This is the first time I have ever put pen to paper, the first time I have ever tried putting into words an explanation of the life I have led. Few will ever be able to grasp its meaning or understand. It is, in a word, complicated. I'm not sure why I'm writing this, perhaps as some record of my thoughts for those who love me, in case I don't come back.
I am, in essence, a child out of time. However cliched it may sound, I am from the future, a future that may no longer exist. I am from another time, another place. There are many of me, as many as there are other realities. Countless really. Innumerable. Each one existing independently and without knowledge of the others.
My birth parents are dead, killed in an explosion. My siblings are being raised by my birth mother's family. I have not seen them since I was a small child. After my parents' deaths, I was separated from my siblings and raised by my mother's nearest and dearest friend. She is the only mother I remember; hence, the only mother I have ever known. Her name is Kirin, and her story is as convoluted as my own. Perhaps that is why she was chosen to raise me. Perhaps my birth mother, in her wisdom, knew she was the only one who would truly understand.
So many questions, so few answers. I have sought out the answers all these many years. It is partly why I am here, but there is more to it than simply that.
I have traveled through time in order to solve the mystery of my own life, but also, to know those who I could not otherwise have known had I remained in my own time and place. Life is like a web, each strand weaving itself through another until they all become interconnected. So many lives, so many possibilities. Countless really.
In one life, I am a child living with my birth parents and siblings in a cottage in the woods just outside of Rhy'Din. In another life, I am with my mother's family, being raised with my siblings far from the city. In yet another, I am the adoptive daughter of Kirin and Fox Mulder, raised with the children of that union as one of their own. That is the life I know and remember best.
In one future, I am dead. In another, I am lost. In still another, I am married and have children of my own and am living on a world far from Rhy'Din. And so it goes, but this is not about those lives. It is about this one. This Marissa. The only life I have ever known.
There were others who came from the future, but they are all part of me now. We live together in one body. We share one heart, one mind, one soul. I know them as well as I know myself. They are part of me, and yet, they are separate. All their voices speak in my head. Together we are as one. Together we have decided what we must do, and together we will do it.
There is one last life that needs saving, one last journey to the past. He is my adoptive mother's heart-brother, and as such, he is as much family as myself. His name is Duncan Mallory. He is from another world very different from Rhy'Din. One of us - one of the Marissas inside me - was in love with him once. Another died for him. His life is almost as complicated as my own. I have seen his life and his spirit destroyed as he fell into despair and lost himself in misery. I have helplessly watched him die horribly in my dreams, night after night.
He came to Rhy'Din once to find someone he loved. One of me brought him here, but it didn't work out, and when he returned to his own world, he was lost.
All of this is not just about one life, but three. A man, a woman, and a child. I have decided to go back, before his life became full of grief and tragedy. I do not know how I will prove myself to him or how I will make him understand, but if I do not do this, if I do not try, I will not be able to live with myself. He is family, after all, and I would do anything for family.
Perhaps then, I can find peace. That is all I want, all I can ever hope for.
Marissa Mulder May 2014, Rhy'Din
I am, in essence, a child out of time. However cliched it may sound, I am from the future, a future that may no longer exist. I am from another time, another place. There are many of me, as many as there are other realities. Countless really. Innumerable. Each one existing independently and without knowledge of the others.
My birth parents are dead, killed in an explosion. My siblings are being raised by my birth mother's family. I have not seen them since I was a small child. After my parents' deaths, I was separated from my siblings and raised by my mother's nearest and dearest friend. She is the only mother I remember; hence, the only mother I have ever known. Her name is Kirin, and her story is as convoluted as my own. Perhaps that is why she was chosen to raise me. Perhaps my birth mother, in her wisdom, knew she was the only one who would truly understand.
So many questions, so few answers. I have sought out the answers all these many years. It is partly why I am here, but there is more to it than simply that.
I have traveled through time in order to solve the mystery of my own life, but also, to know those who I could not otherwise have known had I remained in my own time and place. Life is like a web, each strand weaving itself through another until they all become interconnected. So many lives, so many possibilities. Countless really.
In one life, I am a child living with my birth parents and siblings in a cottage in the woods just outside of Rhy'Din. In another life, I am with my mother's family, being raised with my siblings far from the city. In yet another, I am the adoptive daughter of Kirin and Fox Mulder, raised with the children of that union as one of their own. That is the life I know and remember best.
In one future, I am dead. In another, I am lost. In still another, I am married and have children of my own and am living on a world far from Rhy'Din. And so it goes, but this is not about those lives. It is about this one. This Marissa. The only life I have ever known.
There were others who came from the future, but they are all part of me now. We live together in one body. We share one heart, one mind, one soul. I know them as well as I know myself. They are part of me, and yet, they are separate. All their voices speak in my head. Together we are as one. Together we have decided what we must do, and together we will do it.
There is one last life that needs saving, one last journey to the past. He is my adoptive mother's heart-brother, and as such, he is as much family as myself. His name is Duncan Mallory. He is from another world very different from Rhy'Din. One of us - one of the Marissas inside me - was in love with him once. Another died for him. His life is almost as complicated as my own. I have seen his life and his spirit destroyed as he fell into despair and lost himself in misery. I have helplessly watched him die horribly in my dreams, night after night.
He came to Rhy'Din once to find someone he loved. One of me brought him here, but it didn't work out, and when he returned to his own world, he was lost.
All of this is not just about one life, but three. A man, a woman, and a child. I have decided to go back, before his life became full of grief and tragedy. I do not know how I will prove myself to him or how I will make him understand, but if I do not do this, if I do not try, I will not be able to live with myself. He is family, after all, and I would do anything for family.
Perhaps then, I can find peace. That is all I want, all I can ever hope for.
Marissa Mulder May 2014, Rhy'Din