Anastasia Durante stood on the steps of the Central Courthouse, the rain drizzling around her.
Her father, Arturo Durante, had just been questioned as part of an ongoing investigation into the criminal activity in the Underville.
She didn't know yet that today would be her last day in the year 1980.
It began before they'd left for the courthouse, before the investigation had commenced, even before Anastasia had been born.
It was in her blood, and no one could deny that.
Arturo had met a woman from another place, a woman not unlike the one Anastasia would become.
They were only together a short while, and he was left with Anastasia when her mother vanished.
He knew what Anastasia was, or what she might become, but was hoping it wasn't true.
Now, on the last day they would spend in 1980, he faced the possibility that he might soon have to tell her.
But not yet.
In 1937, the same woman who had just existed in 1980 came to appear and exist in the same place, 43 years before she was there.
Anastasia Durante stood on the steps of the Central Courthouse, the sun shining around her.
There were different buildings now, and the people dressed differently, although she was the same and wearing the same clothes.
Before she could process what happened, another slip of the wind shuffled around her, and she was — for the second time — in a different place.
Now, she was in what seemed to be a basement laboratory or some kind of dungeon. Stone, brick, bits of metal and wood here and there. Poor lighting, wiry and dim, casting shadows everywhere. Bookshelves, metallic with tools all over them. Dusty grimoires and modern textbooks (modern at least to 1937, Anastasia assumed, although she didn't yet know exactly which year she was in).
From the corner of one such shelf, a man in a tan suit and grey shirt appeared. He had a headwrap like Matronite men in her own time wore, and a very long beard the color of pepper with bits of salt mixed in.
"Finally," he said at her, as though she was meant to be there.
She blinked at him.
"Finally," he repeated.
"Finally?"
"I was beginning to wonder if you wouldn't show up," he said, and turned back toward the rest of the room, away from her.
She followed. "Who are you?"
"You should know that by now," he said, barely pausing to look at her. "Don't you recognize me? Think, girl, think."
She didn't. But then, she didn't get out much. She preferred the isolation of the sets she filmed on and the microcosms of the mansion-worlds set up by Arturo and his friends in the "people who are rich for reasons they shouldn't be" areas of Idyllville she had grown up in.
"Azurov," he said, recognizing her lack of recognition. "The Amazing!" A flourish of his hand as they walked.
"Oh," she said, rather understatedly.
"Perhaps things are different where you're from," he suggested. "I know what is, what might be, but rarely what will be. That one's always changing."
"Right."
"In any case, you're here now, and we can get started."
"With?"
"With?" he repeated. "My girl, with everything."
She followed him as he walked toward a certain shelf in the corner, extracting a book there. "Everything?" she asked.
"Everything," he said, handing her the book. It said, Basics Of Time Travel, and was a 30s-era text on how to safely manipulate the flow of events without becoming too much a part of them that it would be impossible to extricate oneself from the history of what you were manipulating. "You...are an Eternitarian," Azurov concluded. "And now, it's time to learn what that means, how it happened, why it happened to you, and most importantly, when. Come."
This was rather a lot of information and suggestions to be tossed at her all at once, and she was thinking about tossing the book he'd just given her at him, before reconsidering and deciding to indulge the man's apparent delusions. If only for the time being.
In the year 1980, Arturo was left in his mansion, essentially alone. His daughter was gone, at least for now. The moment had been prepared for, and yet he still felt a sense of loss regarding the version of her who had existed right then around him.
He stood by the hearth, fire crackling, a glass of something dark in his hand. But he had yet to sip, and he wasn't going to.
The same man from 1937 appeared to him, his existence suddenly appearing in a blink several feet behind Arturo. His beard was the same length, the pepper still mixed with salt; his clothes were the same colors, the tan still layered over the grey.
"Right around now," Azurov began, "your daughter should be appearing to me 43 years ago. It has been that length of time for me since then, but I remember it as well as any other day."
"I don't have to ask if she's well, then," Arturo said, not looking back.
"Of course not. You can ask her yourself."
"Not that version of her," he said. "Not that version, ever again."
"No," Azurov replied. "But another one. A different one. An older one, in some ways."
Arturo said nothing.
"You'll be gone from this world soon as well," Azurov said. "A great miasma is coming. A sickness that cleanses the world. Only the righteous survive."
"And you think I'm not?"
"Don't you?"
Now, they both were silent.
"Perhaps, soon," Arturo said. "If I can."
"I know her well, Arturo," Azurov said. "Up to now, it was safest if you didn't communicate. But after this point, there's no remaining harm. You won't be damaging anything. The Ministry shan't complain. It's the right thing to do."
"Of course, of course," Arturo said.
"You haven't lost her," he continued.
Arturo's mouth crooked a bit at the corners. "Haven't I? She's lost me, in any case."
He turned to look, and the wizard was gone.
In 1937, Anastasia continued on at Azurov's behest, curious but more concerned by the second.
"Is that why I don't heal right?"
Azurov paused. "It's begun?"
"For a while," she said. "It should take longer to heal things, but it doesn't. It's been getting faster."
"Yes, yes...it's all part of this."
"What does that mean?"
"You're immortal now, Anastasia. It's in your blood. A very long time from now, you'll be born and it will be in your blood then too. And now, here you are, and it's still in your blood."
"What is?"
"The immortality," Azurov said, continuing on. "The everlasting youth. The healing factor. In short, from this point forward, you will never die. And you have a great responsibility of a choice to make ahead of you."
"And what's that?"
"Whether you want to honor the timeline that has already come before," he said, "or disgrace it and follow your own path with this new life of yours."
"What came before?"
"There's time for that," Azurov said, leading her finally into what appeared to be a study or a den, offshot from a hallway that had led away from the laboratory. "For now, read. And sit. You won't be going home for a long time, I'm afraid."