“It’s my lucky penny.” “It must—” Markus cleared his throat before starting again. “It must be very important to you,” he said at a slow deliberate cadence. “Actually, I can’t even remember how I got it. Not yet, anyway. It’s been with me through a lot. Why do you care? It’s just a penny.” “Only curious. What people consider keepsakes, that’s all.” Markus began rambling about a psychology course he’d taken in college while assessing his standard-issue time-jump equipment, but Kin tuned out. Other, more important things started bubbling up in his mind.
After the original drafts of this story, I received editorial notes to add more layers of connection between characters. The lucky penny was part of this building process, and the idea was simply about how powerful symbols can be as we retain them through culture. Symbols communicate so much in a single image. In this case, it communicates an entire relationship between two people.
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