Simran slumped onto her creaky hostel bed, dust motes swirling in the afternoon sunlight. The city outside buzzed with unfamiliar languages and the scent of street food. On top of her faded backpack lay a postcard—vivid blues and oranges, the image depicting a city skyline she’d never seen before, with spires that twisted like glass and rivers that shimmered with strange colors. The stamp, oddly futuristic, read: “Sent from Mirador, 2042.”
"How could I have sent this to myself?" she murmured, tracing the looping handwriting on the back.
Simran wandered beneath flickering streetlights, clutching the postcard. She compared strange angles of buildings, searching for any resemblance. Locals bustled past, oblivious to her quest, while market vendors shouted in unfamiliar dialects. Each corner revealed only more mundane reality, nothing like the dreamlike city on her card.
"Maybe it's a prank, or someone with a wild imagination," she whispered to herself, but unease lingered.
Old Postmaster, hunched and bespectacled, eyed Simran as she slid the postcard across the counter. He squinted at the stamp, brow furrowing.
"Never seen a place like this, or a stamp so peculiar," he muttered, turning it over and over. Simran pressed him for answers, but the old man only shrugged, handing it back with a wary glance. Rain spattered the window, blurring the world outside into watercolor streaks.
Simran spread the postcards in a semicircle, the candlelight flickering over impossible landscapes and architectures. Her own handwriting looped across every message, always urging her on—“Keep going. You’re almost there.” Each card bore a date years ahead, stamped from places no one had ever heard of. She felt a pulse of excitement; this was a breadcrumb trail left by someone who knew where she was headed.
"Am I chasing myself into the future?" she wondered aloud, the attic thick with possibility.
She climbed toward the summit, lungs burning in the cold air. Each step felt preordained, as if she were walking in the footsteps of someone who’d already been here—herself, from a future she could not yet imagine. The last postcard read, “Look for the door at the edge of the world.” She pressed on, guided by hope and curiosity, the unknown city shimmering in her mind’s eye.
Simran stood before the archway, heart racing. She pulled out the final postcard, its edges soft from handling, and read the message once more. The ground trembled, and the archway pulsed with blue light, beckoning her forward. As she stepped through, the world dissolved into color and possibility—a journey not just through space, but through time and dreams, always following the trail her future self had left behind.
