Disclaimers & Warnings: See Part 1

It was June the 21st, 2002, and outside of Columbia, South Carolina, Jamie Pappas was ensconced in her old bedroom. Only a month before, she had returned home from Johns Hopkins University, having completed a four-year B.S. degree in electrical engineering. Her interests had turned to the development of navigational systems for manned space vehicles, but her real dream was to fly and see the stars.

On this day hot midsummer's day, she was sifting through the accumulation of her adolescence; all the once precious litter from her junior and senior high school days. It seemed like part of a different world to her now, and she realized that one could never go back. Two piles were forming. The first was baggable, and would end up on the curb for refuse pickup. The second would be boxed for storage in the catchall attic of the old Pappas house. Just about every year, something was added. Every few decades, some family member would make a second round of decisions, resulting in more bags by the curb, as age reassessed the value of the midden pile the family lived under. But some things were never thrown away.

This house was probably old when the war with the Yankees started, she thought, as the aging window unit labored to extract the abundant southern humidity from the air. The summers had seemed a little less oppressive in Baltimore, she remembered, thinking of the Whiting School of Engineering's Homewood Campus. Taking her degree in a school north of the Mason-Dixon Line had been a first in her family. Her father still swore that he could hear his grandfather, Melvin Pappas, a Dean at the University of South Carolina, turning over in his grave.

Jamie had always found greater inspiration in her grandmother, Melinda, who had once gone to a Macedonian archeological dig, helped make a great discovery, and returned with an unlikely colleague. She'd followed her dreams. Jamie had spent hours in the attic, exploring the tidbits of Melinda's life. There were the journals, the old clothes, the artifacts, and the photos. The curiosity she'd felt about the relics up there had eventually lost out to her desire to see space. Maybe it was that her generation had grown up on "Star Wars" and "Voyager". Maybe it was that she just needed to get further away.

She realized that she'd stopped doing anything productive, and was just standing, woolgathering, by her old bookcase. Almost by reflex, she pulled a worn volume from a shelf, and went to sit on her old bed. Most of the contents she knew by heart, but she'd refreshed her memory anyway, every time she was home. Southern Dragons Class of 1997, the cover of the Columbia High School yearbook said in fading silver script.

By force of habit, Jamie opened the book to the page where the binding had long ago learned to lie flat. The rows of pictures stared back at her, friends whom she was already beginning to forget, old comrades left behind. Three rows down and four pictures from the left…she was still there, unchanged. It was the one face she'd never forget. The heart drawn around it in purple marker and the message that meant more than it seemed to. It blurred as she stared into Amy's eyes, her best friend's face expanding until it seemed to be full size, just inches away, late on a cool June night.

It had been between their junior and senior years of high school, and they'd been talking for hours, lying in the backyard and staring up at the summer stars. A meteorite had arced across the night sky, leaving a con trail sizzling through the atmosphere in its wake. They'd both sat up to watch it streaking down, for it had seemed to fall behind the tree line at the end of the Pappas property. It was just an illusion, of course.

They'd turned towards each other at the same moment, something they often did, usually followed by giggles. But this time they'd stared into each other's eyes, searching, drawn closer and closer, barely breathing. It had been a moment, timeless and magickal, as if something ancient had stirred. They'd kissed hesitantly, self-consciously, and very softly at first, but the kiss had deepened. It had been Jamie's first real kiss, and she'd kissed a girl. Later they'd giggled together when they realized that Jamie had ended up with one of the cinnamon Tic-Tacs that Amy had absently put in her mouth a few moments before. It wasn't the last kiss that night, as they became more confident, and there'd been many more over the next year. Many more kisses and many shared touches that were no longer casual, as they both became more comfortable touching. It had all been so new. It had all felt so right.

To Jamie, 4 Ever and Always, Amy. I love you grrrrl. Purple words in purple marker.

"I love you too, Amy," Jamie whispered softly, her eyes staring through the page into her memory, "where did you go?" And another tear stained the helpless yearbook.

Later she lifted a box, heavy with old textbooks and class papers, and clomped up the attic stairs. If her room had been hot, then the attic was an annex of hell. It was so hot that it seemed like the humidity was lower, evaporated from the air into steam that was absorbed by the boards in the walls and ceiling. She found a spot that wasn't already claimed by a previous generation's detritus and plunked her box down. When she stood back up, she had to wipe the perspiration from her eyes with the back of her hand. In the thirty seconds she'd been in the attic, her tank top had become soaked with sweat. Her long bare legs below her cutoffs were already wet and shiny. It was ridiculous.

As she turned to leave, she thought, what the hell, I'm already soaked. Staying up here a few more minutes won't make any difference now. She took the four steps that brought her to the picture of her grandmother, a professional photograph taken in 1947. Jamie had always loved this picture. It was one of the rare few that showed Melinda without her glasses and with her hair down, falling unbound to below her shoulders. It might have been a subconscious thing, but Jamie wore her hair the same way, long on the sides and back, eyebrow length bangs in front. She'd never cut it, permed it, dyed it, or curled it. With the coming of her twenties, she'd grown to look more and more like her grandmother had in 1947, though Mel had been nine years older than Jamie was now. If they'd stood side by side at the same age, they could have passed for identical twins.

Jamie was still staring at the picture when she noticed that the reflections on the glass in its frame were growing stronger, obscuring her grandmother's face. Then she noticed that she could see her own shadow, and it was falling towards the light bulb that hung naked, from a wire in the ceiling. Jamie turned to her right, just in time to see the fading beam of light that had delivered the figure of her grandmother into the attic. Melinda had black wings, and was regarding her with a hint of a grin. Jamie rubbed her eyes.

"Grandmother?"

"I'm not Melinda," the archangel told her kindly, "in fact, you're off by about two thousand years."

"Of course you're not. How silly of me to make assumptions," Jamie agreed, fairly certain that heat prostration was making her hallucinate, "and I'll bet you're here to tell me a secret truth."

"Very good, Jamie," Xena praised her happily, "I can see your powers of deduction are finely tuned."

"Never better," Jamie agreed. I'll have to replenish fluids and electrolytes soon, she thought, if I don't fall down the stairs and break my neck first.

"Good," Xena told her, "because I need you to understand what I'm gonna tell you. It has to do with your soulmate, Amy. Ya see, you can call her back."

Now I know I'm in trouble, Jamie thought. I was thinking about Amy earlier. I was looking at grandma's picture. Now I'm talking to an angel that looks just like Mel. What a great hallucination…it's amazing how closely it's tied in with my subconscious projections of my conscious memory traces.

"Hello…Jamie, ya feeling ok?"

"Oh yeah, sorry, must be the heat. So what do I have to do?"

"First, come over here," Xena directed, pointing to the glass enclosed display case.

Jamie followed the archangel and stood in front of the relics that hadn't made it to the museum at the University of South Carolina, just up the road in downtown Columbia.

"Now, Jamie, ya see that bundle on the second shelf?"

"Sure, the 'primitive Thracian ceremonial carving, purpose unknown'," she quoted from her memory of Melinda's notes.

"Actually, it's the sacred Dagger of the Utma," Xena told her, "a relic from the dawn of the Amazon Nation."

"Amazons…" Jamie muttered, remembering that they had figured in some of the stories from the Xena scrolls. She was beginning to get light headed and she swayed.

"Stick with me, Jamie," Xena encouraged. "Unwrap the dagger and hold it right below the carved animal head."

Geeezus, I must be affected by the heat, Jamie thought as she pulled the brittle moldering hide off the carving. That wrapping was part of the artifact. It was found like this in situ, and Melinda never tried to remove it for fear of destroying something of historic value. The crumbled pieces of the dry rotted skin lay in a pile at her feet. She grasped the dagger just like the apparition had requested.

"Good, now raise it above your head, as high as you can reach."

Jamie held the dagger as high as she could. The carved animal head scraped the ceiling.

"That's it, now, what ya have to do is call out to Amy. Call her home."

"Amy, please come home," Jamie recited.

"Not like that!" Xena scolded. "Ya sound like you're calling a dog!" She sighed, then encouraged, "Call her with your feelings, Jamie, like you mean it with all your heart. Make her believe how much ya need her, and give her a real reason to come back."

Jamie gulped. This hallucination was getting testy, playing with her emotions.

"See her in your mind's eye, Jamie," Xena instructed, "tell her what you feel. You have to believe and want this. You have to believe that anything is possible."

At first, Jamie stared at the archangel, but then she decided, what the hell. She conjured up the image of Amy's face from the yearbook picture, and like she had in her room, she let herself fall into her eyes. She saw Amy's face drawing closer and tilting as she leaned in, her eyes half closed, with a conspiratorial grin on her lips. Behind her she could see the dark night sky, where a shooting star had just passed; a falling star to make a wish on. She felt the first light touch Amy's warm soft lips on her own. She felt the magick. The stars blurred with her tears, but Amy's face remained clear. And then she felt her heart breaking like it had the day her beloved friend disappeared. She cried like she'd cried in the bottom of the stairwell, somehow knowing that she'd lost a part of her very soul. Knowing that from then on, her heart would be alone.

"Amy," she whispered, not trusting her cracking voice to speak any louder, "please, please come back to me. I've missed you so much since you disappeared…I've more than missed you. You took a piece of me with you that day and I've never stopped wondering where you went. I want you back, Amy. I want you back with all my heart. I wish that I could see you again, just to tell you once that I love you."

She felt the air compression in the stifling attic, and an audible "whump" that made her ears pop. For a second, a figure was outlined by a flash of light, and then it jerked around in shock at its displacement. Jamie blinked to clear her eyes and could only stare. Amy had appeared, looking like she'd been holding something in her arms, one breast bared by the ludicrous costume of animal skins that draped her body. She'd stood and whipped around and stared at Jamie, and Jamie stared back at her. The Dagger of the Utma slipped forgotten from her shaking fingers and the ancient brittle ivory shattered on the floor.

"Amy?" Jamie hesitantly whispered. In the back of her mind, she noted that Amy looked a few years older than she'd been when she'd disappeared that day in 1997.

"Jamie? What the hell? Where's my baby? Was that the Dagger of the Utma? And who's she? Am I really back?" Her eyes were flitting back and forth trying to take in all of the details around her. She'd been nursing her daughter, the next Amazon princess, just sitting in her yurt, when for the second time in her life, she'd been snatched across time. If this was real, she could be Amy again, not Cyane, not the Utma…if she wasn't dreaming. Damn, this attic was hot, just like she remembered it. She blinked a trickle of sweat out of her eyes. "Jamie, am I really home?"

Amy had been waving her hands around, punctuating her questions with gestures. She's as energetic as Gabrielle used to be when she was excited, Xena thought fondly as she watched, and the timing was perfect. The Amazons would raise their new princess, and Gabrielle's lineage was assured. Her soul would move through history as it had been intended to, joined with her own in a soulbond meant to last beyond the world and grace eternity with two souls joined as one.

One last time the Warrior Princess had changed the future, but it wasn't her will alone that had shaped this fate. It had been her soulmate's last request so many centuries before. Gabrielle had put the horrors of Armageddon Day back in the bottle. By accepting her own destiny, she had made the restoration of their eternal destiny possible. Seeing her own soul reborn in her future daughter, rejoined with Gabrielle's soul which had escaped the closed loop of the Utma, fulfilled the third part of her daughter's prophecy. At last the Southern Dragon was free. Now, there would always be another reincarnation; another chance to love. Now, their souls' destiny to change the world would continue. And now, it was the modern soulmates' turn to exercise their free will. It was the legacy of the Twilight. The Warrior Princess smiled, accepting that everything had happened just as it should. This was her final mission.

With her soul finally at peace she awaited the light that would take her one up last time. Once it had come and gone, Xena of Amphipolis would at last share oblivion with her beloved Gabrielle. They would be just names in a handful of ancient scrolls. Only in the endless recall of mankind's subconscious memory would there exist that which had once been a warrior and a bard. It was but one of so very many incarnations…the archetypal soulmates, forever linked in the halls of time.

For a brief moment she wondered about the Western Dragon, but just as quickly dismissed it from her mind. Destiny, she realized, was never truly finished. It persisted and grew through the centuries, connecting the generations in a legacy.

Xena watched as Jamie wrapped her soulmate in a tight embrace and silenced her ravings with a kiss. When she finally pulled away from Amy's lips, she leaned in and whispered in Amy's ear, "I love you grrrrl, 4 Ever and Always".

They were both wearing the widest smiles that either could remember, as the beam of light came down and the figure of the archangel disappeared in its radiance.

"Was that your grandmother?" Amy asked after taking a deep breath.

"Yeah," Jamie replied, "but she wouldn't admit it. I think she's just pissed cause I went to school up north."

(Gabrielle, rendered phonetically in Norse runes as it would have been translated by the people of Kaupang. It came to pass that the runes of her name foretold the heart of her life story).

"…a long journey across the seas by ship and overland by horse, by one who will thaw the frozen heart of Odin, bringing a new spring to the Norselands, and afterwards sacrifice her life in conflict with a god…"

"And this god…it isn't Odin?"

"Nay, Ubchulk, for the rune Ansuz falls aside the runes Isa and Berkano, while the rune Geba lies apart, beyond the rune Raido. The journey leads to the god and her sacrifice."

"Then she is fated to leave Kaupang?"

"So it appears to me…"

"And my friend's heart will be broken if she leaves again."

"My cousin, not all divining is meant to be known. Foreknowledge can poison the present with fear of the future, and it is the present in which we mortals live."

"Then I resolve to say nothing…to Beowulf or Gabrielle."

"And how did a tavern keep become so wise?"



Indeed, the tavern keeper of Kaupang came to the same conclusion and course of action as the founder of the new southern faith. As Ubchulk restrained his own lips from poisoning his friends' future, so Eli restrained Xena's ghost from warning her soulmate of the destiny that lay before her. As above, so below.

Queen Aliah (Queen of the remnant of the Northern Tribe, challenged and defeated by Queen Gabrielle, then appointed as her regent)