An Otherworldly Child

by butterflyrooms

Summary:

A child comes into the world.

A strange child, an eerie child. A wild and fey child.

But is he just a weird little freak child, or is there more to this than meets the eye?

 

Part one of the Life and Times of one Theta Sigma (not his real name) Lungbarrow, Prydon, on Gallifrey.

Chapter 1: The Name

The newborn steps out of the loom, and into the reception room of the Great and Noble House of Lungbarrow.

They are, like most new loomlings, lanky and ungainly in stature, their limbs all too long for their skinny body, their hands and feet too big again for their limbs, and overall about half the size they will be once they're properly grown.

Their hair is long, shoulder length, soft looking and white-blonde, like snowflowers in early morning sunlight. That color won't last, thinks Innocet, nor will the texture. It will go pure white and stringy by the time they're two hundred. Hair like that always does.

They cut a glance around the room, at all their cousins watching their becoming. There is a fierce intelligence in their storm grey eyes, one Innocet smiles at.

The child makes no attempt to move or speak, just stares for a long moment.

Satthralope, Lungbarrow's Housekeeper, Looming supervisor, and Child Minder, smacks them hard on their newborn bum, reminding them what they're here for, and they stumble, nearly falling. They catch themself on the Loom. The child's eyebrows furrow, a glint of rebellion flashing in their eyes. They gaze around the room again.

Their cousins, from the very young (four year old Braxiatel) to the very, very old (House Kithriarch Quences, whose exact age is unknown to all but himself), and everyone in between, all of them briefly away from their routine lives and duties and educations to witness the rare occasion of a new cousin coming into the House; gaze back, waiting to hear the newest Lungbarrow's name. This is custom, ritual, and inauguration all at once — the moment the loomling will tell the House who they are. Will lay claim the identity that will define them forever.

They come into the world with a name already woven into their being, just as their body is woven. Body, Name, Brain, and Spirit — all of this stitched together creates a new and unique individual.

"My name is [_____]." the child declares, a defiant note in their high, clear voice. A gust of wind seems to tear it away, whistling through the House's narrow windows even as they speak, snatching it from their very mouth.

A murmur of unease works its way through the assembled cousins.

A bad omen, the wind. Nearly drowning out the child's most important declaration. Although everyone still heard the name just fine, of course. And a strange collection of syllables it is. Old fashioned, but grand and important sounding too. A name that seems to belong better in Rassilon's time than in modern Gallifrey. There's something about it that sets Innocet's hair on end, sends goosebumps up her spine. Like she's heard it before, although she has no idea where. It hardly suits the small, defiant child, still standing unsteadily beside the loom, glaring across at them all, although Innocet supposes they'll grow into it. They usually do.

"Very well." says Satthralope briskly, breaking the silence. As if there never was any silence. "We induct you into the House of Lungbarrow, [_____]. We charge and declare that you will uphold her honor, respect, and stature, and always conduct yourself in the best interests of our ancient and noble House. Now, go and join your cousins."

When the child doesn't move (Innocet can't think of them as [______], she just can't, they will have to come up with some sort of nickname), Satthralope smacks them a second time, harder than the first. This time the child seems to have been prepared, and doesn't fall. But their scowl deepens, grey eyes glittering, and they stagger gingerly towards the assembled cousins. Innocet holds out her hand.

Chapter 2: Theta

Notes:

hoo boy, child abuse.

Theta — they can't call him [______] — has shot up swiftly, as loomlings do, already ⅔ the size of an adult by his fourth year. But he is still ungainly.

He's had a bit of a rough go of it so far, Innocet acknowledges ruefully, always in trouble over something, always getting smacked about and disciplined with blows, though they don't seem to have any effect on his behavior. He is willful, wild, stubborn and defiant, even over the simplest things.

She very nearly wonders, but of course she can't (it isn't done to question Time Lord customs, not even inside one's mind – who knows who might overhear?) if this is truly the right way to teach him. If it has no effect, then surely inflicting pain for pain's sake is just cruelty? Many times now she has caught him crying secretly, hiding away in a corner or in bed at night, the latest hurt shining redly across his cheek, or hidden under his robes, but his whole skinny body shaking as he chokes back sob after sob so he won't be heard. It's useless really; the psychic wave of his misery is so loud Innocet can hear it from halfway across the House. Maybe that's just her, though.

She wants to go and comfort him, but every time he's noticed her watching he gives a terrified glance, jolts and flees like a rabbit, fearing further punishment, and she can never find him a second time.

It's not unjustified. Satthralope says he needs to learn to control his emotions, that making everyone in the immediate vicinity experience pain and misery just because he got righteously punished for his own poor behavior is shameful. If he didn't behave badly, he wouldn't get smacked, and this crying over what he's earned and deserves is just shaming the House of Lungbarrow. To drive this point home, she goes and smacks him up again and again until he collapses, psychic cries blunted.

As if that weren't enough, some of the younger cousins, led by Glospin (who graduated from the Academy just last year, and hasn't yet found a proper job to occupy his days), like to beat him up just for the fun of it, relishing Theta's secondhand agony, laughing about it. Innocent has scolded them to stop picking on him, but it is as effective on them as admonishments ever are on Theta himself.

Worse still, Brax, the next youngest cousin and Theta's only friend (so Innocet reckons) starts his studies at the Academy this year. For the next century or longer (depending, of course, on the trajectory of his studies), he'll only be at Lungbarrow House for holidays.

It's no wonder Theta spends as much time as possible outdoors.

Chapter 3: Outdoors

Theta picks his way carefully over the red grass. He is barefoot, which he knows he shouldn't be, and if he's discovered he'll surely get smacked for it, but the feel of the cool, damp grass between his toes is simply delightful. Perhaps he'll go down to the stream and squish them into the gritty mud, relish in sheer sensation. Throw rocks into the swiftly flowing water, and watch them make their way out into the world, further and faster than he could ever hope to follow. Ache with longing at the sight of their freedom. Perhaps.

It was funny. When he'd first come upon the stream, nearly two years ago now, he'd felt this blinding surge of recognition, like he'd been there before. But he couldn't have done. He was already far out of bounds, outside where he was supposed to be, much further than he was allowed to roam. And he knew this was the first time he'd explored this far in this direction. He couldn't…. know this stream. But he did.

For a moment, he'd been someone else. Looking down at the rushing water laid out in front of him. Swelling with pride. His child….

What?

What nonsense. He obviously didn't "have" a child, not in the sense this false memory, this fantasy, tried to convince him. Children belonged to the House in which they were loomed, to everyone equally. This is the way it had always been, for countless millenia, and always would be. Theta could hardly imagine any other way for the world to work. And anyway, he was the youngest, and likely to remain so for quite some time.

 

Today, Theta doesn't go to the stream. He doesn't go down. Instead he sets his gaze at the top of the slope above him, and begins to climb.

He picks his way up as the ground becomes rockier and the day becomes late, the sky growing a deep russet with the approaching dusk, as the first sun sinks below the rim of mountains still far above him. The second hovers just above the tip of distant Mount Cadon, like a hat. Like the upside down point of an exclamation mark.

Someday he'll be at that distant place, at the foot of Mount Canon, at the Prydonian Academy. He wonders if it will be better than being at the House. It must be. He figures anything must. Anyway Braxiatel raves about it.

Speaking of the House, he should be getting back. He'll be in trouble for staying out this late. Still…. that's just all the more reason not to go back, isn't it? Who would be eager to go home to a beating? Besides, he wanted to reach the top and he hasn't yet.

Resolute, Theta continues climbing. He pants, growing short of breath. What's wrong with this body? No stamina!

The rocky ground pokes at his bare feet. He relishes the realness of it, the mischief. The dirt. Ah yes, the dirtiest. He wriggles his toes in it.

The soles of his feet are tougher than most of his cousins', a result of his habit of going around barefoot, and his pain tolerance is high from habit and from necessity, but even he gasps as the sharp stone cuts him.

Has he got something to bandage it with? No, not to hand.

Oh well.

He continues upwards, leaving a sprinkling of bright red blood on the brown and rust rocks underfoot.

Chapter 4: The Hut

Summary:

a meeting.

It is properly dark when he reaches the…. what? What is it? It reminds him of a House, but much, much smaller. Shabby, somehow, and there's no radiating intelligence coming from it. It is a structure, but in fact it doesn't seem to be alive at all.

Still, there is a window, and a warm light thst emanates from it.

He is very hungry, somewhat tired, and his foot hurts and is bleeding, speckling blood everywhere he's trod. So Theta knocks on the door.

ratta-rattatta-TA. The Prydonian code. Drilled into him from as far back as he can remember, embedded into his bones. Every chapter has one, so everyone can know what kind of Gallifreyan is at their door. Too late, he wonders if he should've knocked differently, somehow. But he's not sure he even could if he tried.

What feels like an eternity passes, then the door opens with a loud creak. It doesn't open far, but enough that the warm light which Theta had seen in the window spills out over the patch of ground where he's standing, washing him in gentle warmth. An old* man peers out bad-temperedly, really more of a featureless dark silhouette, all the light behind him.

*– and by old, Theta thinks, we do mean OLD. He's not just visually old, not just someone who appears old in their current incarnation, that isn't what matters, and Theta can't see him clearly anyway. But he can feel the ages on him, the weight of millenia. Like his oldest cousin, who entered his 13th incarnation shortly before Theta was loomed. It's like that, but more. The weight of years clinging to this stranger is so heavy it is overwhelming. It nearly bowls Theta over. At the very least it renders him speechless.

"Well? Who are you and what do you want?" the man barks, when Theta forgets to speak.

"I— I—" he stammers, cursing the way his tongue ties itself in knots whenever he most needs it to work properly.

"I-I'm called Theta!" he blurts out at last. "I'm an-- an explorad— v-v-venturer! Explorer. Just wand-d-dering... B-bother you, I'm very sorry, but I s-saw the light and… n-n-no, sorry. I'll go now."

Theta begins to turn and leave, but the old man reaches out a psychic tendril that stops him in his tracks. It feels like touch, physically holding him back and linking his mind with the one who sent it, only the man hasn't moved from behind the just-cracked door.

It's alright, child.

The telepathic communication bores straight into his mind, bringing with it the idea of a voice like dry, dry leaves crumbling, fire crackling, a soft whistle behind each word.

And there's no need to speak if you find it difficult. You needed something, didn't you?

"I…" unbidden, the sensation of the pain in his foot rises to the forefront of his consciousness, along with an image of blood and the rock cutting him.

The old man chuckles. His voice creaks and whispers, wind in the trees, everything his psychically projected one promised.

I see. Well, child, what are you waiting for? Come in. You may call me The Hermit.

Notes:

Theta's stammer is a headcanon partly based on William Hartnell's occasional tripping over his lines, which I decided to run with as a remnant of a much bigger struggle in childhood.

In my head, he sometimes mixes up words and tenses, and his mind works faster than his mouth, and he'll skip the beginning of a thought, go straight to the end, and then backtrack. Doing my best to capture this, but it's difficult to translate from Gallifreyan to English!

Chapter 5: The Hermit.

Summary:

theta makes a friend

The Hermit has bandaged Theta's foot, fed him a meal of soup and grains which is utterly unlike and far better than anything Theta has ever had before, asked his age and been shocked by the answer; 4–

– no, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's so long since I've even seen a child, I'd almost forgotten it was possible to be so young. What is it like? The last question is almost eager.

– terrible.

is Theta's answer, and the Hermit laughs again, loudly.

– all without saying a single word out loud.

And now it is dawn, the first and larger of the suns just barely slipping over the horizon, golden light traced around the edges of the mountains and spilling like watercolor paint down the slope. Theta notices it with a start. He's stayed out all night.

It's never dark for long on Gallifrey, owing to the slightly asynchronous orbit of the two suns. 3 or 4 Segments of a day's 18, and most of that more a kind of twilight than true, deep darkness when you can see the stars. So, it hasn't really been that long. Still. Customarily his people stay inside during the dark hours, sleeping or working with the Houselights blazing. Blotting out the dark. Most of his cousins won't even acknowledge the concept of darkness, tiptoeing, whispering around it instead. They make themselves as loud and bright as possible, as if it's a shield against the night. Sometimes, Theta thinks they fear it.

Now he's really in for it.

I'd better go. he thinks reluctantly.

Will you come back? the Hermit responds.

Oh yes. thinks Theta. Oh yes, I will absolutely be coming back.

He practically skips as he makes his way down the mountain and back to the House, the early morning sunlight warm against his back. Somehow, what was such an arduous trek going uphill passes as if it's nothing at all going down. He barely even feels Satthralope's beating. Inside, all the while, he feels himself singing – I have a friend! I have a friend! I have a friend!! – but fortunately, Satthralope doesn't hear him. She never does.

Chapter 6: Badger

After that, Theta visits the Hermit as often as he can get away. Sometimes, there'll be a span of time when that means every day. Other times weeks go by in between. Either way, The Hermit always welcomes him in just the same, and the climb to his strange and lifeless shack gets easier the more Theta gets used to it.

Behind The Hermit's cranky, gruff outward demeanor – which Theta quickly comes to understand as a rare kind of honesty, and which he is, just as quickly, coming to find deeply comforting – he's never actually cross with Theta. Never blaming him for staying away too long, yet never annoyed to see him too frequently. Theta has never known such unconditional acceptance.

———

Is your House dead? Theta asks at one point. They nearly always talk mind-to-mind, bypassing Theta's shameful struggle at pushing the words from his brain to his tongue without breaking them into embarrassing pieces along the way.

The Hermit laughs.

Oh no no, it was never alive!

Why?

Well, it's not really a House. It's just a shack.

But isn't that difficult? Not having a House to take care of you? How do you know when you need something?

I figure it out for myself. And then I take care of it myself.

This seems utterly foreign to Theta, as well as impossibly burdensome.

 

Innocet knows he has a friend outside of Lungbarrow House, but she doesn't call him out. She could, perhaps she should: the family wouldn't approve. Satthralope wouldn't approve.

But Theta seems happier lately, and Innocet finds she likes that more than she likes following the rules.

She has arranged something for him, though now she is beginning to wonder if he really needs it after all.

It is an avatroid, a robotic nursemaid with a soft and whimsical outer shell, something to keep him out of trouble and to protect him from the rest of the family. Something to be on his side, while also helping to guide him towards the correct behavior of a proper Lungbarrow cousin, to do what the cousins' beatings have so far utterly failed to do. A kinder approach.

In a way, it is her quiet rebellion.

Against what, she doesn't like to think.

She plans to present it to him on his fifth loomsday.

 

Now, Innocet tangles her fingers through her midnight-black hair, working it into a braid. It is a long process — she'd come out of the Loom with lots of thick, long hair, and it is even longer now.

She is, in her first incarnation, a small, slightly built time lady (having recently graduated from the Academy when Theta arrived), with a hooked nose and a long, thin face. Her eyes are near midnight black, with golden flecks. Her skin is a warm light brown that blends with the desert sands that surround them in every direction.

She finishes her work – the braid will hold itself, no need for an unwieldy tie off at the end – and checks herself over. Her simple red robe is bright and spotless. There is grey at her temples, and silvered strands glittering through her otherwise dark braid. They catch the light in a way she doesn't remember her hair doing previously.

Huh. How long has that been there?

She decides after a moment that she likes it. It's distinguished. She smiles, and lines appear beside her eyes.

After the holiday, she will be starting a new job, one that will take her inside the Capitol for much of her time. She will still have a home at Lungbarrow House, of course, but she will also have her own office space in the Citadel, and so sometimes she will stay late there. She won't be here as often.

She worries what will happen to Theta.

But of course, her gift of Badger will protect him. And it won't be long before he'll be at the Academy himself and it will all be fine. Of course it will.

Notes:

So, I know the canon around Badger doesn't exactly line up with this. This is because 1) I don't care; 2) I don't really remember Lungbarrow as clearly as most of the other things this is riffing off; and most importantly, 3) I really don't like the whole "actual slavery" thing, awful as time lords are. So this either isn't that, or Innocet and Theta are unreliable narrators. Take your pick!

 

I also don't remember if Innocent was ever described but it doesn't matter at all because she'll be regenerating before any of That (or at least, what bits of it I'm actually keeping)

Chapter 7: The Daisiest Daisy

Summary:

an interlude

It is winter. Very cold. Very dismal. Otherstide has come and gone. Theta's fifth loomsday has come and gone. Innocet has replaced herself with an annoying, interfering avatroid and gone away - or at least, that's how it feels. Theta, as usual, spends as much time as possible outside, visiting The Hermit or exploring, but Badger keeps trying to prevent him from leaving the House. To corral him inside the gates. Theta loses his temper and beats the stupid thing with a rock, then immediately feels awful about it.

Glospin beats him. Satthralope beats him. Innocet comes home and is short with him, then leaves again.

And then the Hermit shows him a new way to look at a flower, and all of a sudden it is spring.

Notes:

just a short and sweet little offering today.

meatier chapter coming tomorrow! :D

Chapter 8: There Once Was An Old Lady Who Died

Summary:

…they covered her in veils, but it was a hot day, and flies came.

She isn't of Lungbarrow. He doesn't even know who she is, or why she's here, out on the edge of the Lungbarrow estate.

His own fault for wandering. If he hadn't been doing this, like he always does, out of bounds and exploring, he wouldn't have seen her.

Would never have stumbled across this lonely, empty husk of a person, covered in all these black flies buzzing menacingly around it.

At first he doesn't even know what he's looking at. It's just a cocoon of cloth, of gauzy veils.

Curious, he leans in to examine it. Some of the flies buzz up into his face. The stench of rot and decay is everywhere, filling his lungs.

He still can't see what's underneath the veils, so he lifts one, slowly, cautiously.

Then he sees the face, and understands.

He has never seen such emptiness before. It is cosmically horrifying, that there can exist something that looks so much like a person, but isn't one, anymore. Isn't anything anymore. That there can just be.... nothing there. Just emptiness. A raw, gaping maw in space and time.

He stands there, holding the edge of the veil, staring down at the void of a face. He is frozen, can't seem to move his feet. Can't seem to move at all. Flies buzz around his face and into his ears, make a home in his hair, and still he can't break the spell, can't bring himself to move, even just to swat them away, for all they are horrible. A terrible fear builds in his throat – maybe the flies did this, maybe they'll do the same to him if he stands here long enough, letting them choke him. And yet…

He remains there, trapped, staring, for what feels like an eternity, but in reality is probably only a few moments. Then a breeze stirs up, hot, and the rotting stink swells around him, overpowering. He gags, retches, and suddenly he can move again.

He turns and runs.

He runs and runs and doesn't look back, doesn't stop or slow, his calves burning, his breath coming in harsh pants. Uphill.

Finally he arrives at the Hermit's hut. He hadn't given a conscious thought to it, hadn't decided to come here, hadn't even known this is where he was heading — but of course it was. Where else?

He pounds on the door, before finally doubling up, gasping and wheezing, hands gripping the red cloth at his knees, to keep him upright.

The door creaks open, and a familiar warm yellow light pours over him.

Gracious, child. Whatever is the matter?

 

Theta finds he can't talk about it right away, can't even think of it. His mind shies away from the image. He doesn't want to think about it, he just wants to be here. Safe and away from the horror of death, of the nothingness that he now knows awaits everyone, one day, even him.

The Hermit makes a hot beverage — tea, he calls it — and they sit and drink it in silence.

Chapter 9: Conversation Pieces

Summary:

a series of conversations.

Do you ever have weird dreams? Dreams you can't explain?

All the time. It's why I'm The Hermit. What's troubling you then? he adds quickly, before Theta can turn the topic away from himself.

Curses. Can never get one over him can I?

It wasn't meant to be a part of the conversation, but the Hermit laughs anyway.

So Theta tells him about the dreams, the ones where he feels like he's someone else, living a completely different life, a life that doesn't even make any sense. But always the same someone else, and always the same nonsensical life.

The Hermit listens intently, far more interested than Theta ever expected him to be.

———

"When I– I– when I–" he curses himself and his stupid tongue. Why is it so hard? It isn't always this uncooperative. Is it? What's wrong with him?

"–grow up, the u-u-universe, I'm going to see the universe."

Braxiatel laughs, a little meanly. "Really? You wouldn't survive one day off Gallifrey."

"I- I would!"

"Who's going to wipe your bum when you shit yourself, then?"

Theta flushes violently. "I-I-I do not – do not shit myself!"

Brax taps his nose knowingly. "My sources tell me otherwise."

"That was,, was one time! H-h-hit-t.... And it was Glospin-- pin's fault. He hit me."

"You should be used to people hitting you by now."

Theta hits Brax.

———

Why do people like you and The Other have titles instead of names?

Well, those aren't quite the same thing, really. The Other had a name, but he lived so long ago that everyone has forgotten it by now. So we just call him The Other, and we know who we mean, but he wasn't actually called that when he was alive.

Theta shivers. He can't imagine what it would be like for everyone to forget your name. The idea makes him ache, a hollow of loneliness, like a well opening up somewhere deep inside him. Emptiness…

And what about you? he asks, quickly shoving the feeling down.

The Hermit thinks for a moment.

It's more comfortable, I suppose. For a certain kind of person — as you rightly observed, people like me. We don't quite fit in Time Lord society, so we choose something else to say who it is that we are.

He fixes his gaze on Theta.

You as well {untranslatable: will be/may be/possibility/inevitability}, one day.

Theta shivers again. How could he know?

But he's wrong. It's not true. Theta will never go about without his name, even if he does use a nickname in day-to-day life – he doesn't want people to forget it.

———

It is Otherstide, and Theta's eighth loomsday.

"Brax?" Theta hisses across the small gap between their beds in the middle of the night.

"Brax? Brax? Brax!"

"...what?"

"The Academy really--- what's it like?"

"Shut up Theta."

"Is it really loads b-better than the House? Do you do experiments? Do you prank the teachers? C-can you–"

"Yes. Now shut up."

…

"B-braxiatel? Ni.... are the teachers ni-nice?"

Brax fake-snores angrily. Theta sighs.

———

Did you know the Other was one of the first to time travel the universe? the universe in the Dark Times! Before stable history! I wonder what he saw out there.

Theta has just learned this fun fact, and he is very excited.

Vampires and demons, I expect. responds the Hermit. That's a lot of what was out there at the time.

I wish I could talk to him. Then he'd tell me all about it.

Well, he probably wouldn't. The Other wasn't known for sharing his experiences, not even with the people who knew him best. He was… a very private person.

A beat passes. One heartsbeat. Da da, da da. There was something about the way the Hermit said that…

Did you know The Other?

The Hermit laughs even longer and louder than Theta has known him to.

Oh, no, child. I may be old, but I'm not that old! Everyone who ever knew the Other is long dead, and everyone who ever knew anyone who ever knew the Other is too, before you ask. He was an old man in Rassilon's time, and that was all trillions of centuries ago. The Hermit smiles knowingly.

Oh. Theta thinks back. That seems to be all there is to say.

He's not sure why, but he still feels uneasy, as if, for the first time in all the time they've known each other – half his life – the Hermit is lying to him.

Notes:

only two more chapters till the end of part one!

Chapter 10: The Dream

Summary:

Theta has a nightmare or several.

The night before he's due to leave for the Academy, Theta dreams it again. This time is more vivid than ever before.

In the dream, he's old. Very old. He feels it in his bones, something about the way the wind cuts through them, something about the ache.

He is old and afraid.

They are going to kill the child.

They are going to kill his family.

They are going to kill him, for his crimes.

He's got to do something.

But what?

He gazes out across the red grass, up at the open sky, all the whirling, dancing stars. It is the deepest, blackest part of the night.

He looks back down. In the distance, there is a House.

Lungbarrow House, but it's new.

The stone walls are white, pure white and sparkling, not the deep redgrey that Theta knows in his waking life, the redgrey blending in with the mountains that surround it. The roof is thatched straw, not more stone. The windows are flung open to the elements, gauzy, translucent cloth billowing out around them in the breeze, not shuttered the way the Lungbarrow elders always keep them.

The thoughts whirl in his head, chilling him deep inside his old, old bones. He's got to do something. He's got to stop it. They are going to kill the child!!

And panic rises, choking him, drowning him, swirling black panic, and he falls into it, falls and falls and is falling forever—

He wakes up with a jolt. He is shaking all over, and his hearts are pounding so hard it's amazing they haven't vacated his chest cavity and gone thundering off into the mountains. But the worst part is the feeling of dread, of absolute impending doom.

He tries to stop shaking, but can't. No matter how hard he tries it has absolutely no effect. It feels like his body is not his own, and won't respond to his instructions.

 

Across the dimly lit room, he spies Badger. He clicks his tongue in summoning and the avatroid comes to him. It dawns on Theta that he will actually miss the creature. Three years, and he's only ever thought to resent it, and yet… 

Badger engulfs him in a warm, bone-crushingly tight hug, and holds him like that until he stops shaking, and finally falls back into the pillows and returns to an uneasy, but dreamless, sleep.

 

—

 

When he wakes again, it's still dark. He isn't sure what woke him— some sort of sound, a sighingz groaning of the wind, maybe. Or maybe just Badger leaving. The terror from earlier seems to have settled into his bones, hardening into an implacable, inexplicable kind of grief. A heaviness, nesting inside him.

He sits up. Maybe he'll take a long walk, or even just pace around his bedroom for a bit, all he knows is he can't stay in bed. In bed is where the fear and sadness are.

He drops his feet down to land on the sturdy floor.

 

And a hand closes around his ankle.

A hand closes around his ankle.

A hand closes around his ankle.

Hand— Ankle.

 

Instantly, Theta's hearts fly back up his throat, choking him as they desert him entirely — Zagreus sits inside your head — The panic from earlier is nothing compared to this — Zagreus lives among the dead — He can't breathe, he can't think, he can't — Zagreus sees you in your bed —

He's still asleep. 

Of course. 

That's it. He's still dreaming.

 

He pulls his feet back into bed and curls into a tight ball and waits for the nightmare to end.

 

In the dream, someone is stroking his hair. In the dream, someone is telling him it's okay if he's afraid. In the dream, someone is telling him this fear is the very thing that makes him brave and strong and capable and kind. 

 

He wakes again, at last, to bright sunlight streaming across his face, and Innocet coming into his room singing. She came home yesterday, specially to take him to the Academy, to see him off. Excitement bubbles through his chest— the horrors of the night have disappeared along with the dark. It's here! The day he leaves this rotten old home and finally spreads his wings, sets out to become whoever it is that he's destined to be. He can hardly wait.

Notes:

how many disparately sourced nightmares can I cram into one chapter? Poor little kid.

Chapter 11: The Academy

At the foot of Mount Cadon, right on the edge of the Great Citadel of Arcadia, Prydon Academy looms above him. The massive structure of black stonework and red wood is forty, fifty, sixty times his height, but it's dwarfed by the red rock cliff edge behind it, soaring high, high above, just past the glass enclosure of the Citadel. Mount Cadon makes Mount Lung at home (sometimes called Mount Perdition, which they say is a reference to an as-yet-unknown future event), and the trek up to where The Hermit lives, look like an afternoon stroll for a baby bunny.

He supposes it is. Baby's first climb. Mount Cadon is the real thing.

Theta immediately wants to climb it.

He gazes upwards, through the clear glass of the Citadel Dome, to where the rough stone goes almost straight up, and up and up as far as he can see, and imagines scaling it. The dizzying feeling of triumph. Yes, one day he is going to conquer Mount Cadon. One day…

"Ready?" Innocet asks, her hand briefly brushing the top of his head, fingers ruffling his hair – an almost taboo display of affection.

Theta jumps. He'd lost track, in his mind, of why he was here. Forgotten this was the beginning of the rest of his life, the day he leaves his family behind (good riddance) and begins to become a Time Lord.

Now it all comes flooding back. He'd been dreadfully excited, this morning, but looking at the actual building, seeing the scale of everything out here, he feels very very small. Young, new, and unprepared in the face of great timelessness.

Like the Hermit, the Academy carries the weight of having been standing, exactly the same, for longer than he can even fully comprehend. For millennia upon millennia, the same halls filled with students going back and forth, treading the same paths in the footsteps of their forebears, people who are long dead now. Wearing down the rhythm. Time lords past and time lords to come, always here. Always becoming. Always the same. The wheel turning and turning, forever. And now it is his turn to be part of that hugeness.

Theta swallows, a nervous gulp. For an instant he imagines running as fast as he can in the opposite direction. Just striking out on his own, and never coming back. Living like The Hermit.

"You'll be just fine." says Innocet. She's heard all that, of course. All of the clamour on the inside of his mind. She can hardly fail to when she's directly touching his head - and they've always had a bit of an elevated mental connection, anyway.

He pulls away, embarrassed.

She leads him to the gates of the Academy, walks with him as far as the front door. When he hesitates there, she pushes him gently through. A soft shove, nothing like Satthralope, but it still reminds him of being born.

"I promise, Theta, you've got this." Innocet says with a smile, but she is shielding her mind, so he can't tell what she is really thinking. If she believes what she's saying, or if she actually expects him to let her – let everyone – down.

Well, he won't. He grits his teeth and strides into the school, trying not to betray the shakiness in his legs.

Innocet watches him until he disappears, then turns and walks back to the transmat, which she'll reprogram now to take her back to the Capitol instead of Lungbarrow House. No reason to go back there anymore, not really, without little Theta to look after. Her long hair sparkles grey in the afternoon sunlight as she strides away.

Notes:

Coming soon: Book Two! The Academy, Koschei, Borusa and Kaznigar, hijinks, rebellion, the encroaching sound of drums from the distant future!

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of Then Bury Me Standing