Isabella’s grandmother

“Mama wrote me, dear!” Isabella’s mother, a not-so-young woman anymore, celebrated as a young child. “She is coming to visit us!” She continued yelling from the kitchen.

“What?!” The old alchemist exclaimed in disbelief and biting his teeth. He made a very discontent face although was able to hide it from Isabella’s mother.

“I thought you liked her and missed her.” The young man, son of a friend of a friend, replied in a lower voice.

“Yeah, I do.” Isabella’s father answered in a lower voice too. “And I do like her better when she is far away, very far away.” He sighed heavily and gesticulated with his hand as if trying to send the old woman away before she arrive. “We can say” He continued “I like her letters. Full of histories from all around where she goes. True or not it is always very entertaining.”

“What did you say, Dear?” Isabella’s mother asked from the kitchen where she was finishing to hit the soup.

“That is great news, my love!” He yelled. “When did she arrive?” He asked contracting his teeth again and, saying in a very low voice. “I need to prepare myself emotionally.”

“You know mom…” She entered the living room smiling and carrying the soup that smelled great. “Anytime. It might even be tonight. Those letters took so long sometimes…”

“That is the problem here; maybe all of us should move to the future with Isabella where the letters came faster.” He said lowly when Isabella’s mother was back in the kitchen.

Isabella entered the living room laughing and saying.

“It is good to be home again.”

“Be welcome, dear, did you wash your hands?” Her father asked.

“Yes, Father. I’ve been surviving well by myself traveling the whole world all around time and I have already 27 years old. Washing hands is the basics.”

“Since when?” He said. “You know here in Alexandria it is not so common yet.”

“Well, that is because now is still a couple of centuries after Christ was born… I don’t know when exactly people begin to worry about washing hands…”

“Anyway, it is good to know that in the future people will be cleaner.”

“I’m so happy you are here, my dear.” Isabella’s mother said with her eyes emotionally melted in tears.

“Me too, Mom.”

“Since your father gave you that time-traveling necklace…”

“Oh, not again, please.” The father said. “Let’s not start that discussion again. It has been more than six years now!”

“Yeah! Exactly! MORE than six years that I go to bed without knowing where, when or how my baby is! She can be dead like in 2020, and we will never know!”

“But she is happy! Can’t you admit that?” He said louder and louder. “And we all will be dead in 2020.” He groused.

Isabella laughed again. Her parents could never agree about her 21 years old birthday gift. A time-traveling necklace her father made especially for her. The kind of gift only an alchemist's father is able to do for you and she loved that.

Trying to change the subject and to gain Isabella’s trust, the young alchemist, son of a friend of a friend, said:

“And how it is, Isabella? To be able to travel the whole world and in time like that.”

“What is this new acquisition in the family, again? Can someone explain it to me better? Couldn’t we have a dog instead?”

“We already have a dog. A couple of ones, dear.” The father said.

“One more?”

“All right, I explain.” Her mother said. “He is a friend of a friend of mine, and he is here to learn with your father. He is a young alchemist too, as his father. But he wanted to learn a few things with your father.”

“Father never had any students, not even me…” She looked with suspicion at the man at the table with them.

“That is not true, I will explain…” Isabella’s father was about to say when the doorbell ranged.

“Are we expecting someone?” Isabella asked.

“Your grandmother!”. Isabella’s mother shouted jumping off the chair and going to open the front door.

“Wauhhh! Already?” Isabella’s father screamed losing his voice to a high tone.

The young alchemist tried to hide his smile.

“Mama!!!”

Everyone looked really happy on that warm evening with the arrival of the old lady, Isabella’s grandmother. Everyone was happy in that dining room enchanted by the light of the flames from the fireplace. Except for Gordon, Isabella’s father, of course, who was a little cranky. He kept hearing in his mind the first words that the old woman said to him that night ‘You look older than before!’. Of course, he thought, it has been almost over a decade. She could just wait another decade before came and he might be lucky enough to be already dead.

After the initial compliments, they all sit around the table to have dinner, as they was about to do before the ringing of the doorbell.

“Isabella has just arrived too, Mom.”

“I know” She answered to her daughter smiling while arranging Isabella’s pink strands in her hair. “I knew it would look great at you, lovely dear.”

Isabella’s grandmother always called her like that, ‘lovely dear’.

“She always knows everything.” Her father whispered to himself.

Yes, that is Isabella’s grandmother. She seems to always know everything. Then the old woman stared at the young man in the diner room, looking at him directly in his eyes.

He felt uncomfortable. Usually, he was very confident, although the old woman's gaze made him tremble inside. He gasped.

“And about you?” She finally said.

“I am the son of…” He was about to introduce himself.

“I know.”

“Be careful, my dear mother-in-law, he is new here and he doesn’t know…” Isabella’s father was trying to protect the young alchemist.

“I know.” The old woman interrupted. “You don’t need to protect him. He will do good by himself.”

“Yes, but he doesn’t know about you and…”

“Don’t you worry” She interrupted him again making a no balancing of her pointer finger.

‘Old bastard’ Gordon thought, but silenced even his thoughts when Isabella’s grandmother looked at him with a mad face. ‘I’m sorry’ was his last thought that night.

“What I suppose to do with you, young boy?” She finally asked him something, breaking the scare staring with an even more scary thing.

He stammered “Well, technically I am not a young boy, anymore, I’m more than 30 already and…”

“I know.” The old woman said. “I am 83 years old and I have been 83 years old for three centuries now. I think you are a young boy for me.”

“He is suspicious, isn’t he, Grandma?”

“Of course he is.” The old woman affirmed severely.

“I am still in the living room.” He said trying to recover some dignity and, trying to recover some confidence: “And why do you need ‘to do’ anything about me?” He gazed at her strongly.

“You are going to give me worries!” The old lady said.

“Don’t you start, Grandma, please?” That was Gordon. When he wants to melt her, he just calls her Grandma. Like if he was saying: Isabella’s grandma, please… Most of the time, that works pretty well.

“What, Gordon?”

“He is not used to that, don’t you do that, please. He is just beginning his life.”

“And he needs to begin it well!”

The young alchemist became worried. Since both Isabella’s parents were alchemists, what could the old woman, Isabella’s grandmother, be or do? Curse him terribly with something really bad? Transform him into a frog? The possibilities were endless in his imagination at that moment.

“You are stronger than I thought.” She paused. “That is a good or a terrible thing, I don’t know yet.”

“Oh… you are actually doing it… okay, I say nothing anymore.”

Isabella’s grandmother tells the future. Does she predict it or does she create it? We wonder… She is a rare kind of alchemist. An alchemist of the words, like Isabella is, but this is not about young Isabella. By the way, Isabella’s grandmother also is called Isabella. She named her granddaughter after her with a blessing by the fire on the beach on the day little Isabella was born. Her entire life she was called to bless the newborns. To give them nice and warm futures. Futures where they could be happy and make others happy too.

The old lady faced again the young man that trembled again even though he was sitting at the table.

“You are going to be either the beginning of it all or either be the ending of it all. You are going either to build an entirely new world or either destroy it completely.”

The young one gasped not knowing what he was supposed to think or fell about that. 

“What is that?” Gordon asked. “You said so much and nothing at the same time. You never said anything so vaguely like that.” The son-in-law was concerned, had the old woman gone senile now? It would be his worst nightmare, to have to deal with this crazy old woman in the craziest mode.

“I can’t tell about him.” She answered calmly. “He was born under the moon of the ambiguous archetype. We can never know about the ambiguous ones until very close to the end…” She said with concern in her voice.

Everyone went in shock and were in silence. That had never happened before. That Isabella’s mother to be unable to predict any future at all.

Then Isabella’s mother, Rose, asked;

“And that is all that you can know about his future?”

“Ohh, no.” The grandma answered. “That is what I can deduce from the gossip I heard on my way here… about his family”

“What the old woman doesn’t know by seeing the future, she knows by gossip. Always like that.” Gordon said to himself.

“Better than you that never knows anything about anything anyway…” The old mother-in-law answered with an acid smile.

Then she looked at the young alchemist again.

“Either way, you will be part of it. You will be important, and it lies completely in your hands the choices of your future and the future of many others too…”

The young alchemist felt nervous, but he was not sure why.

Then the old woman smiled and said reliving the tension in the air.

“I will trust you for now, young boy.” She stirred the soup on her plate. “Continue to eat, everyone!” she said looking around the table, because everyone had stopped eating. “The soup is great and it is better to eat it warm than cold.”

“And we will meet again, young boy.” She smiled to him. “I will help you in the future.” She took a spoonful of the soup.

“Or else I will destroy you.” And she gave a nice, warm, cozy smile.