I am just as linear as my Companions, no matter what I like to tell myself. She can see Everywhere, Any-when – and She does so in a way I could never comprehend. I do believe I am rather envious of Her for that.
You are the one that saved their necks. In fact, it's always you. But you never seem to take the credit when it counts the most.
The Name he Named himself was all he'd ever needed. So it was ironic that the Name he'd been born into would be the Name that he'd also died to.
He wasn't afraid anymore. Too old for that kind of nonsense. Fear was the nightmare of the young. And he hadn't been young in quite a while, no matter what his face told the world four centuries ago.
In many ways, it was thinking that got him into trouble. Or (to put it another way), thinking so far ahead he missed what was right in front of him.
Frothing, babbling…cool, clear rushes of cascading Life, the borders of it knowing no confinement.
Tonight he had finally told the Paternoster Gang that he'd had enough. He had mustered up just enough rage and indignation to get through it; the sting along his left cheek the right amount of fuel to get the job done.
He couldn't even muster enough energy to tell him to shut it. The air too strained and lifeless without his loves to fill him up and dull the chatter of his internal darkness.
The overly pale, overly tired looking man in the crumpled tan trench-coat didn't bother to glance at him. Not even a squint over the perpetual cigarette held loosely between his lips. He kept looking at the mill-wheel, the slow creak and turn comforting even as it was eerie and out of place with the modern world.
He didn't seem deceitful (intentionally or otherwise), but the very fact that he was a liar was indisputable.
Some doors should stay closed.
His first memory (well, the first really important one in his world), was of being perched on his Papa's knee, the stars he loved so much clutched in his tiny fingers.
He stole a magic box and ran away, only to discover that he had wasted his lives learning the wrong lessons.
Two years and six months was quite enough time away as far as Ms. Wright and Mr. Chesterton were concerned. They had run the gauntlet both at home (and as far from it as can be imagined), all either of them wanted was to get back to work and the day to day of life on Earth.
The flesh at my shoulders tightened, and I could literally feel my skin 'crawl', a sensation I had heard of from my many Companions, but had never quite experienced myself. At least as far as I could recollect. And really, wasn't that the problem in the end? Recollection and the lack of the same?
You know how this adventure thing goes – we land, we have adventures, we go home. It's a simple enough thing. Though you have a point about the…everything else…that occasionally goes with.
The endless years that weren't had finally caught up and the nerves of those nearest him were fraying. He was ground zero and they were caught up on the blast of what should have been, their own beings thinned and out of phase with the flow of the time they were snatched from. It was bound to affect them eventually. He was just surprised it had taken so long to happen.
So all was going according to plan (small bump on the head not-withstanding) and if Sexy stayed where he had left Her, he would be home free in a manner of seconds.
It was unusual to have a High Inquisitor from Senior Command come for an inspection in the middle of wartime to begin with. It was even more unusual for that same HI to arrive with not one, but two advisors; those advisors carrying their own ranks and insignia from the upper echelons of Command.
So many lives disrupted and destroyed in the wake of that box of bluest blue. It would have happened whether they had been there or not – maybe in a harsher degree than if they hadn't been there. He had witnessed that first hand; more than once actually.