Shadows of Ourselves

　　"D'you think people leave impressions of themselves in a place?" I asked.

　　"After they've died, you mean?"

　　I scored a cross in a square. "No, after they've been somewhere." I told him about the flashback images of my childhood. "It happened a few times while we've been on Bryher. Like the island is covered with traces of me from the past."

　　"Maybe it is." Uman made a nought, won the game.

　　"Wouldn't it be weird if we left millions of shadows of ourselves wherever we went?"

　　He seemed to give it some thought. "Or what if there are millions of shadows of us in all the places in the world we haven't been to yet," he said, "just waiting for us to make them real?"

　　I frowned. "How would that work?"

　　"Oh, and your idea does work?"

　　"Yeah, I mean, if you walk along this beach," I gesture at the wet sand, "you're going to leave a trail of footprints behind you —— but you can't leave footprints ahead of you."

　　"Not literally, no." He'd scuffed out the game and was marking the grid for a new one. "But in here," he tapped his head, "you can leave footprints wherever you like."

Twenty Questions for Gloria, p263
Martin Bedford
ISBN 978-1-4063-6353-1