A Dance Round the Memory Tree (Narrative)

[Josiah Malkuth]

"I know you've been lying to me," Josiah said flatly, sitting in his chair and glaring at the other occupant within his room. "I know you've been pretending to be my friend, all while keeping things from me. I know you know a lot more than you've been letting on, and it needs to stop. If you want to stay around, then you need to fess up. I need you to tell me everything, and I need you to tell me now!"

The pillow remained completely unmoved by his plea and stayed where it was, opposite to him and leaning up against the wall on the bed where he had put it, stupefied into submission. Josiah nodded to himself. "That's what I thought."

He got up then, picking up the pillow from his bed and staring at it all the same. He closed his eyes, and he could see them again, the memories of the three. They were a part of him now, that was for sure. There memories were his own now, and that had several very important implications.

It meant he didn't need to find someone to teach him magic. He already had, once upon a time. The Knight Wizard, as Josiah called him - whatever he was - at least some of his memories were in his mind now. From the fight he remembered and the other fragmented memories, he had most decidedly already mastered magic. So then, the issue was not a matter of where to look.

It was a matter of when to remember.

If he could figure out how to do that, then he'd be good. Dreaming had triggered it the first time, after that night. However, he wasn't about to run to Gavin and try to repeat everything that had happened that night just yet. Sleeping for awhile, maybe that would help, he thought. Maybe that would ... jumpstart the memories again or something.

He set his alarm for two hours, and placed his pillow back at the end of his bed. Kicking off his shoes, he laid down on his back, folded his hands over his stomach and closed his eyes. It wasn't the way he normally slept, but as he tried to slow his breathing and trick himself into falling asleep, he focused on the memories he had from the Knight Wizard.

[Josiah Malkuth]

The alarm blared to wakefulness from nothingness, and his eyes opened immediately, with only a single thought on his mind as he realized that he had only dreamed of blackness.

Damn it, he swore within his own mind, as he rolled over onto his stomach to get more comfortable. So that genius idea hadn't worked as well as he'd hoped. He closed his eyes and tried to remember what he had remembered before. Those were clear as day. Heck, he remembered those a bit better than memories from his own youth.

He punched the pillow for betraying him like this, then got up from the bed. He was honestly annoyed now, frustrated. Having thought that this would work for sure, he immediately regretted not having asked Cielle more about the memories and ways to get them to return. Josiah began pacing in the room, trying to think of what next he could do.

A glance at the clock told him his afternoon class would be coming up soon, and he was no closer to figuring out this Time thing than when he'd first realized he had it within him. To make matters worse, he had been so caught up with everything else that only now did he realize he hadn't done the work for class. And of course they'd have a quiz today. As if he hadn't had enough go wrong in the last two days, now his grade was going to tank.

His heart was pounding, he was as frustrated as could be, still pacing. There was nothing he could do now, absolutely nothing. The teacher wouldn't make exceptions for "relationship difficulties," and then even if he did, how could he prove it? Bringing up Gavin and being g- bringing up Gavin would be worse than that.

His nails started digging into his hands at his own annoyance. He was just wasting time now, ruining any chance he had of fixing the problem. He grabbed the alarm clock next to his bed and launched it as hard as he could against the wall.

And then it happened. A flash in his mind, what looked like a knife being thrown at him - him being the Knight Wizard, Josiah recognized the feel of his clothes. The Knight Wizard flinched and the energy came from him reflexively. The knife stopped in midair, then fell as he released it from the magical distortion.

The flash ended, and Josiah realized that the hand he had thrown the clock with was still held out. It was shaking slightly, and a few feet away, suspended in midair was the clock.

[Josiah Malkuth]

He tried not to breathe, not to do anything. The longer he tried to do nothing, the more he found he couldn't. His heart was pounding again, and he tried to breathe softly and slowly, just in case breathing would make it fall. His eyes shifted left and right, as he tried to think about how he'd just done it, how the Knight Wizard had done it.

The feeling, he remembered now. His breath came in little gasps now, still standing exactly as he was. He flexed the tips of his fingers a little then, and shifted his weight back and forth from one foot to the other.

Right, right, she said it was mental, and I've just been unconsciously tapping it when I get ... emotional. That seems right. Something with my heart maybe. But if its mental, then maybe I can ... I can ...

"Come back," he whispered, and it was more like a wish.

"Come back," he said again, and exhaled slowly after saying it. He closed his eyes slowly, trying to find that feeling inside him from before. It was like stumbling in the dark in a room you've never been in for a lightswitch, with only your own hands to guide you.

Work ... please ...

The light came on, the clock touched his hand, and he opened his eyes, still standing in midthrow with the clock touching against the will of gravity. He closed his hand around the clock again, and breathed a long sigh of relief. His hands brought the clock in towards his chest, and he cradled it in his hands like it was a cool drink.

He tossed the clock up into the air, and narrowed his eyes at it. It froze for a moment there, he relaxed his eyes and it fell back down into his grasp. He did it again, and finally gave a smile, and then a laugh as he continued with his makeshift game.

[Josiah Malkuth]

His eyes were just above the desk, looking at three marbles just a few inches away from his eyes. He brought a single finger towards the marble on the right, and gave each one a poke in turn. They rolled slowly away towards the other side, a bit askew because he hadn't hit them all straight.

"Slow," he whispered, more to confirm his own will then to actually accomplish anything with the word. Yet as if the word was a spell, the marbles suddenly were brought to a snail's pace, without any other force acting upon them.

He smiled at that, confident and pleased with himself. The clock was upside down at the moment, but he kept glancing at it, and at the watch now on his wrist. He had disregarded it long ago, but having an awareness of his own personal perspective of time suddenly seemed much more important.

In fact, he made a mental note to procure several.

After a moment of watching, he took a deep breath, and put the palms of both hands forward. "Haste," he whispered, and the marbles suddenly accelerated across the desk and flew straight off of it, making three holes in the glass and the resulting spiderweb cracks made it shatter at the last.

"Crap!" he bolted up from the desk, towards the window, looking outside from his upper story dorm room to the world outside. There was no one there for the moment. His eyes shifted left to right as he stuttered, "Uh, um, reverse? Rewind. Rewind, rewind, rewind." He repeated it, as if trying to get a sense of the magic, picturing in his his had what he wanted to happen.

He place his hands on the window pane, taking another deep breath as he flipped the switch and gave it guidance. The shards of glass rose up from where they'd fallen, fitting back into place as if nothing had happened. Giving a sigh of relief, he looked around for the marbles.

But they weren't to be found. He gave another sigh now, an exasperated annoyed one as his mind played out the answer to the question he hadn't asked aloud. "I targeted the window, not the marbles. Didn't rewind all of time - let's not try that - just the window, so of course the marbles wouldn't be affected."

A second of pause. "Great. I'm losing my marbles."

[Josiah Malkuth]

The pencil wobbled back and forth in between his fingertips as his eyes trailed over the page, line after line, before flipping to the next. His eyes shifted to the clock reflexively, aggitated by what he was trying to accomplish. The second hand seemed stuck in place for much longer than was normal, before finally slipping one space.

A glance at his watch, and the seconds paced by as normal. He was used to multitasking before, but this was just a little bit harder than normal. He ended up reading the same page a few times for content, taking longer - technically - but the clock was his reassurance of how the world beyond his little room was getting along.

He had time now.

He had time now.

He had time now.

He had time now.

It didn't matter the way he said it. He was having enough trouble concentrating on his current acceleration and trying to finish his readings during that timeperiod than to think about the blatant magical alteration of time according to his will.

It wasn't the time for that. It was the time for this. That can come later. Of course, he could try to make it time for that, but really, he didn't need anymore grammatical headaches. He was already due for one shortly, relatively speaking.

He closed the book at the last page, rubbing his forehead as he let the switch within his mind slowly turn back into the off position. The clock's seconds ticked by silently, and he quickly fixed his watch back to the clock's time, and he could feel his hearbeat quicken as the two timekeepers synced. He needed to hurry now, to get to class, to get everything back on track, to end this day that felt like forever.

The headache kept him from wanting to try anymore magic, but it didn't stop him from rushing across the campus, amid the throngs of other students heading their own way. Always before, he had felt out of place among them, a silent exile. Now, however, he silently wondered which of them was like him, like them. Fae, Sprite, Youkai, Harpy, his mind pictured his passersbys to secretly share in the life he had just been introduced to.

His footsteps trampled down the staircase into the basement floor as he rushed towards his classroom, backpack bouncing slightly behind him. Then he saw the sign on the door, panting and partially out of breath from his haste, heartbeat fast and palms sweaty from nervous desperation.

Class canceled.

He slammed his forehead against the door once, and then walked slowly away.