"I got to talk with her!" Paige thought to herself. "I got to talk with that renegade time traveler!" Her thoughts raced with excitement as she looked at her tape recorder with her interview in it. She arrived at her apartment, and began transcribing the interview for her notes.
"There was a question she couldn't answer, and it's a mystery to her as much as it is to me, but this mystery cropped up in the headlines. Another witness told their friends about it, who told their friends, who told others, and took to writing about it, and the news picked it up. They did before I did, but did they get to interview that renegade time traveler? I don't think so!" Paige thought to herself again when she paused the recording, and let out a chuckle before she continued transcribing it before she wrote a story that recreated the details.."
The sun was setting, and Aurora walked through the plaza. She enjoyed the sights enough to mostly take the questions she had off of her mind. She reached into one of the pockets of her parachute pants to take out her smartphone, but stopped, and zipped the pocket back up.
"I'll wait until I find a place." She thought, and looked towards the buildings, and the rows of palm trees along the streets. She walked past a bar that was already crowded with customers, a bustling restaurant with seats on the outside, and some boutiques that were closing for the day.
A cafe called out to her with its design. It had a simple exterior that was light pink with gray panels on the side, and neon blue lights. The lights ran along the walls near the roof, and near the edges of the front windows. She entered. The interior was cozy with light pink walls, marble and glass tables, and a gray and white checkerboard floor.
Neon lights in different shapes sprawled across the walls throughout the cafe, and a long line of neon light ran along the walls of the ordering area. She sat down at one of the empty seats along the walls after ordering a drink and snacks, and felt more relaxed. The seats were comfortable. They were curved and were dark pink with lighter pink cushions.
She brought out her phone and skimmed through the new editions of history textbooks to look for the answers to the questions she had on her mind.
She exited the cafe, and looked around, enjoying the view of her favorite time of the day. The sky was dark and clear with a few clouds. Neon lights and streetlights illuminated the surrounding buildings. She walked down a sidewalk towards the central plaza.
Shoppers walking from one store to another. Small groups chatted among themselves as they walked to another of the stores. A large, 3-tiered fountain stood in the middle of the plaza. It was light blue-green with a white support column that had two pairs of 3D shapes along the height of it. A pair of orange diamond shapes with brass rings above and below them, and a pair of highly reflective teal spheres. The trim of each of the fountain tiers alternated between red and green.
Lights emanated from the bottom of the bottom of the fountain tiers, and were reflected by the cascading water from the top of the fountain. Aurora watched the flowing water while walking towards it. She had a spare coin she could toss in it to make a wish.
"I wish for a confirmation, a sign to know if she is still alive or not." She quietly told herself while looking at the coin. "She was so famous... She was one of the freaking presidents, but how was there no report of her death, if she died?" She thought.
A few people stood by the fountain. One of them was standing by herself. A short woman with burgundy hair tied in a bun, and dressed in a black suit with a long skirt gazed into the fountain. She silently held a coin in one of her hands, as if she were contemplating what wish she would make, ignoring the other people who continued to chat with each other, and toss in a few coins.
"What am I afraid of?" Aurora asked herself. "Am I afraid that isn't her? Am I afraid that is her? Did she die, and is that her ghost, or did she live and exceed the human lifespan?" She nervously thought.
"Watch it you jerk! You scuffed my shoes!" A man shouted. Aurora glanced behind her and saw a few people loudly arguing several feet from her as they were leaving a bar.
"You didn't pay, you a**hole!"
"My friend was supposed to cover it for me!" The first man said, pointing to one of his friends, who joined in the ensuing brawl.
"I got bored and went next door. I wasn't going to stay the whole time!"
The argument escalated into a brawl that was heading in Aurora's direction. She quickly ran off to avoid getting caught up in it. She looked back for a moment, but didn't stay. The other people near the well were nervous, but the familiar-looking yet mysterious woman stopped the brawl from getting too close to the fountain.
"What just happened?" Aurora asked herself when she stopped running, and sat down at one of the benches a block away from the fountain. She thought about the questions she wanted to ask the woman at the fountain while she walked back to it, but to her dismay, no one was around.