Aetas stood upon the solemn shore with outstretched hands, the time threads extended from his body as if he were a loom ready to be used. He didn’t dare stroke a finger across them to feel them vibrate with possibility as he once had. Now there were too many possibilities, and he had only one choice.
He cast the threads out. They traveled from his body into the depths of the world. They snaked over Oceana’s waters. They ran through Caelum’s sky. They climbed over Terra’s mountains.
They struck humans, twining around bodies strong enough to carry them. Those humans felt a great movement within them, apart from them, in the oceans and the sky and the mountains. In the depths of Aetas’s heart.
When enough threads had been siphoned off, Aetas cut them from his body and they continued to thrive, to pulse, to glow. Time went on. He held the rest of them, the smaller number of threads he could maintain on his own.
“Hold these threads to you,” Aetas told his followers. “Protect them. Feed them into the world. Ensure time continues to unfold. If you grow weak, come to me where I stay with my sister beneath the water. I will give you what strength I can.”
His followers flocked to the shore. They cupped their hands in the water and whispered their hopes and fears to Aetas, who smiled at them from below.
Several years passed in this way. Time servants visited the shores and prayed to Aetas, and fed their energy into time. Every second, every minute, every hour of every day was a blink and a breath to them, necessary and instinctive.
Then the sky began to darken, a rumble deep and building, and lightning sliced into Caelum’s domain like a serpent’s tongue.
Oceana knew it was Chronos. “He is waking up,” she told Aetas. “He must know what you have done.”
Aetas knew this, and knew he could not run from Chronos’s wrath. He had done what was necessary to make certain the earth would be well kept. If he was to be punished for his care, so be it.
The sky growled and lightning bit. The waters boiled. The earth shook.
Aetas stood on the ocean floor as the water above him parted, revealing a storm dark and looming. He told his sister Oceana to run, to find shelter from their creator.
On this spot, he waited for Chronos to descend.
Danny played with the cog in his pocket as he walked through Hyde Park. After Colton had given it to him, he had polished the cog until it shone. He would often take it out to spin it with his fingers, or roll it around his palm, but never in public in case anyone happened to see.
But as he walked through the park, taking in the couples strolling together, he reached into his pocket for its comfort.
He was on his way to see Matthias. Danny had been furious when he learned that Matthias had suggested taking Danny off the Enfield assignments, but after some thought—and after losing his job—he realized his bruised feelings were the least of his problems. He needed someone to talk to. He needed his friend back.
It was time to tell Matthias about Colton.
Matthias would help him. He had been down this uncertain road, had faced the possibility of losing everything. Hopefully they could prevent history from repeating itself.
But when Danny knocked on the door of the white and blue house, no one answered.
Danny fiddled with the cog as he stared at the park, wondering if he could go to Enfield. But the Lead might be tracking his movements now, making sure Danny never stepped foot in a clock tower again. The reality struck low and hard, winding him. No more clock towers. No more time fibers winding through his fingers.
No more Colton.
“Damn it,” he whispered, putting his head in his hands.
He really was losing everything.
The door’s lock scraped, and Danny started. But it wasn’t Matthias behind the faded blue door. A woman peered out from the shadowed crack, narrowing her eyes against the brightness outside.
“Oh. Hullo.” Danny checked that he had the right house. “Is Matthias in?”
She stood a little straighter and shook her head. Danny shifted on the step, wondering how to make a polite getaway. But the woman leaned forward suddenly, scrutinizing his face, and then waved a small white hand at him.
“You may come in and wait.”
“Will he be long?”
“Not long.”
Danny stepped inside and thanked the woman as she closed the door behind him. She wasn’t dressed like a maid, and she couldn’t be Matthias’s housemate. To avoid staring at her, he looked around the house with a sudden thrill. He had never been inside before.