her at a distance, heart pounding.

He had no plan. No blueprint. No direction to chart her escape. He’d only ever watched this day end in flame.

“Clara,” he called, jogging to her side, his breath catching.

She stopped. Turned slowly.

“Do I… know you?” she asked, squinting slightly.

Then, narrowing her eyes, “Wait… you were just at the schoolhouse. You looked in the door and left.”

Elias gave a slight nod. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”

She studied his face, something shifting behind her eyes. “That’s not the first time, though… is it?”

Her voice softened, uncertain. “I think we spoke before. A few days ago?”

He said nothing.

“You came in after class. Sat at the back. You asked about the fire plan, how I’d evacuate the children, where the buckets were kept. I remember thinking it was odd, but you smiled like it was just academic curiosity.”

She touched the handle of her basket absently.

A flicker of recognition passed through her like smoke through a keyhole. Not a full memory. Just a ghost of déjà vu.

Elias smiled gently and pointed to her basket. “May I help carry that?”

She hesitated, gaze measuring him, his too-modern eyes, the tension in his voice.

“All right,” she said. “But just to the lane.”

He took the basket and fell into step beside her.

“It’s kind of you,” she said. “Not many men offer help without wanting something.”

“Maybe I want time,” he said. “Just a little more.”

She laughed, soft and uncertain. “You’re an odd one.”

4:43 p.m. The slate in his coat pulsed against his ribs, a subtle update in the timeline log. But something was wrong. The timestamp was off. His implant relayed the notification.

Alert: Displacement Marker Shifted - Ignition sequence detected at 4:43:12

Elias stopped walking. His fingers clenched the wicker handle.

“Is everything alright?” she asked.

“We need to move,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Now. Come with me.”

“I don’t understand—”

“Your home, it’s not safe. Please.”

A distant boom rang out. Not loud. Muffled, like a handclap in a cathedral. A moment later, a column of smoke curled above the buildings near the waterfront, far earlier than recorded.

Clara turned to look. “Oh God—”

“Come with me!” Elias grabbed her wrist and pulled.

But something tugged at his gut. A nauseating drop in the pit of time.

You caused this.

His presence, his first trip, the whispers, they hadn’t been as invisible as the Authority taught. Someone had overheard. Or maybe a riverman changed his route because of a warning passed too casually.

History had moved.

“My landlady, my cat—” Clara tried to pull away, eyes wide.

“We have to go!”

A roar. Wind pressed down the street, black with soot.

Elias turned them toward the hill, but a wagon blocked the path, wheels locked. Screams began to rise, low and fast, like birds startled from trees.

“Clara, please—”

But she was already running. Not with him. Toward her building. Toward the place she always died.
He chased her, shouting her name. His neural suppressor screamed in his head.

Timeline breach. Recall initiated.

“No!” he shouted, trying to hold her in sight, to anchor himself in the present.

Her face turned. And in that moment, she remembered.

“You came back…”

The light swallowed her.

The chrono-field pulled him through.

And the fire took her all over again.

In the time before.

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I’m Jason, a science fiction writer obsessed with the places where technology, military life, and human nature collide - often in spectacularly messy ways. With a background in tech and the military, I love crafting stories full of sharp dialogue, immersive worlds, and unexpected humor. Follow along if you enjoy these kinds of stories or want to learn more about my writing and upcoming novels.

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