(303 days after Nolan's crossing)

He leaves her hints.  Or she imagines that that's what they are.  Clues.  Puzzle pieces.  Clara is good at puzzles, being one herself.  She's good at deciphering mysteries. 

She finds a crumpled receipt on the floor of his room from the convenience store across the street.  The words "matches" and "energy" are circled in blue ink and she figures it must be a message about the nature of her existence.  She watches him braid his shoelaces together and wonders if he's making some statement about how the two of them are connected.  She studies the joints and veins and ligaments of his twitching fingers, hoping to find a pattern within the irregularity of his tics. 

She'll figure out who this man is, how he knows her name.  How he knows she even exists, for that matter.  She'll figure out what he wants and most importantly, what exactly "will be possible soon."  Those words stick with her long after he has said them.  She asks Nolan what he thinks they mean, but Nolan hasn't a clue.  He's suspicious, though, suspicious as well as skeptical... and concerned.

He could know someone else named Clara.  Nolan peers down over the lip of the roof.  The bearded man sits below them on a bench behind the hotel staring into the forest.  It could be a coincidence.

He was speaking to me.  He couldn't see me, but he knew I was there.  Or at least, he knew I was supposed to be there.  He wanted me to hear him.  The man, his attention still focused on the forest, cocks his head to the side and then, as if in a stupor, gets up and stumbles off into the trees; he continues on until the foliage swallows him whole.

Nolan clamps his hands onto the gutter.  If it's not a coincidence, if he was really speaking to you, is that necessarily a good thing?

She shrugs.  She's already asked herself that question, but without more pieces of the puzzle, she can't put an answer together one way or the other.

Clara keeps an itemized list of what she knows so far:

1. Since the man said her name yesterday, he hasn't uttered a single word—not to her, nor to anyone. 

2. He's registered at the hotel under the name John Chapman.

3. He has a small knapsack filled with clothes, a toothbrush, and a comb (the last of which he seems to have forgotten he owns).

4. He wears a small leather pouch on a red cord around his neck.  He never takes it off, not even when he's in the pool.

That pouch.  Clara contemplates swiping it.  It's not like he could catch her as she takes it from his neck.  And he wouldn't miss it, since she'd simply be creating her own copy.  Besides, the pouch has to be a clue.  He may actually expect her to take it.  He might be counting on it.

The pouch skims along the water's surface as John dips his head below.  She takes the opportunity to tug it into her plane.  Pouch in hand, Clara retreats poolside while the man remains in the shallows.

She unties the drawstring and opens the water-tight bag. 

Her heart sinks.  The pouch is empty.

Why? She mouths to the man who cannot see her.  What is this?  Are you messing with me?

Clara spends the rest of the day trying to find meaning in the meaningless.  She searches his room hoping to uncover more hints.  Sitting on his bed, she slides her hand over his rumpled woolen blanket.  Eventually, she shuts her eyes.  Behind her lids, she pieces together the senseless clues he may or may not have left for her.  All she can come up with in response to them is a series of maybes: maybe the empty pouch represents something, maybe his sad, troubled mind, or maybe the invisible barrier between them.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Her eyes fling open again at the sound of him entering the room.  He takes off his shoes, leaving them untied next to the door, then puts his crazy formula-filled notebook on the bedside table.  He taps it with his finger before retreating into the bathroom.

Clara eyes the notebook.  He's left it right out in the open rather than putting it back in his bag the way he normally does when he's not filling its pages.

This could be the puzzle piece that allows all the other puzzle pieces fall into place.  She takes the grey dog-eared tome and opens it to the first page.

A/N: Is the bearded man, now known as John Chapman, really leaving Clara clues, or is it all wishful thinking on her part?  What do you believe is in that notebook... something useful, or is it just another dead end? 

Today's image courtesy of Gulan Bollsay, Flickr Creative Commons.