11th July 1574"I don"t know if you ever thought about this, but when looking at the records detailing the lives of some of the greater figures in the history… Don"t you think that one could say that they exceeded their own time? Like, as if they were born too early."
Prompting my body up, I moved from laying to the sitting position, instantly pulling Elia into my arms. With her soft flesh brus.h.i.+ng against my lap, she rested her side on my shoulder and looked me deep into the eyes.
"You got me so excited with that statement of yours, and only for the sake of justifying your own flaunting?"
While her words sounded harsh, from the fact that the corners of her lips were curled slightly upward, I could tell that she wasn"t annoyed nor angry at all.
"Please, answer my question. It"s not easy to speak about this topic for me…"
While I knew that she didn"t mean anything bad with her words, with how worried I was about revealing the deepest truth about me to literally anyone, even such a playful remark was enough to make my confidence in my decision waver.
"Oh, sorry, I didn"t want to undermine you like that. Yes, I do find out the lives of some people quite interesting. Take your grandfather for example. The war tactics that he implemented are only now gaining traction both in the country and outside of its borders."
Most likely noticing that her usual, playful approach wouldn"t fit in the current situation, Elia almost instantly adapted to my mood and answered my initial question. Maybe it was something she didn"t even realise she did, or maybe it was her attempt to calm me down a bit, but no matter which option it was, I could still feel her pressing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s on my arm.
"While I won"t ask just how did you learn about this part of my heritage, it shows the point that I was making. Some people just exceeds their own time. Before, I always thought they were simply born a genius, always seeing a few steps in front of what others could see… but in my case, it"s both far simpler and way more complicated at the same time."
Grabbing Elia by her shoulders, I pulled her directly into my embrace, too scared to utter what I was going to say next without the rea.s.surance of keeping her close to me.
"Before I will explain what I have in mind, I need you to keep in mind that it all happened before I met you. The me that you know was always the same."
Even if saying such sentence was bound to set Elia into expecting the worst, from how I was only pretending to be a n.o.ble all the way to not being a human at all, when thinking about what I was going to say next, letting her have her own a.s.sumptions appeared to be the lesser evil in my situation.
"Well, to not elaborate needlessly, I"m the true example of someone born too early. In a literal sense of what I said."
After squeezing those words from my mouth, I turned silent waiting for Elia"s response. Yet as the silence started turning longer and more awkward, I couldn"t help but raise my so-far lowered eyes in order to see my wife"s reaction with my own sight.
Yet rather than seeing hints of being repulsed, scared or angered, I could tell that she had no idea what I spoke about!
"Ah, let me phrase it differently. In fact, I was originally born around… four centuries from now into the future. It"s not like I came up with all those ideas that I"m implementing in our lands… But for the most part of my life, I was already surrounded by them!"
Saying those words felt pulling out some kind of arrow from my body. While painful in itself, as soon as they were out, I felt an overwhelming wave of relief. No matter what Elia"s response would be now, I couldn"t influence it at all.
"Dear… Should I understand it that you… Came here from the future?"
Hearing her question, I realised that my plight could be said in such a simple way, instead of me attempting to explain it in such a needlessly elaborative way that only made it harder for my dearest to understand it.
"Yeah, I was going back from a shop one day, aiming to spend my leisure time after work having some fun playing…"
"PLAYING AROUND?!"
Just as I was about to explain the moment that moved me from my own reality to this timeline, Elia interfered with my words, suddenly distancing herself from me for as far as she could.
"No, wait, what?"
It took me a while to understand what did she meant with those words with how focused on the topic of time travel I was.
"Listen, there will be all sorts of ways for people to spend their time and have fun. What I was going to do, is to use an insanely complicated machine that I don"t even fully understand how it works, to simulate a world in which I could pretend to be the King, ruling the nation through the ages. While this description is far from perfect, it"s the best way to explain it shortly. As for the real problem at hand… I have no idea how, why or because of what it happened. One moment I was climbing the set of stairs after a long week of working, only to trip on them and find myself in this time and age, with a completely new set of clothes and a bunch of memories that allowed me to recognise who I was and who the people from my group were."
While I wanted to keep Elia in my embrace in order to rea.s.sure myself that she wouldn"t just escape from me, I knew that such an action would bear no effect. If by telling her that news she would decide to end our marriage, or rather, declare that it was never based on the truth and thus invalid in the first place, not even the strongest hold on her shoulders would manage to keep her in place!
"Wait, working? So in the future, you weren"t but a d.a.m.ned peasant?!"