Strange Years Around the World

(1951-1985)

Within a year, after the farewell, Lizbeth had learned everything there was left to know about the group of mermaids and tritons.

Before she knew it, she was ready to embark on a journey of her own.

Beyond the ability to breathe and survive underwater, to use her voice as a weapon, or her song as a suggestion, there wasn't much more she could learn. She might be a siren, but she was still one who could stay out of the water all the time.

The stories about her kind in the modern fey world were not too many. There might once have been many, but no reliable records were kept and no empirical data appeared in human fables and legends, other than sirens being related more to rivers, lakes, streams and the sea, with their mermaid counterparts being related to the sea only.

Sirens were a type that almost exclusively had physical abilities and those that had magical abilities were very rare. In Lizbeth's case they fell exclusively into the physical abilities, although her voice did not seem to have any magical power per se. One of the more learned ones simply told her that it should be counted among the extrasensory abilities.

After learning everything, Lizbeth spent weeks thinking about leaving. Where would she go?

There was also the fact that more suspicious ships had now been spotted along the coasts and the group of mermaids and tritons had decided that a migration to calmer waters was best. Lizbeth could have gone with them, but decided to continue overland in the RV. In that way she bid farewell to the group—hoping to see them in the future.

She returned with Emmeline to her training for about three months, now that she could use new skills. She still couldn't beat her, but she managed to corner her several times. For a few months she lived in Emmeline's castle, while she honed her fighting skills, not only to fight but to finally get on the road to travel alone. She polished her knowledge in mechanics with the latest advances and in the use of new types of weapons. Even though she was a fey, or perhaps because she was a fey, traveling alone for a woman at that time was still a challenge.

Lizbeth had thought that traveling alone would be an experience of self-discovery and adventure.

And it was. But it was also one of uncertainty, loneliness and, at times, a deep longing for Shin. She had accepted the separation because she understood his reasons, but still, there were nights when the absence felt like a heavy slab on her chest.

They communicated every week. Shin seemed to have been in action lately, helping Leon and the Armitage Foundation, while some academics had been searching for information to see if there was any way to stop anomalies from occurring around him, but without a result. Apparently Shin had been doing some dangerous missions but didn't want to, or couldn't, tell her all the details.

At that time Leon and a group of feys and humans, many of whom Lizbeth had met, were talking about forming a new group affiliated with the Armitage Foundation. The initiative had ceased its activities a year after the war. And now the so-called Cold War required another approach.

That had resulted in the creation of an independent team, which would secretly receive information from the Foundation, to act around the world investigating what had come to be called Dark Events. Such was the name being given to anomalies. This group would act as if it were disaffiliated from any organization and in that way would not cause problems for the university with the military, the government—or the royal family in the United States.

That group was called Tempus Fugit.

Lizbeth received the news with joy and concern. Old Wingate Peaslee offered her to be part of it, that way she would be with Shin, even though Shin would be participating mostly in solo investigations and where action was called for. Lizbeth thought about it, but refused. Shin probably wouldn't refuse if she pushed him, but she was going to force him. It was better to continue to have contact as before. She didn't even mention it to him when they talked on the phone, so that Shin wouldn't get angry with Peaslee later.

So she continued her journey, but now she left the RV with Emmeline and opted to travel by motorcycle. Something lighter. She was sad to leave what had been her home, but Emmeline promised to leave it in her hangar and it would be there when she decided to come back for it.

The first leg of her journey was a sort of slow farewell. She crossed Scotland again, stopping in towns where traces of the war still remained.

During her trip, she discovered a strange anomaly that she had to solve. She had no way of proving it, but something told her that it was due to the time she had sung for those children near the sea. Perhaps Shin was right that those close to him could be contaminated by his curse? Using her voice once more, she performed a cleansing ritual in the area and kept a close eye on the weather in the following months to make sure nothing strange happened.

She visited many of the places she had been with Shin, and she also took a couple of weeks off, renting the house where the two of them had stayed with Milena and Sari. Then the journey continued southward.

London seemed too noisy and chaotic a place, though she spent a few months there, working in a small magical bookshop that operated in the cellars of an antique store. Attached to the basement was a unique communication center for the feys. It was there that she learned about some of the fey communication systems that had begun to be implemented in recent years. Lizbeth used these channels to send messages to Shin, although he did not always respond immediately now.

After London, she put her motorcycle on board a ship and she crossed the Atlantic.

Canada greeted her with endless forests and a fey community larger than she expected. There she stayed for almost two years, in a small town near the U.S.K border, working in a bakery run by a fey and her human husband. She called herself Margot. Margot loved cakes and stories, and though Lizbeth was never good at telling her own, she heard many as she kneaded bread or decorated cakes. By then her culinary skills had reached an incredible quality in a very short time, but already the desire to move had been born within her. She said goodbye to the couple and continued her journey—crossing to the kingdom.

That post-war project called the Tripartite Empire had really come to fruition and now travel between the three countries of Canada, the U.S. Kingdom and Mexico was much easier. On the other hand, the bloc had stabilized the weak post-war economy that had threatened to plunge the kingdom into enormous debt. Some did not seem happy about the bloc—but the results spoke for themselves. Lizbeth, although she had never been there, certainly Arkham reminded her a little of parts of the UK.

There she had her first meeting with Shin. The two lived together for three months and made the most of it. They stayed in a wing of Miskatonic University. Finally Lizbeth had the opportunity to see the place where the Armitage Foundation was born. It was just as she imagined it. A lively place, but if one looked carefully it had an air of secrecy in certain parts.

The truth was that in recent years it had become a nest of spies. Academics and students included.

The cold war was heating up and the same thing was happening in all the universities, not to mention the witch-hunt being promoted by parliament.

They lived in relative calm for those months, but even there they were involved in some adventures. Lizbeth showed him her new voice skills that made Shin and Leon pale. Shin advised her to be careful, because someone with her ability was likely to become a target of the army's search for feys with abilities.

In Arkham, Lizbeth finally met Svetlana—Shin's younger sister.

The bell above the shop door chimed as they stepped inside, the air rich with the scent of old paper and dried lavender. Behind the counter, a tall woman with blonde hair streaked with silver looked up from a ledger.

"Ori!?" she exclaimed, her eyes lighting up before softening with a kind of quiet relief.

"Svee," Shin replied, smiling in a way Lizbeth didn't often see. The woman was almost as tall as he was. Lizbeth watched, surprised, as they embraced and exchanged words in Russian—though the dialect was strange to her ears, likely from the region where he had once lived. Then Shin stepped forward, taking Lizbeth's hands in his. "I want you to meet someone important."

Svetlana's gaze shifted to Lizbeth, assessing but not unkind.

"So, this is the one you write about in those letters you never admit to sending," she said, her Russian accent still threading through the English after decades.

Lizbeth felt her cheeks warm, suddenly nervous. "I've heard so much about you," she replied, unsure whether to extend her hand or offer something warmer. She chose the latter, stepping forward slightly.

Shin cleared his throat. "Lizzy, this is my sister, Svetlana… and her husband, Michael."

From the back room emerged a man of calm bearing, his movements deliberate, as if every step were measured against some internal rhythm. He shook Lizbeth's hand firmly. "Dobro pozhalovat', Miss Lizbeth. Welcome."

"Please—Lizbeth is fine… or just Liz," she said with a small smile.

Svetlana gestured toward the back. "Come, we've tea. And perhaps later, my brother will tell me why he's been hiding you from me for so long."

"I wasn't hiding her," Shin protested as they followed. "I was making sure I didn't introduce her to you on one of your bad days."

Svetlana laughed softly, a sound like glass chimes in the wind. "All my days are bad days, little brother. That's why I have Mich—and now, perhaps, Liz—to balance them."

Lizbeth glanced at Shin, and for a moment, she could almost imagine this was what a homecoming felt like.

Shin leaned close to her ear. "Remember, she can wrestle a bear to the ground with her bare hands. Don't let her fool you."

Svetlana swatted his arm. "What have you been telling her, dumb?"

After the welcome talk, they settled around a small wooden table near the window, steam rising from delicate porcelain cups. Svetlana poured the tea with practiced ease, glancing at Lizbeth over the rim of the cup, while Shin and Michael lit cigars.

"When I was little," she began, her voice softening, "Ori used to insist on carrying me on his back through the snow, even when it was freezing. Maybe he just enjoyed the trouble it caused me because my father was also tall and I used to get dizzy easily as a child. Does he do the same to you?"

Lizbeth smiled, imagining stubborn Shin trudging through the snow, his little sister clinging to him, laughing despite herself.

Michael leaned back in his chair, watching the two women with quiet amusement. "He hasn't changed much," he said. "Still stubborn, still carrying burdens he shouldn't."

"And now he has a new one," Svetlana added, nodding toward Lizbeth. "I can see why he writes about you so much. Seriously, what have you seen in him?"

"Don't start telling her embarrassing stories, please…" Shin said, exhaling smoke from his cigarette while examining the bookshelves.

Of course, Lizbeth knew many of the stories, both from Shin himself and from acquaintances. Life in Siberia, the escape from Russia, family adventures when Feodor Romanov was still alive, and how they had even fought back-to-back in certain situations until they managed to reach the United States.

Although that life now belonged to the past.

Svetlana now just worked with her husband in an old bookshop which they owned, a place closely tied to the university. There, Lizbeth heard for the first time the stories of the two siblings during the years they had lived in Siberia, before the Bolshevik Revolution and the Great War.

Though she was now a grown woman, with children long gone from the nest, Svetlana still had a youthful spark in her eyes. She was glad to finally meet the woman who had captured her foolish brother's heart, and welcomed Lizbeth into the family with a warmth that caught her off guard.

Sometimes, when Shin was away at the university or speaking with Leon, Lizbeth would stay in the bookshop, sitting behind the counter while Svetlana and her husband sorted through dusty crates of volumes that smelled faintly of sea salt and ink. The couple had a way of moving together—without speaking much—yet understanding each other perfectly, as if decades of shared winters and small victories had taught them a private language.

Svetlana would hand her a cup of tea so strong it could wake the dead, and ask about her travels with a curiosity both gentle and persistent. Her husband, a quiet man with eyes like old parchment, enjoyed showing her the rarities: illuminated grimoires, first editions smuggled through wars, and letters sealed with forgotten coats of arms. Lizbeth listened, and though she spoke little, she began to feel as if these four walls, with their dust motes dancing in lamplight, were a small refuge from the rest of the world.

On slow afternoons, Svetlana would take her to the market by the river in the car, where strange vendors sold charms sewn into cloth pouches, and fishmongers still whispered about merfolk sightings as if they were gossip about neighbors. Lizbeth learned which baker saved the last loaf for her sister-in-law, and which stall would sell her honeycomb at half price if she hummed a few bars of a song.

Some evenings, the four would share dinner in the tiny apartment above the shop. The windows looked out onto narrow cobblestone streets, and when the fog rolled in from the Miskatonic, the whole world seemed to shrink to the glow of their lamps and the clink of plates. For Lizbeth, those nights felt almost like being part of a family she had never known she was missing.

One rainy afternoon, when Shin had been called away for a meeting, Lizbeth found herself alone with Svetlana in the shop. The steady drum of rain on the windows blurred the sound of the street, wrapping the place in a hushed cocoon. Svetlana was repairing the spine of a book whose leather had gone brittle with age. Lizbeth watched her hands—steady, patient, almost reverent—and realized there was something familiar in that care.

Without looking up, Svetlana said, "He was always like that, you know. Wandering off, finding trouble, carrying the weight of other people's storms."

Lizbeth smiled faintly. "And you?" she asked.

"I stayed," Svetlana replied, her voice soft but without regret. She looked at Lizbeth then, her gaze deep and assessing. "You're not the first to catch his heart. But you are the first to keep it."

Lizbeth felt a strange warmth at the words—both a blessing and a warning. They worked in silence after that, the smell of old paper and glue between them, until the rain stopped and a faint beam of light broke through the clouds. For the rest of the day, Lizbeth carried that beam inside her.

Yet Arkham was never a place entirely free of shadows. More than once, their walks through the mist-veiled streets took an unexpected turn—a warded alley here, a whispering statue there. One evening, returning from the riverside, they found a trail of salt scattered across the cobblestones, forming a crude sigil. Shin knelt to study it while Lizbeth kept watch. The mark dissolved when touched, but not before both of them felt the air thicken, as if something unseen was drawing breath nearby.

There were other nights when their adventures were lighter, even absurd. Shin insisted on showing her the underground network of tunnels used by smugglers during the Prohibition era—now half-forgotten, half-claimed by eccentric professors for "private research." They emerged hours later, covered in dust and laughing, only to find they had surfaced in the cellar of a bakery, to the bafflement of the owner.

And there was the strange incident at the Miskatonic greenhouse, where Lizbeth swore one of the carnivorous plants hummed in the same key as her voice. Shin, unimpressed, claimed it was just the wind, but she caught him glancing at it uneasily as they left.

Between such moments, there were quieter days—Shin repairing an old revolver in the corner of the apartment, Lizbeth perched on the window ledge watching the fog creep in. The rhythm of life there lulled her into thinking, perhaps foolishly, that the two of them could remain like this indefinitely.

Not all their diversions were harmless. Arkham, with its mix of academia, military interest, and fey enclaves, was also a crossroads for those who preferred their dealings to remain invisible. One night, Leon slipped them a folded note during dinner at the faculty club. It contained nothing but a time, a location, and a drawn symbol—a raven's head. The following evening, Shin and Lizbeth waited in the fog-drenched plaza behind St. Cyprian's Chapel. A man approached, his hat pulled low, and handed Shin a sealed envelope without a word. By the time Lizbeth glanced over her shoulder, he had vanished into the mist. Later, in their apartment, Shin burned the envelope after reading it. "It's not ours to solve, this is for Randolph," was all he said, but she noticed he kept a hand near his holster for the rest of the week.

A couple of days later, still curious, she wanted to know more. "Who is this Randolph guy?"

Shin looked at her with some concern. "Randolph Carter... and believe me, you don't want to get involved in his business."

Lizbeth didn't ask any more questions, but the name sounded familiar to her.

Another time, they were asked to escort a visiting "lecturer" from the port to the university—a woman whose credentials were as fabricated as her smile. Halfway through the journey, Shin changed their route abruptly, claiming a road closure. Lizbeth realized, only later, that the change had shaken off a tail: a pair of men in a black sedan who had been following at a steady distance. When they finally reached the campus, the woman handed Lizbeth a small, weighty coin, stamped with a symbol she didn't recognize. It was gone from her coat pocket the next morning.

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These undercurrents of danger never quite broke the surface, but they reminded Lizbeth that even in moments of peace, their lives were tethered to a world of shadows and coded words. Arkham had its fog, but it also had eyes—always watching from somewhere inside it.

Despite these strange events, that time seemed like a return to the adventures of yesteryear. And although they didn't have their RV, they were now returning to that secret room at the university.

In that quiet corner of dusty books and overcast afternoons, Shin and Lizbeth spent a few weeks in relative peace—and for a brief moment, they were happy again.

The peace ended when Gehirn called the TF members from Morocco. He needed help with something. Thus came the parting of the ways again.

After Shin left for Morocco, Lizbeth stayed behind in Arkham for a while, living with Svetlana and her husband above the bookshop. The apartment smelled of old paper and black tea, and the windows always seemed to hold onto the morning fog just a little longer than they should. But still was a very warm place. Those months were quiet—filled with shared breakfasts, slow walks to the university library, and evenings spent listening to the rain drum against the roof. Lizbeth found something comforting in that domestic rhythm, even if it always felt borrowed, like wearing someone else's coat.

Around that time, she also traveled to Baltimore, where she was finally able to leave flowers on her parents' grave. The visit was quiet, unceremonious. She didn't cry, not then. Grief had long since turned to sediment—heavy, invisible, but still always there. But placing those flowers felt like closing a door that had remained ajar for too many years—too many decades.

Back in Arkham, she resumed her quiet life above the bookshop. And during those months, she continued her search for traces of the elusive Fog Society. Yet, standing at the heart of it all, she found herself disoriented. There were truly two pasts: the one she remembered and the one history set, filled with contradictions and shadows.

That was also when a series of hidden manuscripts began surfacing in the Miskatonic Library. Poems, novellas, detective stories—some signed with a different pseudonym. Literary scholars became intrigued, and even Svetlana and Michael joined the investigation.

It soon became evident that the astronomer once known as Edgar Allan Poe had lived a secret life as a writer—though he had never published a word. And he wasn't alone. Other writings emerged, some linked to names long suspected of involvement with the Society. Jules Verne, Hoffman among others.

The findings raised more questions than answers. Some pieces were too polished, too modern, too alive. Wingate Peaslee and a small circle of scholars devised a plan: to publish some of the works, preserving the pseudonyms where possible, and restoring the real names where it felt right.

Most publishers showed little interest. But pulp magazines, thriving in their golden age, were eager to do so. Lizbeth, in the quiet of the reading room, allowed herself a rare smile. Among those rediscovered voices, her father's work was there—unmistakably his. He had written in silence, but now, at last, the world would hear him.

In 1954, she felt it was time to move. After an emotional farewell to her newfound family, she headed south to the United States, passing through Chicago and eventually reaching New Orleans. There, she worked for a while in a night bar that catered to both human and non-human clientele. It was in that smoky, half-lit place that she met a young vampire named Carmilla—a backpacker for the last seven years—who convinced her to travel together to Mexico. Armed and riding new motorcycles, they began their journey.

Mexico surprised her—not just with the intensity of its people and cities, but with the magic that seemed to hum in the air. In recent years, the country had risen as a regional power, forming an imperial bloc with the United States and Canada. While free trade flourished, it had also birthed a hidden black market, and it was within that shadowy world that they found themselves tangled in several dangerous adventures.

A powerful criminal group tried to capture them, but they not only escaped and disrupted the network—they also managed to rescue several imprisoned feys and humans with rare abilities.

Her journey with Carmilla lasted a little over a year. Then, one rainy morning, Carmilla was found by her family's bodyguards, sent from Europe to bring her home. Though they had grown close, Carmilla insisted Lizbeth not get involved with her family. "Too many ghosts," she said, "and some of them still bite." Before leaving, she promised they would meet again—that their journey wasn't over.

Lizbeth stayed behind. In a small town near Veracruz, she spent nearly two years working as a bodyguard for a girl from a powerful family. The child had been one of the kidnapping victims she'd rescued with Carmilla. Her family suspected she descended from ancient shamans on her mother's side, and though they never confirmed it, Lizbeth knew they were right. At night, the little girl would speak to beings no one else could see, her voice barely above a whisper. That family came to love Lizbeth as one of their own.

Over the next few years, she crossed paths with Shin a few more times as she continued her travels through Central and South America. Always in borrowed nights and quiet corners of the world—Panama, Quito, a rainy evening in Salvador. He would appear without warning sometimes, worn by whatever mission Tempus Fugit had sent him on, and they would fall into each other's arms like waves returning to shore. They never spoke too much of the time they had lost—only of the now.

In 1958, she felt it was time to move again. She stopped briefly in Peru, where she was fascinated by the Andes and the ancient Inca structures. But homesickness called her back to Europe after a few more adventures between Brazil and Argentina.

***

She returned to the UK for a visit in 1960 and spent time in various places visiting friends.

During that time she met up with Shin again and they enjoyed their quiet life for a few weeks once more. They also discovered a song that was becoming popular and would unite not only them but other feys as well. The Great Pretender. Regardless of the meaning of the song they felt that the lyrics in a way showed the kind of lives that many feys led. Hidden, pretending to fit in, but at the same time different.

In Shin's case he felt a little too identified. Too many times he had left, leaving her to dream alone of a life where they would be together once and for all. Lizbeth, for her part, said that sometimes a song was a song, she didn't have to look for a deep meaning in it to enjoy it. And, even if they even if their paths diverged, that didn't mean that it was because he left her alone and wanted to hurt her on purpose.

Over the years, Lizbeth had met others like them. Not just couples, but triangles, clusters—intertwined lives of love and separation, of reunion and silence. Among the more scholarly circles of fey psychology, the term had already taken hold: facing eternity.

If the legends were true, and feys truly lived for hundreds—or perhaps thousands—of years, then maybe this kind of love was the only kind that made sense. A kind of "happily ever after," just not the way the old tales told it.

There were feys who loved humans, of course, like Margot, but those stories were rarer. The humans aged, withered, and faded. The feys remained as young as the day they first arrived.

While traveling from one country to another, Lizbeth often found herself wondering what her life would be like if Shin were always by her side. It was not nostalgia that struck her, but a kind of strange certainty: their hearts had adapted to the distance, to the waiting, to the fleeting encounters that seemed eternal and, at the same time, always too brief. Each farewell was a reminder that the time they shared was not measured in days, but in moments to be savored with intensity.

Sometimes she caught herself comparing their love to the human relationships she had seen or experienced: ephemeral, intense, full of jealousy and grudges she never fully understood. With Shin, the connection was different; there were no impositions, no possession—only a strange certainty that they would meet again, over and over, despite oceans and decades. It was a love that seemed to defy time, an invisible bond that tightened and loosened, but never broke.

***

In 1961 the news reached her.

Runen Island had sunk.

After the war it had passed to shared control between Great Britain and the Netherlands, serving as a base for the magical associations of both countries during the cold war. But one night the tremors began. In less than three hours the island disappeared in the waters. There were no deaths, but the place where she had trained and where she had made so many friendships had disappeared forever. Or so it was assumed. Nobody ruled out that the island could appear in the future.

In 1964 she arrived in France.

There, in an auto repair shop, she honed her mechanical skills once again and spent almost five years in France, fixing cars and motorcycles, until one day, without knowing why, she woke up with the certainty that she had to move once more. She crossed the border and arrived in Spain and then Morocco.

Finally with all the money she had, she decided to leave it in the hands of Gehirn, who seemed to be making mountains of money and had even founded a small company. Gehirn promised her that he would put the money into investments and his stock exchange team would manage it.

Slowly the occult world was intruding into the human world and weaving a web not only of communication but also economically.

Lizbeth knew well, about the predictions that in the future the occult world might one day make itself known, but that would be decades away. Some feys were optimistic about living among humans, while others wanted nothing to do with it. Lizbeth could not blame either side.

Between those years the two met almost every year. But it was a more dangerous time even than the war they had been in and Shin always advised her to be careful. Even in those times she herself was involved in several troubles.

On one occasion the two of them had to rush to the rescue of Milena and Sari. The latter had been captured by a Soviet submarine. The three of them sank the ship in the Atlantic, freeing a group of mermaids and tritons that had also been captured. After the rescue, the four lived for a few months, settling in the Caribbean. Until Shin departed and later Lizbeth went off in a different direction, leaving the two mermaids in the shelter of a group of sea feys.

There were many more trips and finally she changed her environment by traveling to Asia. She visited Japan, Hawaii and finally wanted to know the place where Shin had come to Earth. She secretly entered Siberia.

It was a bad idea.

She was traveling almost a whole year disconnected from the world, and when she arrived in Tunguska it was the worst time with mosquitoes so big as mountain cats. But she was very impressed by the place. Despite the years, the area was still almost devastated, but she couldn't shake the feeling of familiarity. She didn't know why, but she felt like she knew that place.

Finally she found travel companions to go out and they arrived in Mongolia and from there to Hokkaido. During those last months Shin had searched for her, all over Japan when he had stopped hearing from her.

The meeting between the two of them became long enough for them to live together again for almost a year until they decided to continue traveling.

They had grown accustomed to it and it even seemed normal to them. It felt like a married couple going out to work in the morning and coming back at night to reconnect.

Maybe that was the feeling of the feys that time stretched out as they lived longer. In Lizbeth's case in human years she was over thirty and Shin was over sixty. If the feys were really so long-lived it might even be that it would continue when they were over a hundred and, if they succeeded, perhaps a thousand years in the future.

The thought was amusing—and terrifying. Would they keep living like this forever?

For now, she was enjoying the world. But the question lingered. And she knew Shin was thinking about it too.

In the early seventies, she worked at a small stall on a beach in Greece, selling hats and souvenirs to tourists. It was an easy, quiet job, although she felt that something was missing. She earned money without difficulty, but the truth was that she couldn't find anything to spend it on. She didn't need much to live on, and most of the time she simply kept what she earned in a bank account that she barely checked, but whenever she checked it, it grew.

She had learned to survive on her own and sometimes traveled the world with occasional company for a few months or weeks. Other times… it was adventures… or work time.

Lizbeth soon discovered that mechanics was not only a way to make a living, but also a way to ensure that she would always have something to do, something tangible to focus on. Her skill with vehicles allowed her to make money relatively easily, repairing cars, motorcycles and even boats when the job called for it. But the very nature of her life required her to move regularly. Staying in one place for too long was never an option, although she didn't always fully understand why one of the main reasons was that she did not age at all. But also there was something she had begun to discover in the sixties. In all the feys there was also that feeling of wanting to move constantly.

Sometimes, she thought about what Shin had told her before they parted ways the first time. That she should see more of the world. Over the years, she began to recognize that he had been right.

The love she felt for him hadn't changed, but with distance, she had begun to see more clearly how much she had shaped her life around him. She had learned to be independent practically, but emotionally... she still missed him with the same intensity as the first day when they parted. And it was the same with him. Passing relationships also existed between the two of them, but they were just that, passing—like a teenage summer love.

In an attempt to fill the void, she tried having a few relationships with people she met on her travels. Some were short and ephemeral, just a couple of nights. Others lasted longer, a month maybe. She never found anyone who could understand her the way Shin did, or anyone with whom she could be completely herself.

Despite that, the arrangement she had with Shin had worked. Every one, two, or three years, they would meet somewhere in the world and spend a month or two together. Those meetings were intense, filled with conversations until the wee hours of the morning and nights where they clung to each other as if time was slipping through their fingers. But there always came a time to part, and although it was difficult at first, over the years they both learned to cope.

In terms of relationships their bond was open. They had both learned that well when they had those months with Milena and Sari. They didn't feel jealous of being with other people, compared to human relationships where it always ended with a breakup and divorce. That was very much part of the nature of the feys. Some psychologists and academics had begun to study fey psychology some time ago. And that may well be due to their very nature and how their perspective changed as they lived longer.

None of their fleeting relationships compared to the bond they shared, yet they had learned to see in each encounter something of its own, a unique spark. Every person who chose to spend time with her, or with him, left a trace—a singular moment that did not need to be prolonged to be valuable. It was a love measured not in years, but in the intensity of what was lived.

Sometimes she remembered an ordinary afternoon in some foreign country: the laughter of someone who trusted her for a few days, a kind gesture, a shared secret. And she felt gratitude for it. Not because those moments took her away from Shin, but because they taught them that life offered small constellations of affection, each with its own light, and that one should not disdain them for being fleeting.

When she reunited with Shin after months or years, those experiences did not seem like obstacles, but rather a fabric that enriched them. They had learned to love more fully, to recognize that the time shared with another person did not diminish their bond, on the contrary, it made it more conscious, more delicate, more transcendental, perhaps—if one were to describe it in the terms of contemporary human youth culture at the time

Every embrace with a stranger, every intense and brief conversation, reminded her that life was full of unrepeatable moments—and that the most important thing was the love that persisted, that always returned to each other.

Meanwhile, during his own adventures, Shin had studied what he could regarding his curse and in fact was actually beginning to believe that he may have been cursed at some point. He reached that conclusion because nothing had occurred in his first years after arriving.

He had lived with Feodor and Svetlana in peace and quiet until the Russian Revolution and the First World War caught up with them and they had to flee. That was when his problems had begun. That led to Shin's regret that he might have been cursed by someone. It was true that he had made many enemies but, if it really was a curse, he had to find a way to break it. But he still couldn't find a solution.

But everything changed in 1974.

***

It was an ordinary day. She was working in a small garage on the outskirts of Barcelona, adjusting the engine of an old Citroën, when she realized that it had been too long since she had heard from Shin. At first, she didn't think much of it. Communications between them were not always constant. There were times when he would take weeks to respond, and others when he would simply disappear for a while and then reappear as if nothing had happened.

But months passed, and there was no sign of him.

At first, she tried to convince herself that it was nothing. That maybe he was just busy with something. That, as always, he would return when she least expected him. But as the silence dragged on, an uneasy feeling began to settle in her chest.

By 1975, worry had turned to fear.

Lizbeth began to ask questions. She contacted some acquaintances in the fey community, but no one seemed to know anything. She sent messages through the communication channels they had always used, but none were answered. She searched places where she knew he had been before, but every trace of him seemed to have vanished into thin air.

It was then that she was told the truth. They had tried to hide it from her. Leon, Gehirn and other members of Tempus Fugit had tried to find him before they could give her the news.

The last concrete information was that he had been on a flight that had ended in disaster when it exploded in midair. The plane was carrying an artifact of unknown origin, but was mentioned in several legends of that part of the globe. Something valuable enough that several organizations were interested in it. It was during that mission that Leon managed to recover the object and deliver it to the Armitage Foundation through Tempus Fugit. But Shin... Shin had disappeared in the middle of a fight inside the plane at a point in the Indian Ocean.

There was no trace of him after the incident. Not a body, not a sign that he had managed to escape.

That was worth a good blow to Leon. They should have told her as soon as it happened. The reason they hadn't told her was Shin's regeneration.

He was a perfect fool at times, but he was also a perfect immortal. There was no way to kill him and many had tried for years. Lizbeth knew that very well. But regeneration usually took a short time unless it was something really serious. A heart or head wound could take a little longer. Usually hours. But that explosion on the plane was likely to have left him regenerating for a long period of time. That was the reason. They had searched everywhere for him but hadn't found him. They had his trenchcoat—which they had given to her.

Lizbeth tried not to lose hope, but the weight of uncertainty became unbearable.

She even traveled to see Svetlana and her husband to find out if they had anything concrete but there were no results either. Still Svetlana was optimistic—she said he was surely alive.

Months passed, then years, and it became harder and harder to imagine that he was still alive. But something inside her told her that he was still alive. It was not rational. She had no proof but it was what she felt.

Psychics and clairvoyants also gave her hope, even if the others were not very optimistic. In the meantime she clung to routine, to work—to anything that would distract her from the idea that she might never see him again.

And then, as the years passed, the idea began to become impossible to ignore.

Shin could be dead. No, it wasn't possible.

Lizbeth spent the next few years searching for answers as she spent that time traveling, but every clue she found seemed to lead her to a dead end. Instead, she found herself involved in other adventures that she did not expect—and some of them gave her some perspective on what Shin had done during those years. There were many things he had not told her. He had been involved in too much trouble and had enemies and friends alike.

She knew he was alive, but she knew that Shin was not easy to track. He had perfected the art of disappearing when he needed to, but this time it wasn't just a voluntary absence. Something had happened. It was even possible that he had encountered something dangerous that had forced him to cut off contact with the others.

While that was happening she joined Tempus Fugit to help them in other matters. During that time the cases that the organization solved kept her busy and up to date with the occult world. The situation was a little calmer than in previous years, but the missions were more dangerous.

She was in Australia, India, Russia, Germany, Egypt and Congo helping TF in all kinds of missions. She even had to be present when they lost two members. And she also met new friends, among them a restless fey who had appeared in Hawaii almost a decade ago named Oxy.

Oxy wasn't very good at missions, but when it came to science she became an almost full-time consultant.

The other fey was a girl named Van who had come to Earth during the early years of the Vietnam War. Van was also one of the last ones to have seen Shin alive since she had participated in that mission.

Lizbeth became close friends with both of them, and the three of them came to work almost entirely as a separate team for a year in the deserts of North Africa, while living among the Tuareg and mercenaries of the London Magical Association under Emmeline's command.

During that time, she also became acquainted with the island that served as TF's base. It had been discovered in the early 1970s. Hidden somewhere in southern Japan, near Okinawa, it was—like Runen Island—an evanescent place. Since Japanese folklore sometimes referred to feys as Marebito, the island was given the name Tokoyo no Kuni, though local legends preferred a more ominous title: Onigashima. A ghost island, whispered about for centuries.

Unlike Runen, its existence was kept secret, known only to Tempus Fugit's inner circle. Only forty people had access, and rarely more than five were present at the same time, given how often they were deployed. It was a paradise, yes—but one filled with traps, ruins, and ancient silence. Its twisted stone halls hinted at a civilization far older than anything human memory could recall.

Lizbeth stayed there only for short periods, between assignments, but a part of her longed to return. If the future ever gave her the choice, she would live out her days there—quietly, with the wind, the sea, and no need to run again. A place beyond time. Forever, if possible.

And then, February 1985 arrived.

After more than a decade of silence, the message came.

It burst into her world like thunder, crackling through the encrypted Tempus Fugit lines known only to Shin's most trusted allies.

One word: Kazakhstan. And coordinates.

He was alive. Not only that—he had sent a clear destination.

He was heading toward the United States Kingdom.

And he was not alone.

He had found a fey.

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