A Peculiar Time in 1944 - A Millard Fanfic (Miss Peregrine's Home) #wattys2020

Chapter 21

Aurora rushed down the stone streets of Cairnholm headed for the bog where she could - hopefully – lose her pursuer. The young man was fast but luckily Cairnholm's streets were always taking twists and turns and Aurora knew every single one of them, so she at least had that advantage. She made it to the point where she'd turn off the cobblestones and walk through the bog without being caught. She looked behind her to make sure the man wasn't there – he wasn't. And just as she was about to step off the road an arm shot out from the bushes and pulled her into the green foliage.

The man pulled her further into the trees but not deep enough, she could still see the road from where they were. He tugged on her arm making her face him.

"Aurora." He said almost in shock but didn't let go of her arm, knowing she'd run. "How? Mother thought you were dead."

That immediately stopped her struggling. Her mother? He knew her mother? The man looked her over almost like he was seeing a ghost. "My God, you haven't aged a day. How can that be?"

He must have noticed the confused look on her face because he gave a chuckle, "Aurora, it's me, Noah."

Noah? Her baby brother Noah? The last time she'd seen him he was only ten months old and now, she did the math quickly in her head, now he was a man in his early twenties. She was too stunned to speak so Noah continued speaking.

"Mother said that you would have found some way to contact us if you were alive. Why didn't you? What happened after you ran away? And how on earth have you stayed so young?" he rambled off questions in his American accent. Did her family leave Europe after the war?

"Noah, I . . . I can't explain it." she stuttered.

"Can't or won't?" he asked letting go of her arm, confident that she wouldn't run from him.

"I. . . " age out a voice whispered in her head and she realized how long she'd been away from the loop. "I have to go."

He grabbed her arm again, "Aurora please, I just got you back. Don't go." He pleaded. Aurora looked into his blue eyes and saw the baby she'd left behind that night, the brother she never got to really know.

"I'll meet you here tomorrow."

"Aurora –"

"Tomorrow, and I promise I'll answer all your questions."

oOo oOo oOo

Aurora kept her word and met Noah the next day just as they planned. When he saw her his face lit up with a smile so bright it rivaled the sun. She knew she didn't have long, a few hours at most so she got straight to it. She started with the night she ran away and how now she lived in a time loop – a day that repeated itself - and that's how she never got older. She explained about people who were gifted and had to hide their abilities – what they called peculiarities – from the rest of the world because they knew they wouldn't be accepted.

"Like the X-Men comics?" Noah asked, his question puzzling her.

"The what?"

"The X-Men. It's a new comic book series. It's actually really similar, people called mutants have these super human abilities and use them to save the world."

"Mutant?" Aurora asked, the term making her somewhat offended.

"Yeah, don't take it as a bad thing. They're called that because their abilities come from a mutated gene they carry. They're actually really cool, like superheroes."

Aurora tried to imagine that for a moment, if the children at Miss Peregrine's home used their peculiarities to fight crime. She almost couldn't hold back the laugh when she pictured Horace trying to talk fashion sense into a criminal robbing a bank.