kcoT kciT:2

Alexandrie did not – could not sleep. The daylight was too tempting, the movement of people in the streets below drew her curiosity, the ticking - the ticking. 

It was as though a window had been opened in her mind: she could hear everything in the world but couldn’t hold onto any of it. Sheets pulled over her head - no - staring at the ceiling - no - hands moving constantly moving, kneading, pulling, pushing at notes to look at something anything but the image of Jasper crumpling to the floor.

Too similar to Vee. Too similar and she would not be useless again.

Despite refusing to allow anyone to sacrifice themselves for her, the moment he fell Alexa uselessly begged for La Chanson to return to the depths of her eerily silent mind. As Jasper lay on the floor, she cast a mental net to find it, draw it, drag it from wherever it went and turn the attention of whatever had hurt the young man to her instead. Twice now she had forced an Edgewater to listen to La Chanson against their better judgement. She’d hurt him. Somehow. But he needed to know. She couldn't have kept that to herself. He had to know that he affected La Chanson. 

Whether to tell him it was similar to the effect Genofeva had…

Time? More coincidences. No - they were not real. Fate? But wasn’t all of this - all these things - Mysel and Heo hit with one spell, Jasper’s debt, Genofeva knowing of Praetorian abilities…none of those could possibly be fated. If anything, they were a denial of it. 

How had Genofeva known more about Chevalier’s abilities…than Chevalier?
She couldn't have unless she seen a Praetorian before.

Maybe she had.

Alexandrie’s entire concept of existence was upside down. If anything was possible, Genofeva wasn't opening portals in space, she was opening them in time and…
Any portal could be the same under that assumption. Was Lucas even at Cliffspider? Was he at Anvil Mountain? Jasper assumed Cliffspider, but that didn't mean he would be.

Nor did it mean he would be there when they arrived. He could arrive after them. Or be anywhere in the world. 

Or dead.

She could admit, fingers pulling and shaping light and colour into golden thorns, that she was pushing her thoughts too far. If nothing else, Jasper seemed to have a sense of where his brother was. Which was good. It was good.
It meant he was alive.

When she and Mysel lapsed into silence, Alexandrie’s thoughts turned to the infinitely slower clock that emanated from the boy. Mysel was not just a creepy kid. His clock ticked backward. Something about that filled Alexandrie with a deep, deep disgust – almost nausea. More than anything Mysel had said or done - even folding into Heofonræsele, the wrongness of the sensation hit her in a deep, primal way.

It wasn't just that the ticking was backward. It was that it was slowly unticking. Where once the tock had existed, now it did not.

When a tick occurred, it was no more. Mysel had been an adult and now he was a child. Heofonræsele had been an adult and now was young.

The way the clock tocked, they had never been adults.

It had taken a long time, but Alexa suspected the magic designed for one would probably work on both.

Eventually.

The curiosity and discomfort fought. Did Mysel and Heofonræsele share a clock, or was his different? And what if it were? What if Heofonræsele’s was faster? What if one blinked out before the other? What would happen? Would they be gone together?

What happened to Jasper that his clock was so ponderous? Had it been slowed? What happened that it lead up to the river – and why only one wet foot? Why did they keep going back there?

Why couldn’t La Chanson be with them there? Was she going back to that time with Jasper – or was she simply an observer? Why show her something if there was nothing to be done about it.

What was she supposed to do – hold on to him?

Hold on. She had - in the river, but -

Time was never something Alexa really understood, her own heartbeat told her when to do what needed to be done. Who or what was playing with time, she didn't understand. Who or what was taking payment in exchange for… what? More? Less? Altered time?

What happened at the river? What debt was there to be paid? 

Jasper’s ticking was slowing. Like a grandfather clock… Almost ponderous but signalling an ending that she did not want to consider. Begging La Chanson to come closer – to be louder, stronger, bolder – to drown out her sudden fear that everyone had a clock... She’d asked Mysel how they knew it was them shunted from time rather than the whole world and the fear that she could be right had her shaking her head as if to clear it, looking at the cluster of notes and light in her hands.
She was beginning to understand the meditative satisfaction of creating. She enjoyed the feeling of drawing on La Chanson (and herself, sort of) to bring something new into existence. Was this what it had been like for the divinities and fiends before they fought? Had they ever revelled in the feeling of newness and magic?

As her hands moved, what started as fluid gained form. Vines snaked around her arms and hands before she realised what she was doing. Buds flowered, opened. A caplet of roses. She smiled, her hands continuing to conduct notes in the air. A small person, rose petals for a dress, thorns for fingers and dirty feet twirled on her hand. Another, taller, danced with her - their movements familiar, graceful, unusual but practiced. The distraction had her watching the small dancer and the white petaled automaton dance, but it was too late. Distractions that led to memories stopped being distractions.

She pitied the Edgewater children. Watching the creation sway, she understood what was strange:
Lucas had spent so long calling her sheltered. It hurt at the time: he had treated her as though he was full of worldly wisdom she could only dream of possessing. And yet it wasn't that she was sheltered. It was that she was loved. She was loved wholeheartedly and wanted and welcomed. Her memories of home life were laughter and stories and warmth. Home was safety. When she thought of home it made her happy – even as it made her want to cry. Her thoughts of Maman were as rose tinted as the glasses in her bag.
Of course the brothers loved the wandering life. They had nothing to miss back home.

And no one to miss them.

The only one who cared about Lucas was Jasper - the only one who cared about Jasper was Lucas.

Everything else was controllable. Manipulatable. Formal. She’d frowned when Jasper called his mother lady Edgewater. She was the parent he claimed he’d liked - and he still spoke of her as if they were in public.

"You no longer live at home,", she wanted to say. "You can call her Maman… Mother."
But… But that wasn't what their family did. It wasn't how the family operated. Truthfully, Alexa struggled with the idea of calling them a family at all. She didn't understand friends being close enough to be family, but then, Chevalier was not a blood relative and he was family. 

She almost crushed the dancers as her mind brushed over Cedric Edgewater.
How dare he?
How dare he?
He had hurt Jasper, and Lucas… But he didn't care about that.

He cared about Chevalier.

In the wrong way. He cared about Chevalier as property. Not a person. Which disgusted her as much as what he had done to the brothers. She’d never wanted to hurt someone so very much and the desire to hurt him however she could almost frightened her. She didn’t think she could follow through on that impulse, but -

If Jasper needed her to…

If Lucas needed her to… 

If Chevalier needed her to -

She would. What was important to Cedric Edgewater and how could she ensure he never got it? 

She had never been so invested in the downfall of a person before.
To ignore his family and put out a bounty on their heads… To ruin their lives - all their lives - to finish what Grandmère had not allowed 50 years prior?
Neither he nor the Progress Confederacy would ever harm her family. 
Chevalier was a person, and slavery was not legal in the Progress Confederacy. Nor was murder. She would not allow it.
No matter what happened, Alexa would protect them all.

He would not hurt any of them again.

But who was she to be able to say that? Grandmère had refused to agree to La Chanson’s request, or task, or command and it had withdrawn from her. She had come home wealthy, but she had also come home without the magic of La Chanson. Without the magic - Alexandrie was an adolescent Sinrou. She had seen a lot of course, and learned a lot, but she was still - to some - a child. Return home without the full force of La Chanson and…

What would be different?

Jasper did not seem interested in returning home. Not the way he spoke of it. Lucas…she didn’t know what Lucas had intended before he had disappeared. Jasper hadn’t known about the ticking. Or the debt. Had Lucas? She suspected he did…everything she knew of Lucas - every time she’d talked to him about what La Chanson could do... it was all about protecting Jasper. 
Was this why?
Protect him from what?

La Chanson could not protect him. La Chanson was consumed by it. Time was more powerful than La Chanson du Monde, and it was watching Jasper in a way that it was not watching Lucas or Shi…at least, not that she’d heard. Was her task to do something about this? If La Chanson could not, how could she?

Grandmère had chosen not to do as it asked. Despite what Vee said, Alexandra had always assumed grandma had failed. To learn it has been a deliberate choice…

Was Grandmère glad Alexandrie had gone? Was this planned? Was Alexa always supposed to be here? Had Grandmère always known this would happen? She let go the spell on the dancers, cleaned away the twigs and leaves and petals and pulled the blanket over her head, tucking her feet beneath her. The room was warm, and it was not empty. It was sort of comforting to share a room again. She knew she needed sleep – her body ached with the cold that came from exhaustion – but her mind continue to turn and fold an exam in the things she learned – the things she was learning.

The Song of the World called her from such a distance – in the same way that it had called her Grandmother.

Why not Maman? Did something get in the way? Or was there something wrong with her? Would Maman have done what it asked, if she had gone instead? Why had Alexa not heard any stories of what was within Anvil Mountain – and how could La Chanson be so sure she would do what Grandmère would not?

There was… Alexa hadn't feared what would happen until now. She’d simply had a grim determination about the whole thing. Had accepted she might die – that she would likely never go home. 
Had reconciled that.

But there was more going on here – whatever the task was, or question or request… Perhaps a sheltered teenager on her first look at the world was not the best one to make such decisions.

What if she made the wrong choice? They were so close – La Chanson sounded clear here. Almost as though the air did it good. She on the other hand…

As sleep threatened to drown her, she pushed her head above the blanket. No. No sleep. She didn’t want to sleep. The noise of the world was better than the voice in her head telling her to run, as far and as fast as she could. Alexandrie couldn’t explain it - she had no excuse to stop them moving and she couldn’t think of a good enough reason to halt Jasper’s determination to leave. She simply didn’t want to move closer to La Chanson, and she didn’t want Jasper to either. To move toward it would move them closer to fate.

And she was no longer sure she trusted who was guiding it.