Tag: Y2K x 10

It had felt a bit like a rebirth, coming back to this time. She had been gone for over six months. Vanished. Poof. As good as dead. It hadn't been hell, but her time away certainly hadn't been heaven. She had not been sure it was going to be a purgatory, even with the insistence everyone had tried to reassure her with in the months prior to her correction. But here she was, given the second chance to live in her second chance time.

Habitually, lost in thought, Khaeris ran a fingertip at a small imperfection on her upper arm. There was no scar--just a small injection and then it was done. But there was a slight rise in the subcutaneous tissues. The small tracker was there. Pollux had, apparently, been carrying it with him constantly, in...

It was supposed to be a good week.

She had returned from wandering and camping in the Eversong woods, haven taken her ram and her sunfur panda for her only company. She’d danced between trees, walked barefoot down deer runs, fished for her supper, woven flower crowns from weeds, and laughed with a crab on the beach. She’d only left a note for the clinic and tacked up a notice at her booth. She had needed it. Needed the time wandering, as only a Traveler could.

It had all been so freeing. It was supposed to help. A reset. Surely she’d feel herself after that.

She’d come back renewed and happy, dimples fairly permanent with her smile and remembering the Tournament of Ages just in time to make it to the Wonderlight Ball. So she ...

(( From a prompt on Tumblr ))

Khaeris slid onto the bench under her fold-down table. Her tea sat nearby, steam dancing and swaying as it tempted, trying to pull her focus from the envelope in her fingers. As much as she loved her tea, the envelope held her rapt.

This was the 135th envelope.

On her first day back in this timeline she had opened a flurry of them. She had been crying and her heart had swelled with emotions she could hardly name at the time. She opened one most mornings, savoring them now. Her heart continued to swell every time she opened one. Even now, months later. Even after reunions and hugs and more tears.

Khaeris let herself remember how displaced she’d felt that day, crossing the Bazaar toward her wagon....

It had felt like a kind of static shock. Startling. Not quite painful. But a surprise, none the less. She had jumped and so had her heart. No one looking at the scene would have understood the woman's jolt. It was quiet in the room Khaeris had been granted. Her alchemy tools were neat on the dresser top. Perhaps not the best work bench, but it was doing the job in a pinch. Mr. Hale had not minded. His generosity was evident in the superbly crafted set of tools in front of her now.

Her mind whirled with the possibilities. Her gaze fell unseeing onto her research journal. She leaned on the dresser while she thought.

No. It hadn't been true static, of course. She didn't know exactly what, but something had happened. Something she was...

Khaeris lay in a bed that wasn't her own. The sheets were rich. The rug she put her feet down on each morning was thick and soft. The curtains over the window were finely made. The window itself looked over the Court of the Sun, not the Bazaar.

Pollux hadn't come home that week. Other Pollux, not her Pollux.

Gone on a business trip. Zandalar? Had he said that? He supplied the military, he'd said, but was that what this trip was?  Maybe somewhere else. She realized should probably be ashamed she hadn't listened closely, but she wasn't ashamed. Despondency came and went in waves.

Though alone every evening, Khaeris could not be disappointed in this. He was too strange. It was both too familiar and too jarring to see his shape. His...

Bronze dragons were masters of time. They could bend, twist, and knead it with the ease of a baker folding dough. They could peer into the future, manifest the past, and shiver the present into paralysis.

They could not, however, Khaeris thought, keep a schedule. Infinity did not daunt them. And calendars did not concern them.

“You were supposed to be here three hours ago.” Khaeris blinked owlishly and finished sitting up, peering into the doorway. She hadn’t been sleeping, but the room was dark and she’d been laying on the bed.

“I assure you, I was not. I think.” The dragon in humanoid form chirruped, not even bothering to sound indignant, but rather cheerful and half-distracted already. A light clap and the arcane...

The blue glow of the usually steady runes strobed in her vision, through no fault of their own.

Ah. It was one of the flickering episodes. The tiny breakfast nook bench she sat on was beneath her, then not, then there, then not--and so on. For the span of about five seconds Khaeris flickered in and out of that reality. Too fast to even have her teacup tumble from where she had lifted it, but not fast enough to pretend it wasn't happening. And happening inside her vardo, where Helal had so painstakingly runed nearly every inch of walls. The episodes were getting stronger.

She reflected on the last few months. The attacks had been ramping up in both frequency and intensity. From a fraction of a second gone, beginning months ago, to...

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...

My eyes open to the morning light and there she is.

Not literally, of course. But she’s there, somewhere; using my face, speaking with my voice, recalling my memories.  I blink and feel my chest tighten. Waking up has become waking up to her. She is often the last thoughts in long nights, and the first thoughts in the mornings now. Those quiet moments, lying still and coming to grips with the day seem to be heavy with the idea of coming to grips with her.

Why? How? I don’t have any answers. I’m conscious of my breath. Keeping it even. I don’t want to worry him. His hand on is on my hip, and I’m grateful for the weight of it and shift carefully back toward him, not wanting to disturb him. He’s not up yet, but I’m...

She didn’t know what they were called, but Khaeris ran a finger over the spiraling, sharp line of a long, thin machine screw. She pressed the pad of her finger against it for a few seconds, just  enough to be painful, before she carefully set it back down in the funny little magpie pile she’d made on the floor of his room. A few of the very precise screws, a piece of cork (what was that for?), and one of his sketches he’d made for Pyraelia’s prosthetic designs. She’d been sitting there awhile now, in the early hours of the morning, not bothering to look for the restless sleep she’d abandoned an hour ago.

They made her think of him. The strong lines of his ink sketch were his confidence in his work. The hard metal screws...