Kaleth and Aennin's visit to Eydisthorpe had been a brief and barely eventful one. While most of the villagers had kept to themselves, Aennin quickly found himself irritated by the constant stares of the ever-vigilant constabulary. The two of them couldn't find a moment alone the whole time they were there, so they were forced to focus on getting food and leaving quickly. The atmosphere in the town was tense, as if absolutely everyone was waiting for them to leave. This fueled a growing anxiety in Kaleth, which peaked when the two travelers were separated. He had found himself alone on an empty road with an angry-looking man shortly after and ensnared the man's ankles with rapidly growing roots in recoil. This incident hastened their departure; as soon as they reunited, they were back on the road. It was at this point that Aennin had become moody and silent, which Kaleth knew had to have been because he made the mistake of using his magic.
They would arrive in the Heronite capitol of Dalaska after two more days filled with intermittent bursts of slowed time. Kaleth had found this difficult to get used to since these episodes hardly seemed consistent. For seemingly random segments of the journey, everything around the cart and the maulans pulling it slowed to a crawl as they sped through the mountain road. There seemed to be little point in timing these bursts, but Kaleth guessed that they might have spent at least half of the trip traveling at what must have seemed like an impossible speed to observers. On the few occasions in which they ran into someone on the road, they were simple enough to bypass, but Kaleth had to wonder what it might feel like to be on the other side of this incredible magic.
Upon entering the city, Aennin insisted on find a place to stay put while they waited for the other Avatars. Kaleth had hoped that he would at least have someone to talk to then, but the words "stay put" only seemed to apply to him. His entire first day had been spent in solitude, sequestered in a small room at a modest inn. It was furnished only with a pair of beds that felt snug only around Kaleth's short body and a pair of footlockers. With nothing to keep him occupied and no one to talk to, the boy frequently fell into spells of listlessness in which he would do nothing but stare at the ceiling, thinking about nothing.
It was well into the night, as sleep tugged at him once more, when he next experienced anything to punctuate his boredom. The ceiling seemed to shake in rhythm with the ticking of a grandfather clock, which grew louder as he continued to listen. He continued to stare blankly upward in boredom when he suddenly heard an unfamiliar voice whispering to him. "...look to your new beacon and state your wish."
Kaleth's eyes widened with shock and he sat bolt upright, searching for the source of the voice. Somehow, both the voice and the clockwork noise had vanished, leaving the boy in silence once more. But he would only have a few minutes to contemplate this oddity before Aennin finally returned with a pot of hearty stew and pairs of bowls and spoons. He sighed and set the pot on the chest at the end of the empty bed.
"Get it while it's hot. You'd think Heron of all places would have more food that's tolerable when it cools," Aennin grumbled as he ladled some of the stew into a bowl and sat down on the bed with it.
Kaleth scrambled out of his bed and poured himself a portion so quickly that a few drops of the liquid inside had splashed to the floor. Ignoring this, he asked, "Where have you been all day?"
"I've been casing the city all day. I found one of the other Avatars today," Aennin replied as he reached into his satchel for a loaf of bread wrapped in cloth.
Kaleth raised his eyebrows while he watched Aennin break the bread in half. "Which one? And when do we meet up?"
Aennin rolled his eyes and replied between sips of his stew, "I'm talking about the one I don't get along with. She'll probably drop in to say hello while I'm out tomorrow, but we're keeping our distance until the others get here."
Kaleth sighed as he took some of the bread. "When do I get to leave this room? There's nothing to do in here!"
Aennin glared at the boy and growled, "I don't know. When you can be trusted to follow the simplest of suggestions. This is where we need to be! I'm not interested in having to flee town because you're so reflexive with your magic."
Kaleth frowned and tilted his eyes toward the ground. "I said I was sorry about that! I was scared."
Aennin rolled his eyes and took a bite of potato. Upon swallowing it, he replied, "Look, you're a hell of a lot more capable than I was at your age, but your training is going to get us in trouble here. I can bring you something to occupy yourself with, but you need to keep a low profile. Here."
Suddenly, Kaleth found himself oddly compelled to think of the sounds he heard before. Within seconds, he already knew what he wanted. "Can I just have a clock?"
Kaleth thought he saw a twinkle in the elf's eye as he responded. "Yeah. I can do that."
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