Just Starting Out
1.3 - Time Capsule
“Kayla, we’re broke,” John said one morning as the two of them were eating breakfast. “With your yoga classes, and the sheer size of our electricity bills due to us never leaving the house, we have just about nothing left.”
“There has to be some way around this,” Kayla muttered. “I’m not dropping yoga, as it’s my favorite thing I do all week, and we sure can’t change the price of the electricity bill.”
It had been about four months since John and Kayla had moved into Newcrest, and while they were beginning to settle into their new lives- Kayla having made friends at the yoga studio and John with his coworkers- not enough had changed to really make their lifestyle sustainable on the negligible funds they had trickling in.
After a few minutes of silence, Kayla spoke up again. “John. A while back, I remember noticing some odd deposits of rock in the yard. Like, looking like people has moved them to bury stuff. Maybe someone buried something out in the yard? Like, something we can sell?”
“Seems like a long shot, Kayla, but I guess it’s worth a shot.”
Kayla quickly finished up her breakfast, showered, then walked outside into the giant plot of land her and John’s tiny little house was built on.
As she walked, she began to notice the same weird piles of rocks she’d noticed previously, while meditating out in the yard. Kayla got down on her hands and knees and began to shuffle through the rocks and dirts in the area, eventually producing a tiny box. A time capsule, she guessed. Someone had probably buried it with the intention of digging it up again in 10 years, but in Kayla's opinion, finders keepers!
Over the course of the next four hours, Kayla dug deeper into the dirt beneath that area, producing more time capsules. Another weird quirk of the builders, she guessed. Maybe they realized this weird little house would be their last gig and decided to bury some memories. Once she felt she'd excavated everything she could from that area of the yard, Kayla went back to the house and laid out all the time capsules she’d scavenged on the kitchen counter.
“John!” Kayla called out. “Come and look at what I’ve found!”
There was some grumbling from behind John’s bedroom door, but eventually, he emerged from his room. When he saw everything Kayla had laid out, he froze, awestruck.
“Kayla, what? Are you seriously trying to tell me that all of this was buried in our yard?”
“Yeah,” Kayla nodded. “There’s this one weird little spot in our yard, I think the builders were trying to bury memories, or something along those lines. Let’s see what’s inside!”
Kayla grabbed a random box, and pried off the lid. Inside, there was a little doll, which Kayla placed carefully on the island.
“Or... those builders were trying to get rid of a curse! Cause that thing is creepy! Please get rid of it.”
“John, come on! This doll has to be worth something. There has to be some weird collector out there somewhere who would kill for these! Even if it isn’t that much, it’s at least something, right? Hopefully enough to make up for my yoga classes.”
“Alright, Kayla,” John sighed. "Just please, do it soon? If I have to see these dolls laying around the house, I swear… they’re definitely cursed. You can’t convince me otherwise.”
“Awwww..” Kayla smiled mockingly. “That really is tragic, because guess what John? I’ve got yoga class to head to!”
“Kayla, are you kidding me?”
Kayla walked over to the door, grabbed her yoga bag from off coat rack, then turned back around to face John. “If you want them gone, better start posting some listings about them online. Figure out some way to appeal to those weird collector freaks.”
“Fine. Fine!” John shouted after her as she shut the front door. “Looks like I have no choice…”
Keeping his eyes locked on the doll the entire time, John carefully walked backwards through his bedroom door, then quickly slammed the door shut and locked it before the doll could follow him in.
A half hour long bus ride later, Kayla was walking up to Ms. Roach’s Yoga and Spiritual Guidance. Despite its unfortunate name, she found her yoga sessions so refreshing. By this point, she could barely imagine how she used to cope in Newcrest before them. She really did feel for poor Ms. Melody Roach, however. The name was so bad, so wordy, that Kayla felt that it drove away customers.
“Kayla!” Melody Roach smiled as she walked in. “It’s so good to see you!”
Melody always made sure to greet each and every one of her students as they walked in. While Kayla had found it weird at first, by now, she found it welcoming.
“Hey, Melody,” Kayla said. “I think I may have figured out a solution to that whole financial crisis I was having, so looks like I’m going to keep coming to your sessions!”
“Thrilling to hear, Kayla! I do love having you here.”
“See you in a bit,” Kayla beamed, before heading to the locker room to change.
She quickly changed into her yoga clothes, then headed for the yoga room. Melody’s yoga establishment was small, as, like most people in Newcrest, she was new to town, but the place was doing surprisingly well. Somehow, despite the unfortunate name, most classes were usually about half full. Melody was doing well enough that she hoped to expand soon, and when she did that, Kayla was hoping she’d be able to convince her to change the name.
By the time Kayla had changed and walked into the yoga room, Melody had done the same. “Let us begin,” she said.
As they went through the poses, Melody talked in a really soft, low voice about her life. The effect was almost therapeutic. There’d be some instances where she asked someone else in the class to tell a story, but they were never as good as Melody.
“You know… when I was still in school, I wanted to be a therapist…”
Kayla zoned out completely, focusing on going through the motions of yoga. Her mind, however, rushed through a flurry of ideas. Doing yoga always seemed to focus her creative energy.
Today, she was focused on how she could begin to make money. Being an editor, to be honest, didn’t bring in much. John brought in most of the money, and she spent more than him. To be completely honest, she was starting to feel pretty bad about it.
As she began to focus her mind, Kayla slowly began to picture a lifestyle book, no- a series of lifestyle books. They certainly wouldn’t be creative fiction, as that never worked out for her and she’d since realized it was a waste of time. So… she could focus on how one could live their life relatively stress free, how to decorate to focus energy, become calmer, how food and music and even the people you surround yourself with could affect your happiness… she’d spent more than enough time practicing that sort of thing since moving to Newcrest. It was genius! The perfect plan.
Kayla’s mind slowed down as Melody finished the lesson.
“And that’s how I ended up purchasing this lot, here, in Newcrest, to build a yoga studio.”
Kayla didn’t even stop to talk to Melody on her way out. She was way too excited about her genius idea. Rushing to her locker, Kayla pulled out her phone and rapidly typed her idea into her notes app, not even bothering to put on her glasses beforehand. This idea… she felt that it could save her and John.