Chapter Twenty-Seven - Little Worries

“So how are we going to get to the village to the north?” Charlotte asked. She adjusted her belt, then shivered a little. For all that it was early morning, there was a bit of a chill to the air. The people she saw walking by had jackets on, and seemed better prepared for the weather than she was.

Then again, if it was a few months away from the Winter Solstice, and then they moved back eight months, then they were technically back to one of the coldest times of the year. She chuckled at the strangeness of it all.

“We don’t want to make too much of a fuss,” Dreamer said.

“Ah, because we’d be noticed and then that would break causality?” Charlotte said. “You might make it so that Abigail never summons you, and then you wouldn’t be on this planet to come back to this time, thereby creating a paradox.”

“What?” Dreamer asked. “No, I’m not worried about that stuff. I’m worried about the time monsters. Come on, let’s go.”

“Time monsters?” Charlotte asked.

Dreamer looked genuinely annoyed. “Yeah. When you eat them, then uneat themselves. It’s really annoying.”

“You’re not worried about paradoxes and causality?”

Dreamer sniffed. “As if someone could undo me meeting Abigail and the fun I had after. No, that’s happened to me already, so it’s happened, that’s all. No one’s going to unhappen it.”

“Um,” Charlotte said. “Okay?”

“Yes,” Dreamer agreed.

Dreamer wiggled her fingers Charlotte’s way, and so the older girl grabbed Dreamer’s hand and walked out onto the street with her. “Alright, if we’re heading out the old fashioned way, and we don’t want to attract the attention of time monsters--which I really, really don’t--then we’re going to need to grab a couple of things.”

“What things?” Dreamer asked.

“Just... well, I’ll want a coat. And maybe some gold to make it to the town by carriage.”

They walked down the street, hand-in-hand, and Charlotte felt oddly... misplaced. Something was subtly different about the city. A city that she walked through every day, and that she knew fairly well.

Had it changed that much in eight months?

She glanced at the carriages rumbling down the street, at the people walking in little groups, sometimes exhaling hot enough that puffy steam escaped with their breath. The sky was a nice blue, with fat clouds hanging above and a few wintery birds darting about.

Charlotte couldn’t pin what made her antsy.

“Are you okay?” Dreamer asked.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s just... Five Peaks feels different.”

“That’s because it is,” Dreamer said with Dreamer-like certainty.

“You mean because this is in the past?” Charlotte asked.

Dreamer shook her head. “It’s not just that. There’s a lot of other things you might be feeling. You’re good at feeling things, right?”

“I guess.”

“You’re not feeling me in the city, because I’m not here yet. In our time I’m part of the city. I had time to sink my tentacles all over. In this time, the people with the nice hats are doing something similar. Watching for things like me, scanning and poking and sniffing at the air. But because they use big magics to do that, it stains the city.”

“So I’m not looking for something new, but the lack of something that was there before, and that’s here... now in this time,” Charlotte said. She stood taller and breathed deep. There was something of a stink to the air. “Well, that’s something.”

“It’s not going to be a problem on this adventure,” Dreamer said. “But my metatentacles are poking at it because it might be good foreshadowing for stuff later.”

“Uh,” Charlotte said.

Dreamer smiled up at her. “Don’t worry about it.”

Charlotte decided to worry about it.

Unfortunately, other than worrying about it, there really wasn’t much she could do. So they walked hand-in-hand, across the city and to one of the carriage stations on the edge. “I don’t have a lot on me,” Charlotte said, her breath making little puffs before her as she spoke. “But it should be enough for a carriage to get us over to... wherever.”

“You need a jacket,” Dreamer said. “You’re going to get all sick and cold.”

“Well, I think I’m well on my way to being quite cold,” Charlotte said. “I’m positively perky here. The boys at the Academy would love to chat with me right now.”

“What’s that mean?” Dreamer asked.

Charlotte eyed the girl next to her. “How old are you?”

“I’m several eons old,” Dreamer said. “I was there when time started.”

“Well, you look like you’re twelve, so maybe ask again when you’re several dozen eons old and I’ll tell you,” Charlotte said.

The station they were near had a yard where horses were being moved in and out of large stables while carriages were being hitched. Dreamer walked ahead of Charlotte and dragged her behind one of the stables where no one was around.

“What’s... oh,” Charlotte began, but then the air rent and tentacles poured out of nothing and wrapped themselves around Charlotte. She would have complained, but they were rather warm.

Then the tentacles left, and Charlotte found herself wearing a long jacket, the sort of leathery thing she saw inquisitors wearing, though done up in a deep purple instead. “Huh,” she said.

Dreamer nodded, then summoned a coat for herself. “It’s actually just a lot of tentacles shaped like a coat,” she explained.

“Thanks Dreamer, you’re a sweetheart,” Charlotte said. She rubbed Dreamer’s head, because she knew the girl liked that kind of thing, then gestured back towards the street. “Let’s get a ride, yeah?”

Dreamer nodded, and the pair of them walked back out from behind the stables.

Charlotte flagged down a man loading a cart, asking him where she had to go to secure a ride, then walked over to a little building where a clerk was filing papers behind a desk.

It took a few coins and a few minutes, but soon enough they had two tickets out of Five Peaks, and towards the scenic and quiet town of Six Hills.

***