Khaeris Dawndancer

The Beginning of Correction

Her wagon was not particularly accessible.

While getting into the wagon was never a problem; once inside and trying to relax it got more difficult. The prosthetics didn't come off as quickly as they did in his own home, he didn't bother taking them off at all, sometimes. Here, the steps were awkward to the loft, the water closet was too small and there wasn't much to hold onto (never mind you had to climb down the steps again). The floor bounced slightly with your steps and the furnishings were nearly an obstacle course.

The tiny space was hers, but it wasn't welcoming to him.

He hadn't complained; it wasn't like Pollux to complain. He might have been used to figuring things out, but she noticed how much more time, effort, and thought he had to give simply existing here. Her chest tightened a little and her hand stroked over his back, where he was practically wedged against the wall in sleep.

A little guilt, then a little caress of fear, and then the brush of frustrated anger; the emotions slithered through her and kept her awake. It was a cycle tonight. Her emotions pulsed slowly with the same rhythm of the glowing time-wards etched into the wooden planks of her walls, fighting the weak darkness as well as the chronomantic reverberations that were rippling off her. She was the pebble thrown into the pond. The wards did help. She hadn't had nearly as many episodes now that they were here to anchor her.

Helal's hand in the runes was clear to her. She knew him. She knew the elegant flourish of his script--even in the precise lines of the runes. He'd worked all day to put them up for her. Her knick knacks and anything else previously on her walls shoved out of the way or put away into over-full cupboards. She could see the differences between how he drew them, and how Andaeros would have written them. A momentary swell filled her and the words to ask Andaeros for help died in her thoughts.

Her hand dropped from Pollux and she shifted to turn and look over the length of her vardo. Sunny was snoring somewhere in the rafters above them.

She slid out of bed, forgoing the ladder and just letting her feet softly hit the floorboards. Khaeris moved silently for once. Her nightgown brushed at her ankles, but no chimes, no music moved with her in the night.

The ritual of tea was comforting and her mind calmed. She would ask Helal to rune Pollux's apartment. Neither of them would be happy about it. Pollux's face would do that scrunch of narrowed eyes and tight lips. Helal would huff and toss his hair around. Both of them would do it though, for her. They had both already offered. They didn't like each other, but they both loved her, in their ways, and they would do it.

Gods and goats. Accepting help was difficult. She'd worked too hard, too long to be independent. Her stomach clenched. She was frightened so much lately. It wasn't terror. It was just a thread; uneasiness running in the seams of her everyday life, tugging into every aspect of her days. And nights. Even the idea of sleeping made her hesitate. Weeks prior, Pollux had gently informed her it had happened then, too. She wasn't even aware of it at night.

Would it happen like that? She would just vanish one night? If she vanished would memory of her vanish, too? Forgotten as a time anomaly, corrected out of their memories and consciousness, too?

She slid into a seat at her breakfast nook type table. Her warm tea cup nestled against her palms and she focused on that sensation. Focused on the moment. There was heat. There was the hard bench. There was the taste of the goldthorn in her tea. The smooth texture of the porcelain cup.

Pyraelia had given her that tea cup. ... She was getting Pyraelia mixed up in all this, too. Pyraelia had had a hard enough year without having to try to track down theories on chronomancy, too. But she did it, for Khaeris.

Khaeris knew she was the most useless piece in this puzzle. Helal. Pyraelia. Pollux. Even Iloam were trying to help her. Reassuring her they wouldn't let her fade away. They wouldn't forget. And they would come for her. It was getting harder to convince herself to act normal. To leave her wagon and to work. Helal had wanted her to leave the city with him and she'd nearly panicked.

The incidents were coming more often. Random and nearly instantaneously over, she could not predict them. She hadn't told anyone that they were increasing. What would it help?

The prevailing theory was that Azeroth herself was wounded. In her wounding, she was desperate to heal, as anything hurt was. The world soul was frantic in her pain. It seemed fitting that in her working to heal herself, she would repair wounds.

Khaeris shivered with that train of thought. She didn't' belong here. She was the 'wrong one'. Kharris was the woman naturally here. Khaeris was a 'lesion'. Too long had Khaeris, and Kharris, ignored the issue in favor of pretending it wouldn't be a problem. No one had worked out how it had happened, or why, or even precisely when, but Khaeris kept hearing the brassy, confident voice of the bronze dragon in the Caverns of Time.

She would be corrected. Eventually.

And that eventuality seemed to be coming closer and closer every day. It felt like a weight pressing slowly down on her. She imagined she could feel her molecules sinking into nothingness between the reality of the bench beneath her. Feel the  frequency her life shifting out of sync with the rest of the world.

The tea cup clattered against the table and she gasped with air that hadn't been there a moment before.

For a moment, she hadn't been there.

It had happened. Here. In her own vardo. Past all the wards.

She pressed her hands into the table top, as hard as she could. She was here. She was here.

But for a moment, for the briefest flashes of of a hint of a second, she hadn't been.