The tempo rose, inside and out, and I didn’t know any more if it were a dance I were doing or something else entirely. The cloak fell and a suspicion that I didn’t even know I had had in my head turned to certainty, a suspicion that wasn’t even suspicious, because I know better anyway. Time comes naturally to me even if it scares me, even if it makes me dance or R O A R S in my ear or flies towards me on black, fluttering wings—

(“--give you your crows back, but you could say that I am d i s i n c l i n e d—“)

--and as they swooped above me and something evil started to cackle in my ear, I felt the world warp and I couldn’t feel my body for a few seconds and suddenly, without much pomp and circumstance, the storm of time and things just sorta…stopped

*"Try not to mess this up, hmm?"*

And I woke up.

Was I ever really asleep? Yah, maybe, or not, or whatever the hell. Time is many things and nothing at all, and when it decends on you like that, you leave the rules of the world behind you and everything and anything and nothing goes all at the same time.

But here I was, back in the rules of the world, where things make sense and I remember just how much time actually scares the everliving shit out of me.

I rose from where I had been left in the mud (thanks, asshole). I groaned, feeling sore all over, though mostly it was in my head; I blinked my sight straight and looked across from me, my eyes drawn to where the cloak had fallen and the thing had been deposited by the great black raven.

The cloak was gone, of course. But the thing was there for real, glistening in the shadows cast by the trees.

The thing.

The egg.

I got up gingerly, like an egg is something that can be startled or whatever. I crept towards it, reaching for it cautiously with my muzzle, checking it out. When I say it glistened, I’m not bullshitting you; it was smaller than I would’ve thought, spherical and faceted with lots of little edges all around its surface, white in color but all those facets glittering with different subtle hues whenever the light happened to touch it. It was a pearl—but a jewel—but an egg with the prettiest, bitchinest shell I had ever seen for an egg.

I peeked behind me, my brow arched—wondering what had happened to Roland, to the crow. The wondering didn’t last long; my head hurt too much. My teeth tender, I reached down and grasped the egg lightly between my jaws; and with one furtive gaze around me at the unassuming forest, I turned the fuck around and got the hell out of dodge.

Spark comes naturally to me, and so does Time.

That doesn’t mean I always have it on my side.






[Just wrapping this up for development! Thank you all so much once again!!]