From an inconstruable beginning comes the transmigration.

Samyutta Nikaya, XV

Joachim and Karim had been waiting for us in Merzouga when we got out of the desert. Dylan and I received emergency treatment in Merzouga before taken to Errachidia’s hospital where Dylan underwent leg surgery, and the doctor administered IV fluids to me after running some tests.

My internal injury was almost healed, but I had been advised to stay in the hospital to recover from dehydration and weakness.

“He’s better now.” Joachim had briefed me about Dylan’s condition, but didn’t inquire about his identity.

“If you don’t want to tell me, I won’t ask about it. There are certain things in the world that are better left unexplained. It’s understandable if you don’t want to say them.”

“It’s him.” It’s the only thing I had said to him, and he nodded in understanding.

In the morning, Sean and Zimar came to see me and brought me homemade porridge to eat instead of the hospital’s food. Zimar started crying upon seeing me and told me how she was afraid that I would never return and might die in the desert.

I comforted the girl and told her that I am not the one to die easily. She wanted to stay with me in the hospital longer, but the visitors’ time was up, so she and Sean had to leave.

 Amira had also flown from Chefchaouen, and visited the hospital next day with her husband.

“I’m sorry for Okba’s death.” I teared up, but the woman shook her head and assured me that it’s alright.

“It has ended. Everything is in past now.” She gave me a hug me, and I felt that a huge burden was lifted and could finally breathe.

Dylan looked disoriented and confused when he regained consciousness, and had a difficult time taking in his surroundings. Fortunately, Joachim and I were by his side to help him adjust to his new environment and took care of it before the nurses could become suspicious.

“You should have left by yourself.” He said to me. “You didn’t have to bring me here.”

I felt a pang in my heart hearing him say these words, but instead of telling him that I couldn’t leave him behind to die, I said:

“If you had died, I wouldn’t have found the door of heaven myself. Why should I do something which is yours to do in the first place?” I said to him.

He gave me an incredulous look and said, “You’re cruel.”

“I am.” I mused at the thought. Later, when I called home after seeing so many missed calls and voice mails on my phone, I got yelled at for being an ingrate and unfilial child.

“Are you coming even back or not?” My mother cursed at me, and in the background I could hear him laughing at my plight.

After Dylan and I got discharged, Joachim arranged for us to stay at his place in Marrakech.

“Yousef is missing.” Zimar told us at dinner before siblings could fly back to Türkiye.

Joachim contacted Irem’s and Hisam’s families to inform them of their accidental death, but couldn’t reach Yousef through the phone and was told he had been missing too.

“Did he go back or just disappeared?” I asked them, but Joachim couldn’t tell it either.

“I’m afraid that it’s not only few of us.” Amira had commented. “There is a bigger conspiracy behind this that we don’t know at the moment.”

“It’s better not to know anything.” Dylan remarked, and everyone at the table fell silent. “The more you know, the more dangerous it will be for all of you.”

After finishing the dinner, Amira asked to see Dylan in private and told him something. Later, when I asked Dylan about it, he only told me we needed to go to Granada as soon as possible and finish the business before the total Solar Eclipse that was in a month. 

However, we could not take a direct flight to Spain from Morocco or go by sea without his legal documents and passport.

In this world, he didn’t exist or had any dentity.

Fortunately, Joachim had some connections, and arranged identity documents and passport for Dylan, but we decided to take a high-speed train from Marrakech to Tangiers, then cross the strait to Algeciras, Spain by ferry that would spare us the trouble.

Dylan and I arrived at the train station an hour earlier and had our latte coffee at a café before boarding on the high-speed line, Al-Boraq. We found our compartment and settled down in our seats after taking care of the luggage. This rail trip reminded me of the first time I had met Dylan. Although we were traveling together, the experience was still foreign yet surreal to me as if we were back in time again.

I checked my bag for the air pods to listen to some music and noticed that I had brought that book with me as well. I casually flipped through the pages of the book and read that one line:

‘Those with unfulfilled desire return to a place called Hell’

 I turned the next leaf of the page and found the same boring line written on it again.

‘Was the author of the book obsessed with this line?’ I scoffed.

However, something didn’t feel right as I randomly opened another page, and it had the same line again. I became confused and rummaged through the book’s pages, and each page had the same line written on it.

“What is it?” Dylan asked after seeing me anxious. I showed it to him, and he carefully went through each page of the book before closing it.

“It’s Samsara”. He remarked.

“Samsara?”

“It’s a Karmic cycle of continuous life, death and rebirth with no beginning or end.” He said.

 “You, humans are trapped inside suffering of your desires and keep returning to same place through constant births and reincarnations unless you let go of your obsessions.”

“Is it too bad to be a human?” I asked and looked out of the window to collect my thoughts.

However, as the train slowly pulled in at the Casablanca’s station, darkness rolled in, and in sudden glitch in time, what happened to be a temporal distortion, I saw another Me standing inside the train and wiping the blood off her face.

I paled in horror and felt my breath hitched as SHE walked towards me covered in blood, but as She approached near, Dylan snapped me out of it and pulled me towards him.

“What did you see?” He asked me in concern.

“H-Her…” I stuttered, unable to formulate words in shock. “There was another Me.” I shakily pointed at Her but there’s no one. The couple sitting next to our seats shot us an odd glance, and Dylan had to turn his back to them to cover us from their curious look.

“You must have imagined it.” He said, but I shook my head. It’s then my eyes fell on the fallen book next to my feet, and I finally understood what those words had meant.

Every time I experienced a time lapse or dimensional shift, I’d come across the same line in the book again. If it was a Karmic cycle of continuous rebirth, it meant that I might have been caught in a constant time loop as well.

If it’s a Karmic fate, then, the other ME, no, I had been on this train before.

“T-This isn’t our first time either, is it?” I paused to look at his face. “You and I have been here before too.”

Had he denied it, I would have been relieved, but his silence only confirmed my suspicions.

“What are you hiding from me?” I grimaced.

“It’s a karmic fate. Dimensions are interconnected; we might have encountered each other, before, or one of us might have foreseen the fate.”

 It’s he who might have seen it, but he refused to tell me.

“What did you see then?” I demanded. “Why are we back on this train?” I unwavering met his gaze, but sank back in disappointment when he avoided my gaze.

“The fate—”, he spoke to ease the tension. “It doesn’t matter which one of us has seen it first or experienced it before. We being here means that we still have a chance to change it.”

“You can’t change what you don’t know.” I spared him the words and decided not to linger on it since there’s no point in arguing if we didn’t have trust between us after what we had been through together.

For the rest of the rail trip, I remained silent and wanted to get off the train feeling sick. After arriving in Tangiers, we took a cab from the station to Tangiers Med port and boarded on the ferry to Algeciras.

It was a clear sunny day with no sign of clouds on the horizon. The warmth of the sun on skin; sound of cackling seagulls and crisp smell of saltwater in air jogged up some old memories when father took us to the Maldives on vacations, and Darcie ended up being seasick on the cruise.

I stood on the deck of the ferry as sea breeze ruffled through my hair. Under the vast blue sky, I felt free and unburned from the troubles of life. Dylan also joined me and stood on the deck watching the sea with me.

“I didn’t know that you were a sea person.” He initiated the conversation.

“I would rather be in a desert than lost at sea.” I recalled the failed experience of snorkeling in Banana reefs in the Maldives because of the mask leak and ended up inhaling water.

Although I took swimming and breathing lessons afterwards, I did not dare go scuba diving or snorkeling again despite being a decent swimmer. Perhaps, some fears and experiences stay with you lifetime.

“As much as the sea is beautiful, its depth is unimaginable. I’d rather die looking up at the sun than drown in a cold dark place.” I told him.

“Should not the last moment before death be beautiful?” He asked me, and I wondered what was on his mind to bring up such a question.

“Death shouldn’t be beautiful, rather peaceful.” I commented. “If I had to die alone, I’d rather have it easy and quick.” Why should one suffer in the face of death?

 Dylan stuffed his hands inside the pockets and let out a resigned sigh.

“You, humans are the most complicated creatures. It is difficult to understand your hearts.”

 The corners of my mouth curled up in a nostalgic smile, and I said, “Neither do we. Perhaps, chasing desires in a life full of sufferings and regrets, we simply want a peaceful end.”

Dylan pursed his lips in a thought, but turned towards me and asked, “If there’s a place that could reverse the regret and change the past, wouldn’t you go?”

I looked at him in confusion and said, “Why did you ask?”

“I want to know your answer.” He stepped closer, and I shuddered in response. For someone who’s often quiet and reticent, at times like these he’d become confrontational and willful.

“If it changed the past, would it still have the same future with the people who you once held dear?” I asked and turned back to sea to enjoy the peaceful view; however, such moments of tranquility are often short-lived.

 A strong tidal wave hit the ferry sending spray of water in the air and splashed us.

“What was it?” I staggered back and saw Dylan looking over the sea in the distance.

 A storm of thunderous clouds was brewing on the horizon.

The waves roared and surged higher as the sea had become turbulent due to the storm and crashed violently against the side of ferry causing the passengers on the deck to flee in panic for shelter.

Dylan and I also rushed to go back inside, but I lost my balance upon another impact and fell behind. Dylan ran back to grab my hand in the state of panic, but another strong tide hit us, and I fell overboard falling into the sea below.

“Rhea!” I heard him shout above as I hit the water. I flailed my arms and legs to break through the surface holding breath, but the tides and currents were too strong to pull me down again.

Using my might, I thrust and swam upward again to breach through the water’s surface, but a strong undercurrent overtook me causing me to inhale a lungful of water and choke.

Water filled my lungs, burning the chest and I started losing consciousness and breath.

As I drowned and sank lower, the world around me turned dark and cold, and I looked at the warm shining light on the water’s surface. I stretched my hand to reach for the light, but then a figure cut in through the water and swam towards me.

My vision had blurred, so I could not see that person clearly. The body had long become cold and numb to any sensation, and I could feel nothing but a pair of warm lips against my mouth before darkness slipped in.

Nothing had confused me more than waking up in a hospital, and seeing Joachim and Sean there.

“What were you thinking?” Joachim frowned.

“It’s good that you sent a distress signal before passing out, so we’re able to find you.” Sean told me. “You would’ve been dead in the desert.”

“Desert?” I became muddleheaded because I had a faint memory of going to Algeciras with Dylan before a storm hit us and I almost drowned after falling into the sea.

“Where am I?” I immediately asked them.

“We are in Merzouga, Morocco. Don’t you remember?” Sean said to me, but I shook my head in disbelief.

“W-Where is he?” I asked Joachim about Dylan, but the man told me there’s no such person in the hospital.

“Did you remember it wrong? You’re alone in the desert when we rescued you”, said Joachim.

“But I-I was in…”I clutched my head in pain as it started hurting when I tried to recall it. Sean made me lie down and called the doctor to check on me if I had a concussion.

The doctor said that I might have had symptoms of psychogenic amnesia due to the trauma of being stabbed and suffered from mental confusion. It turned out that I had sneaked out of the tent after getting stitched up, but could not make it far and passed out in the desert after firing a flare gun.

“You need to rest.” Joachim comforted me.

Tears fell from my eyes and I started crying upon realizing that I had gone back in time again,      and no one would actually remember meeting him. Getting him out of the desert or going to Spain with him had never happened in this timeline. To put it simply, I didn’t get a chance to see him in the desert.

It all had ended in vain.

After I got discharged from the hospital, I told Joachim I wanted to go back to Marrakech and leave for the States. Karim returned me the retrieved luggage from the desert, and I found my dead cellphone among the other stuff.

I charged my phone, called home and told them I’d probably be returning. However, on the eleventh hour, I decided to board on the plane to Spain instead of going back to the States.

This time, I wanted to do it for myself.