(Six years, one month, three weeks and four days after the Ban began)

Avie uses a box cutter to slice open a newly arrived package. Inside is a new Our World Only sign to replace the old one long faded in the lobby window. She mustn't look as if she's gotten lax in her patriotic fervor. Securing the new sign, she gently places the old one in the shipping box to be sent to the Friends of the Authorities non-profit. They will respectfully dispose of it.

Despite everything that has happened to her, Avie considers herself to be a very lucky woman. She has survived over six years alone in this awful, awful place, narrowly avoiding arrest or death on more than one occasion. She thinks of her last brush with fate, of Troi, gone from her life almost a year now.

At first, the Council believed the story spun about Hiram returning to Texas. According to the news reports, Gillian had told them their mother's health was failing. Avie's not sure Gillian ever believed her brother had ditched his life in Cascadia to high-tail it back to Texas without so much as a goodbye, but for a while, the hapless Council seemed to.

Six months after Hiram disappeared, a utility crew laying lines for a new housing development found his decomposing body buried in a shallow grave fifty miles southeast of the hotel. The deceased's DNA matched that of missing militia officer Hiram Burk.

Troi was arrested by the authorities within the week. He gave a full confession, which was released in its entirety to the press. In it, he stated that he had murdered Hiram when Hiram caught him faking a medical condition in order to take leave. Troi had been exhausted by his job, he'd claimed, and had contemplated abandoning his post before his contract ended. Hiram had threatened to expose him as being derelict of duty. Troi simply couldn't handle the disgrace.

In a statement his lawyers issued to the press, he asked that his wife, Gillian Onslowe, as well as everyone he had hurt, find a way to forgive him.

Avie has forgiven him, for lying on her behalf, for coming into her life under false pretenses, for pursuing her when both of them knew it would not end well. She's forgiven him his zealousness, his gullibility, his horrendous taste in movies. She's forgiven him for being an enemy, but she can't forgive herself for letting him become a friend. Like other times in her life when it mattered most, Avie had miscalculated. She should never have let him get so close, even if rejecting Troi made him more suspicious of her.

Avie is stewing in old grievances, mainly ones she's inflicted on others, when a customer enters the lobby. "Not quite the same, but close." He approaches the counter. When she looks up from her tablet, his smile falters. "I was talking about the hotel, but now that I see you... you look so much like her."

Avie does her internal eye roll. She pleads with everything that is sacred that this man isn't another effing anti-realm journeying nut job with a weakness for brunette hotel managers.

She succeeds in a thin lipped smile. "You need a room?"

The man glances around the lobby, empty save for them. "It's time, Avie. Your daughter needs you." Avie is about to tell him he must have mistaken her for someone else, but he holds up a hand. "It's okay, I'm a friend-a friend who knows about the pocket realm... and what you've given up to keep Clara safe."

The man, who must be in his late teens or early twenties at the most, knows a shocking amount about her situation. So that can only mean....

"Vira sent you, didn't she?"

His mouth hangs open, and if Avie's not mistaken, he flinches slightly. At least Avie knows one thing this man doesn't. "Vira came to me before the Ban. She's the reason I knew it was coming."

"Marcella might have mentioned to me that Vira spoke to you," he mumbles.

Avie's heart flutters. "You know Marcella? You've... you've seen her? How is she?"

The man's sour expression lightens. "She's doing really well-terrific, in fact." He cocks his head to the side. "She misses you, too."

Avie nods. How she'd love to ask him more about her step-mother! But it will have to wait.

"So the Ban..." She leads the man out of the lobby and up to her room. "It's over? When?"

They enter Avie's room and she draws the drapes closed.

"In this world? About Three days ago."

"Three days!" She could have been with her daughter three whole days ago.

The man smiles apologetically. "I would have shown up earlier, but I'm already stretching the rules by coming here now rather than several month from now. Travelling backward in time has certain... implications. I have to pick and choose carefully, you see."

Avie doesn't know what there is to pick and choose from, but everything else about the pitfalls of time travel she learned long ago from Marcella. She waves him off. "Let's just open the Fold and get through." She pauses as a look of unease clouds his handsome features. For a second, she wonders if her desire to see her daughter again has turned her into an unsuspecting fool. This guy could be an authority. Worse, he could have been sent by the Council. He hasn't even told her his name. "What? What is it?"

"I just... I can't go with you."

She narrows her eyes. "Why not?"

"I have something else I need to do. You don't need me along, anyways. Believe me."

"Look, whoever you are, I don't really care if you come with me or not." She begins her long unused calculations. Her fingers draw the air until the man stills them. "What are you doing? Let go of me!"

With his free hand, he slices downward; the Fold appears, unsealing itself as easily as if he'd done nothing more than open a car door.

Avie stares at it, mouth agape. "Well, shit."

"I'm just giving you a head start. You'll need your formulas to get you to the pocket realm once you're in the Fold, though."

"Why do I have the feeling there's a lot more you should be telling me?"

He laughs. "I wonder if she'll sound like you."

Before she can ask him what the hell he means by that, he draws open a second doorway to the Fold just a few feet away from hers and slips inside of it. As soon as he's through, it reseals itself and disappears. Avie's own doorway shimmers like a phantasm. She falls to her knees before it, a weary pilgrim praying for mercy.

She shuts her eyes as images of her daughter wash over her. Clara's soft cheeks, the curl of her dark hair, her almond eyes.

After all this time, six years, one month... she's going to see her daughter, but her excitement is overshadowed with anxiety. Will her daughter remember her? Will she reject Avie for abandoning her? Will she be damaged from her years in solitude?

Avie shakes off these thoughts and picks herself off the ground. She can't let fear rule her, not now when she's finally gotten the only thing she's wanted all these years.

Knowing it will be her last in a long while, she takes a deep breath and steps into the Fold.

A/N: Here we are... caught up to the point in Chapter 3 in which we see Avie in front of the Fold. We can all agree, a LOT has happened to her in the past six years. What do you think will occur when she gets to Clara's realm? Will Clara know who she is?

Thank you for clicking that star and for reading all of these words that I've slung together into what is hopefully a cohesive and interesting story!

Today's dedicatee is @talkingflowers who this month pledged to write 10k words for #JustWriteIt. Her debut Wattpad story, THE BOATING ACCIDENT is being posted now till the end of April. It's a funny tale in which a teenage girl boards a small boat headed for an event in Miami and, well, things don't go quite as planned. Christy has been a fabulously supportive reader for a while here on Wattpad, and now she's taking the plunge to become a Wattpad author. Let's show her some support and give her story some love! (update summer 2016: Since I first wrote this, Christy's fantasy story THE GROVE has been featured by Wattpad. It is SO GOOD! Go read it!

Media image is courtesy of Colin Poellot, Flickr Creative Commons.