A Suitcase of Necessities

A short to-do list: Check out of the hotel, swing by the corner store and get another travel-sized body wash, get a taxi, go through airport security, check the email, get on a plane. The good thing about a short to-do list is that you can run it over in your mind until it’s memorized, and you can still forget to pick up the body wash at a corner store and have to buy one at the airport for triple the price. Lenore found her gate with the ease of someone who’s had to navigate airports regularly for the last 10 years. She was always more nervous waiting to board the plane than she was on the plane. Looking through her emails kept her mind off it, until she got to the last one. The last email in her inbox had sat there for as long as she’s had this email address.

The email was from Lenore’s best friend, Eren. They were in ballet together, studied together, cried over breakups together and graduated high school together. Lenore left to study forensics at a prestigious university, Eren never figured out what she wanted to do before they lost contact. Lenore was hired at the Penrose research institute, a company that funded a lot of different research and let their funded researchers pretty much do whatever they wanted as long as they published at least 1 paper a year, and if their findings could be monetized the institute got full rights to it. This was her work email provided by the institute. She was never let go on record, so she still had access to the institute’s resources, and for some reason her email never got deleted, but she figured it wasn’t in the database anymore since she only got phishing and scam mail. She marked Eren’s email as important when she got it, it was a simple congratulations message, Lenore never learned how Eren found her work email and managed to bypass the firewalls with such an obvious personal address, but it made her smile at the time, and it made her smile now, in a different way.

“Now Boarding, flight 328.”

The dull tone of the announcer broke Lenore’s reverie and she stood, shouldered her leather carry-on, and made for the line. She took a deep breath because for the first time she was flying back to her hometown. The first time since she left, the first time since her college graduation party 12 years ago, and the first time since she made Eren forget who she was.

Lenore had no idea why she decided to go there of all places, she would just have to pick up and leave in a few months when the Penrose Institute caught up to her. Something drew her there, something that was entirely divorced from the call of faded memories and old friends. Maybe it was the longing for an inkling of familiarity, or maybe it was the storage facility where she kept all her personal belongings that weren’t necessities. She made a mental note to make sure that box was still untouched by the Institute, it was good that the medallions did weird things to technology.

Lenore’s research: Modern Magic, something she knew Eren would have been fascinated by. On a college trip to an old church in Italy Lenore uncovered what looked like an arcade token in shape, it had a little more heft and the engraving of a flame on the front, all her peers thought it was just an old italian coin, they couldn’t even make out the engraving. 2 weeks after Lenore published her paper on what was found on that dig, before she had even graduated, she got the job offer directly from Alan Penrose, the CEO.

It turned out he created the institute to find and study these medallions. To find a way to use their energy to power the world, that’s what he said, at least. No, He found a way to release their magic into the world, a way that would result in the mass exposure of humanity to the things lurking just behind the veil between the mundane and the arcane. The world would be thrown into chaos.

That was why Lenore left, she took as many of Alan’s medallions as she could and left him a letter, the employment equivalent of a breakup over text. Except it wasn’t a resignation letter, it was an explanation of the dangers of what he was trying to do, and a confession of what she stole. If she resigned he could have cut her off from the company. Lenore knew that he couldn’t fire her on-record, that was the purpose of the letter, she made sure he knew she had another copy and a way to make it public if anything happened to her. That’s why she was on the run, and why she had to use the rosemary medallion to wipe her best friend’s memory.

That was the subconscious reason that drove Lenore to visit her hometown. She wanted to check on Eren, to see if there were any negative, lasting effects of the memory change. Despite all her insistence that testing not be done on humans she herself tested a very dangerous power on her best friend. To this day Lenore believes it was for the best, anyone who might know where she is would have been targeted, and Eren would have tried to keep in touch regardless of the potential danger.

She dropped by the storage unit, bought with a fake name, and made sure everything was there. Then headed to the old park she and Eren played in as kids, and sat and talked until the wee hours of the morning as teenagers.

Lenore didn’t know that park was condemned by the city and was slated to be torn down after the winter months with possible freezes. She was only about to find it because she still had the memories of what the houses around it looked like, otherwize the plot of land would easily be mistaken for an overgrown, undeveloped space. She walked around the rusted tresses and the squeaky merry-go-round and swing set for what felt like hours but was only a few minutes. In those few minutes it felt like she relived every memory of her childhood and adolescence. Lenore tore herself away from the park to find a hotel.

A run-down bed and breakfast, the nearest hotel Lenore could find to her old friend’s house. She plopped her suitcase on the bed and opened it. The suitcase that held her entire life for the last decade. She took the overpriced body wash out of her carry-on bag, with the intention of placing it in her suitcase, and instead hurled it into the wall with a loud thunk.

“Stupid Italian church dig. Stupid Penrose Institute. Stupid SUITCASE!”

Lenore flipped the suitcase full of carefully packed necessities onto the floor with a roar of anger, frustration, and regret.

Something had to change. She couldn’t run anymore, not for the rest of her life.

She had to fight.