The Many Ramblings of K. A. Webb

Part 1

Panthea studied him. There was nothing about him that told her which world he might have come from and that made her wonder if he might be under a glamour. It wouldn’t surprise her. A lot of the people she worked for hid their true selves from her, just in case the Council found them, so she simply accepted it. Well, she did most of the time. Depending on how well the glamour was constructed she could sometimes see through it and if she felt she needed to know more about her client that was exactly what she’d attempt to do. She looked at the coins in his hand, Atharan, easy to exchange and hard to track, definitely the currency to use for transactions like the one they were doing.
“You came to me for a reason.”
He nodded. “You’re said to be the best. I needed the best and, if you prove yourself to me today I do have more work for you.”
“What sort of work?”
“Show me that you have what I asked for.”
The tavern was a place Panthea knew well, as it was the place all of the travellers did business, so she felt comfortable tipping out the crystals she had gathered from Labyrinth, after spending hours searching for them with the race who were most likely to find them – the Astrum Talpas. Like all the races of Labyrinth they only traded their crystals in return for time and the ones he was after were different, so, of course, that meant spending more time working for them as well as with them. If she hadn’t warned him that the job was going to take longer than he expected, because he had no idea that Labrinthian races only took time as payment, then she could easily have seen him complaining that it had taken her three days to get six crystals.
“Good.” He smiled. “You look tired.”
“That’s what happens when you need crystals from Labyrinth. I wouldn’t spend time there otherwise and the work is going to pay for my continued comfortable living, so that really is all that matters. Three days in return for income that will keep a roof over my head for another moon is more than worth it, even though I really would like to be in bed right now, which is only going to happen if you’re happy with the work I’ve done.”
“I am. Go to bed, Panthea. I’ll come and talk to you in the morning about the other jobs I have for you.” He pressed the coins into her hand. “Do you care what I’m going to be using these crystals for.”
“No, my job is to get them for you. What you use them for is entirely up to you, because once they’re in your hands no one will know I had anything to do with you getting them, except for the Talpas, and they aren’t going to say anything. They like me, fortunately, otherwise you never would have received them, and they asked me to pass on a warning – using the crystals incorrectly will come back to bite you.”
Smiling again, he nodded. “That sounds like the Talpas.”

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

The day it had happened changed Madison’s life forever, yet it was something that wouldn’t affect anyone else. They were just another loss during the hard snows. A loss that was expected, by everyone but her. Pure bad luck had stolen her parents from her, because the hard snows had come early, and she found herself in the same place her parents had grown up – the orphanage. She’d been left alone in their cottage, making the supplies she had last as best she could, but with every day that passed she found herself closer to the day she’d have to start her new life, as she had no other options. It really was hard to believe that she was in the same position as her parents and, as she looked at herself in the mirror in one of the girl’s bathrooms, there were still days when she thought they might come for her, because their bodies hadn’t been found. Unfortunately that wasn’t an unusual occurrence.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

Based on a prompt I gave LJ and DW user aldersprig during her weather mini-call.

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.

“Come with me,” Paul said, smiling. “You’ve told me before how much you’d love to explore time and now is the time to do it.”

Vanessa looked at Paul. Their eyes met and she bit her lip. Time travelling wasn’t something anyone did without careful planning or the agreement of at least one of the officials in charge of controlling who went where. He was holding one of the stones in his hand, that she knew couldn’t be bought, so he must have gone through the official channels, but she was still unsure.

“I don’t know,” she replied, glancing at the stone and then back at Paul’s face.

“We’ll be there for two weeks and then we’ll come home. I know you’re on holiday, so it’s not as though it’s going to be a problem getting time off, and I really want to show you my favourite time period.” Paul reached out and touched her hand. “Please, Nessa.”

Paul was saying the right words, but Vanessa had a feeling there was something he wasn’t telling her. They’d known each other since childhood, even though they hadn’t always been friends, and there were times she knew him better than she knew herself. She was certain this was one of those times. In his eyes, behind the convincing smile, was another emotion.

“Why now?” she asked.

“It feels like the right time.”

“Is there something that you’re not telling me?”

When Paul shook his head Vanessa knew he was lying to her, but there was no evidence. It was just her intuition telling her that she shouldn’t go with him, not right then, because he had another reason for travelling back in time. At the same time she couldn’t help thinking that she should go with him. He wouldn’t have asked her if he didn’t want her with him.

“I know it’s short notice and I probably should have at least mentioned the idea of us going time travelling together, but I wanted it to be a surprise. This is something you’ve always wanted to do.”

Nodding, Vanessa glanced at the stone again. “How did you manage to convince someone to let me go with you?”

“I’m not going back in time to do anything in particular, just to check a couple of things are going the way they’re meant to be, and when someone outside of one of the organisations goes time travelling they have to have a chaperon, so I thought I’d combine the two.”

Vanessa realised she was still chewing on her lip and told herself to stop, as she attempted to think things through. Paul had been with one of the secretive time travelling organisations for five years, since they had left school, and she couldn’t imagine him turning his back on them, but she knew he wasn’t always comfortable with what he was asked to do. They’d never been able to talk about exactly what he did, because everything was confidential, and she couldn’t help feeling relieved. It was too easy to imagine what he may have been asked to do.

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.