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rainbowfic2025-12-16 04:27 pm
paradoxcase) wrote in rainbowfic2025-12-16 04:27 pm
Light Black #3, Realgar #20 [The Fulcrum]
Name: Liberation
Story: The Fulcrum
Colors: Light Black #3: Trail, Realgar #20: Reference
Styles and Supplies: Thread, Panorama, Brushes (December 16, 2025: Conversant), Glue ("Try to keep your emotions in check today. It's possible that you could become extremely angry and do some damage to yourself and others around you. It's important to maintain certain modesty and humility at all times. You'll build good character that earns the respect of others, including your superiors.")
Word Count: 2889
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Characters: Setsiana, Qhoroali, Liselye
In-Universe Date: 1912.4.3.8, 1789
Summary: Setsiana, Qhoroali, and Liselye go to meet the Liberator.
It only took until the end of the long third week of the month for Liselye to make time to spend a day in 1789 watching for the Liberator. They dressed in their nurefyes, braided their hair, and packed some small bags of mainly money, qoire, and snacks.
The walk to the temple in 1789 was comfortingly familiar to Setsiana. There were still some new buildings that hadn’t been there in 1647, but it was much more similar to what she remembered from that time than the city in 1912 had been. She had been living in Nwórza in 1912 as a free person for four and a half months now, and had by now gotten used to the new city; walking the 1789 city seemed almost like returning to quaint town she remembered from her childhood, but had left some time ago.
The temple itself seemed unchanged, both from the version that Setsiana had known in 1647, and the version that she and Qhoroali had broken into in 1912. The words above the arch were maybe slightly different, but its stones otherwise seemed eternal. They had traveled to the early evening, and the sun hung low in the sky behind the eastward-facing temple entrance.
Surprisingly, Liselye first took them around the back of the building, and then came to a stop at a particular point, nodding sharply. She tapped the stone wall with the back of her index finger. “There’s a fire door here, in some times and timelines,” she said. “Useful for when we free the slaves, but I guess it hasn’t been put in yet. So that means there’s only one entrance or exit that we have to watch tonight.”
They completed the circuit of the temple, and confirmed that there really were no other unexpected doors or entrances. Unlike Taleinyo, this temple had its dormitories attached to the main structure as a large outgrowth behind the sanctuary, so traversing the back side of it took some time. They then crossed to the other side of the street. The temple faced a decent-sized gap between two buildings, through which could be accessed a public park. The ground had not been completely leveled here, but still rose shallowly through the length of the park. They chose a place along the slope where they could sit and observe the open archway of the temple’s entrance while still seeming like they were inconspicuous park visitors.
Once she had verified that their location was a good one, Liselye got up to leave. “I’ll go into the temple now and talk to the priestesses to make sure the slaves have not already been freed,” she said. “This’ll be no good if we misread the log and arrived on the wrong day.” She went through the front archway of the temple and milled around by the entrance to the sanctuary.
“Is she just going to say, ‘hello, have any of your slaves escaped recently?’” Setsiana asked, amused.
“She knows how to speak to them like she belongs there,” Qhoroali replied, unconcerned. “She frequently does that when stealing books for me, so she’s gotten a lot of practice.” Across the street, a real priestess exited one of the doors near the sanctuary, and Liselye engaged her in what seemed like a friendly conversation. The priestess left through a different door, and Liselye returned to where they sat in the park, and settled down to wait with them, reporting that the slaves were still present.
The sun sank lower, and wreathed the edges of the temple in an orange glow. Several priestesses came and went through the main corridor of the temple, many leaving to go into an attached building that Setsiana thought might be the dining hall, but none leaving in other directions. Before the sun set entirely, Setsiana and Qhoroali left in search of some food for the night, leaving Liselye to watch the temple entrance.
They walked a little ways along the street until they came to a café advertising carry-out, where they ordered some meals that came wrapped in a corn-flower flatbread. While they waited for the food, something on the wall caught Setsiana’s eye. It was a small clock like the one in Qhoroali’s apartment, but like one from a fever dream — the pins were traveling in the wrong direction and there were way too many hour marks.
Qhoroali followed her gaze, and smiled wryly. “They’re still using the T’arsi clocks in this time period,” she said. “I told you it was weird.”
They retrieved the food and went back to the park as the darkness of evening fell and the lamplighters came out to perform their duties. Liselye was still seated on the incline, leaning comfortably back on her elbows. “No one’s left,” she reported. “They’ve all just gone to eat, and then back again.”
They settled down in front of the temple’s much more familiar clock to eat and watch. A priestess went through the main corridor of the temple with a taper, lighting lamps along its length, and somewhere up on the upper floors, a lamp was lit that backlit the temple’s translucent clock face. The park had only one or two street lamps, and quickly became almost completely dark. Priestesses returned from the dining hall and reentered the temple, mainly through a door that Setsiana guessed must lead to the attached dorms. A few solitary townsfolk left the dining hall in other directions.
Eventually, the activity of the temple slowed and then stopped. No one traversed the entry corridor for some time, and Setsiana’s gaze wandered to the moons and stars above. It was the fair weather of the late spring, not too far before when her birthday would ordinarily be, and indeed, the small moon seemed almost full, with the large one at about half. Her eyes quickly adjusted to seeing mostly by moonlight. Her gaze returned to the lighted temple corridor from time to time, but no further movement was happening there.
The opening of a door sounded from the corridor; a priestess left through it, carrying a large stack of books. She set the books down on the small table from which Qhoroali had stolen the logbook back in 1912, returned to lock the door behind her, and then carried the books through the door that led to the dorms. They all watched the entrance intently for a moment, but the night had returned to silence and stillness.
The watch continued in this way for hours more, in which they ate the snacks they had brought with them and exchanged some small snatches of conversation, but nothing further of note occurred. At last, the sky began to lighten and the first rays of dawn began to illuminate the temple’s stone facade. At around the same time, the temple clock’s first chime of the morning marked the start of the day.
A few minutes after the chime, a number of priestesses poured out of the door to the dorms. The foremost was carrying a rolled-up paper or cloth. One of the others grabbed the small table, separated it from its chair, and moved it to the center of the main corridor, allowing the first priestess to unroll the paper onto it. The others all gathered around to peer at whatever was written there.
After a moment of silence, the priestess who had unrolled the paper said something and two other priestesses hurried through one of the other doors into the temple — the one that Qhoroali had unlocked when they’d come to free the slaves. The others seemed to wait tensely for their return. After they did return, all of the priestesses broke out into an argument, which became a commotion. One in particular began raising her voice steadily until she was nearly shouting, though her words still did not carry clearly to where they sat, and then retrieved the chair and stood upon it.
Liselye frowned. “I can’t make out what they’re saying,” she said. “I’m going to go over there and listen.” She stood up, brushed the grass and dirt off of the skirt of her nurefye, and casually walked down towards the temple. Stealth seemed to be unnecessary; the priestesses were too engaged in their argument.
Qhoroali waited a moment longer, and then said, “I want to know what they’re saying, too.” She cast a brief guilty glance at Setsiana, and then followed after Liselye.
Setsiana stood up and watched them go. Liselye had said she had to stay out of sight of the priestesses and wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone, but if she lingered near the archway, maybe she could hear what was going on without being seen. She cautiously walked down the hill and along the front of the dining hall building until she was just at the edge of the archway, and there the voices began to more clearly form words to her ears.
“The meaning is entirely clear,” the priestess standing on the chair was saying, turning to face one of the others. “You’re just being obtuse. Sapfita objects to this practice, has objected to it for all of Time. She is just reminding us of that fact.”
Another one of the priestesses, the older woman who Setsiana recognized as the one who had laid the paper out, stood to the side with her arms folded, wearing an unamused expression. “Do you presume to know more about what Sapfita approves of than your seniors who have been studying Her for longer?”
The priestess on the chair turned back to face her. “You may have earned the right to administer the temple, but you have no basis upon which to claim superior knowledge to the rest of us. I have read that dreamreading, recently. Have you? How many years has it been, now?”
Liselye had positioned herself amidst the throng, and inched closer to the table to get a look at whatever was on the paper. Whatever it was took only a few seconds for her to process, and she then drew back. The others were all focused on the priestess on the chair, and did not notice. Qhoroali stood a little ways further back, behind most of the others; she peered inquisitively at the paper, but seemed unwilling to push into the crowd in order to see it.
“Did you read that dreamreading recently, now?” asked the older priestess, with eyebrows raised and a glint of suspicion in her eyes.
The priestess on the chair gestured to some of the others. “There are plenty who can vouch for my whereabouts last night,” she said. “I like to return to the fundamentals sometimes. I find it keeps us grounded in what’s most important.”
The head priestess was still looking at her with a steely-eyed expression. “Come down from there, Laiyona, and cease this fuss. You may find that if you cause fewer disruptions, good things will come your way one day. And if you continue with this kind of behavior…” She shrugged.
Laiyona looked at her in unhappy resignation, but said, “You will not be here forever, you know. Perhaps the younger generation will make different choices and put us all in a better timeline.”
“Perhaps,” agreed the head priestess, and waited patiently while Laiyona climbed down from the chair and returned it to the table.
The other priestesses seemed to take this as the conclusion of the argument, and began to drift away, mostly in the direction of the dining hall. The head priestess considered the paper still laid out on the small table, and after only a moment’s hesitation, ripped it to shreds.
Setsiana made her way back to the park as unobtrusively as possible, and waited for the other two to return. The three of them moved to a more sheltered location that was hidden from the sight of the temple to talk. “So, did the slaves escape after all?” Qhoroali asked.
“They did,” said Liselye. “But obviously not through the front entrance. The Liberator also left that paper in the head priestess’s room, as a calling card, I suppose.”
“What was on the paper?” Setsiana asked.
Liselye frowned. “I don’t know what it means. It just said ‘Fänyea, 36, 6.5 minutes’.”
“‘All humans must have agency to choose their own destiny,’” quoted Setsiana, in perfect synchronization with Qhoroali. They looked at each other, and shared a smile.
Liselye looked from one of them to the other in confusion. “What?”
Qhoroali gestured to Setsiana. “If what we learned differs, you’ll probably have learned the more relevant version.”
“It’s from a dreamreading,” Setsiana explained. “A very famous one. ‘36’ is the year, and Fänyea was the dreamer. Dreamreadings are recorded as literal descriptions and interpretations of the dream, written alongside minute-notations in the margins, to show what relative time each message occurred at. At six and a half minutes into that dream was a message that’s well-established as meaning ‘all humans must must have agency to choose their own destiny.’ It’s the principal thing that led to our understanding of the doctrine of Free Choice, and the imperative to choose the best timeline with our actions.” She paused, thinking back to the argument in the temple. “I guess you can read it as a condemnation of slavery, as well, since making a person a slave removes their ability to choose their own destiny. Traditionally, we see the ‘must’ as referring to the imperative to choose well, but you could also interpret it as the imperative to let others make their own choices.”
“And they understood that meaning immediately, with no other clues,” Qhoroali said, thoughtfully. “Or at least, Laiyona did, because she had been rereading it recently. I wouldn’t expect that to be a given, in the general case. Whoever left it must have some intimate knowledge of this temple.”
“Maybe it was Laiyona who left the paper and freed the slaves somehow, then?” suggested Liselye. “Who else could have done it?”
Setsiana shook her head. “If she hadn’t had some iron-clad alibi, I don’t think she would have said anything. The head priestess looked like she was just itching to pin it on her.” She thought for a moment. “Someone could have gotten in and out with the slaves and with the paper using time travel, the way we do it. Just start at a time before the temple was built, and travel into the future until you are in a cell with some slaves, or in the head priestess’s room. Right?”
Liselye laughed. “Not remotely. Things move around way too much inside a building, you’d bump into something — or someone — and hit your head before you’d gone so much as 20 years, let alone the amount of time you’d have to travel to get to this time from a time before the temple was built. Rou and I had some misadventures like that when she tried showing me how it worked, the first time.”
“You could do it with a Mirror, I’m pretty sure,” Qhoroali said. “It’s a direct tunnel of some sort, I believe it cross-cuts through a lot of dimensions to avoid having to travel the whole timeline, like we do. So you wouldn’t necessarily wind up passing through every point in time in that same location.” She chewed her lip for a moment. “That means there must be two people involved, at least, if they were using a Mirror. You have to have one person to operate the Mirror while the other person travels.”
“They keep Mirrors under a lot of security,” said Setsiana. “If one of theirs had been misplaced, or touched, or used by someone who wasn’t supposed to be using it, I’m sure there was no way they wouldn’t have known.”
Liselye shrugged. “Maybe they stole it from another temple where this sort of thing doesn’t happen regularly, then.” She looked back towards the temple. “Anyway, it seems like Laiyona’s hopes for the future were for naught, since that temple is still taking slaves as of 1912.”
“Well, in our timeline, anyway,” said Setsiana.
“Even if it’s just our timeline, that’s still one timeline too many,” said Qhoroali, darkly.
Liselye nodded in weary agreement, and went back over to where they had spent the night to gather their things.
Setsiana looked over in the direction of the temple again. “I bet I could time travel though a building like that,” she said. “I bet Sapfita would know just how to Guide me so that I didn’t bump into anything.”
“Maybe,” said Qhoroali. “But no one else can do that but you, and you didn’t do this, right?”
Setsiana shook her head. “Maybe there is someone else out there who can, though. There’s so many people in the world; it’s got to be possible.”
“Sapfita told you there wasn’t, didn’t She?” said Qhoroali. “Do you think She might have been lying?”
“No, not exactly.” Setsiana struggled with how to put it. “I just can’t accept that I’m the only person who’s ever existed who can talk to Her like that. I know She said it’s just me and there’s some reason for that, but… I can’t make myself accept that.”
“Fair enough,” said Qhoroali. “We still don’t have a real explanation for how that works, anyway.” She started back across the park to join Liselye, and Setsiana followed.
Story: The Fulcrum
Colors: Light Black #3: Trail, Realgar #20: Reference
Styles and Supplies: Thread, Panorama, Brushes (December 16, 2025: Conversant), Glue ("Try to keep your emotions in check today. It's possible that you could become extremely angry and do some damage to yourself and others around you. It's important to maintain certain modesty and humility at all times. You'll build good character that earns the respect of others, including your superiors.")
Word Count: 2889
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Characters: Setsiana, Qhoroali, Liselye
In-Universe Date: 1912.4.3.8, 1789
Summary: Setsiana, Qhoroali, and Liselye go to meet the Liberator.
It only took until the end of the long third week of the month for Liselye to make time to spend a day in 1789 watching for the Liberator. They dressed in their nurefyes, braided their hair, and packed some small bags of mainly money, qoire, and snacks.
The walk to the temple in 1789 was comfortingly familiar to Setsiana. There were still some new buildings that hadn’t been there in 1647, but it was much more similar to what she remembered from that time than the city in 1912 had been. She had been living in Nwórza in 1912 as a free person for four and a half months now, and had by now gotten used to the new city; walking the 1789 city seemed almost like returning to quaint town she remembered from her childhood, but had left some time ago.
The temple itself seemed unchanged, both from the version that Setsiana had known in 1647, and the version that she and Qhoroali had broken into in 1912. The words above the arch were maybe slightly different, but its stones otherwise seemed eternal. They had traveled to the early evening, and the sun hung low in the sky behind the eastward-facing temple entrance.
Surprisingly, Liselye first took them around the back of the building, and then came to a stop at a particular point, nodding sharply. She tapped the stone wall with the back of her index finger. “There’s a fire door here, in some times and timelines,” she said. “Useful for when we free the slaves, but I guess it hasn’t been put in yet. So that means there’s only one entrance or exit that we have to watch tonight.”
They completed the circuit of the temple, and confirmed that there really were no other unexpected doors or entrances. Unlike Taleinyo, this temple had its dormitories attached to the main structure as a large outgrowth behind the sanctuary, so traversing the back side of it took some time. They then crossed to the other side of the street. The temple faced a decent-sized gap between two buildings, through which could be accessed a public park. The ground had not been completely leveled here, but still rose shallowly through the length of the park. They chose a place along the slope where they could sit and observe the open archway of the temple’s entrance while still seeming like they were inconspicuous park visitors.
Once she had verified that their location was a good one, Liselye got up to leave. “I’ll go into the temple now and talk to the priestesses to make sure the slaves have not already been freed,” she said. “This’ll be no good if we misread the log and arrived on the wrong day.” She went through the front archway of the temple and milled around by the entrance to the sanctuary.
“Is she just going to say, ‘hello, have any of your slaves escaped recently?’” Setsiana asked, amused.
“She knows how to speak to them like she belongs there,” Qhoroali replied, unconcerned. “She frequently does that when stealing books for me, so she’s gotten a lot of practice.” Across the street, a real priestess exited one of the doors near the sanctuary, and Liselye engaged her in what seemed like a friendly conversation. The priestess left through a different door, and Liselye returned to where they sat in the park, and settled down to wait with them, reporting that the slaves were still present.
The sun sank lower, and wreathed the edges of the temple in an orange glow. Several priestesses came and went through the main corridor of the temple, many leaving to go into an attached building that Setsiana thought might be the dining hall, but none leaving in other directions. Before the sun set entirely, Setsiana and Qhoroali left in search of some food for the night, leaving Liselye to watch the temple entrance.
They walked a little ways along the street until they came to a café advertising carry-out, where they ordered some meals that came wrapped in a corn-flower flatbread. While they waited for the food, something on the wall caught Setsiana’s eye. It was a small clock like the one in Qhoroali’s apartment, but like one from a fever dream — the pins were traveling in the wrong direction and there were way too many hour marks.
Qhoroali followed her gaze, and smiled wryly. “They’re still using the T’arsi clocks in this time period,” she said. “I told you it was weird.”
They retrieved the food and went back to the park as the darkness of evening fell and the lamplighters came out to perform their duties. Liselye was still seated on the incline, leaning comfortably back on her elbows. “No one’s left,” she reported. “They’ve all just gone to eat, and then back again.”
They settled down in front of the temple’s much more familiar clock to eat and watch. A priestess went through the main corridor of the temple with a taper, lighting lamps along its length, and somewhere up on the upper floors, a lamp was lit that backlit the temple’s translucent clock face. The park had only one or two street lamps, and quickly became almost completely dark. Priestesses returned from the dining hall and reentered the temple, mainly through a door that Setsiana guessed must lead to the attached dorms. A few solitary townsfolk left the dining hall in other directions.
Eventually, the activity of the temple slowed and then stopped. No one traversed the entry corridor for some time, and Setsiana’s gaze wandered to the moons and stars above. It was the fair weather of the late spring, not too far before when her birthday would ordinarily be, and indeed, the small moon seemed almost full, with the large one at about half. Her eyes quickly adjusted to seeing mostly by moonlight. Her gaze returned to the lighted temple corridor from time to time, but no further movement was happening there.
The opening of a door sounded from the corridor; a priestess left through it, carrying a large stack of books. She set the books down on the small table from which Qhoroali had stolen the logbook back in 1912, returned to lock the door behind her, and then carried the books through the door that led to the dorms. They all watched the entrance intently for a moment, but the night had returned to silence and stillness.
The watch continued in this way for hours more, in which they ate the snacks they had brought with them and exchanged some small snatches of conversation, but nothing further of note occurred. At last, the sky began to lighten and the first rays of dawn began to illuminate the temple’s stone facade. At around the same time, the temple clock’s first chime of the morning marked the start of the day.
A few minutes after the chime, a number of priestesses poured out of the door to the dorms. The foremost was carrying a rolled-up paper or cloth. One of the others grabbed the small table, separated it from its chair, and moved it to the center of the main corridor, allowing the first priestess to unroll the paper onto it. The others all gathered around to peer at whatever was written there.
After a moment of silence, the priestess who had unrolled the paper said something and two other priestesses hurried through one of the other doors into the temple — the one that Qhoroali had unlocked when they’d come to free the slaves. The others seemed to wait tensely for their return. After they did return, all of the priestesses broke out into an argument, which became a commotion. One in particular began raising her voice steadily until she was nearly shouting, though her words still did not carry clearly to where they sat, and then retrieved the chair and stood upon it.
Liselye frowned. “I can’t make out what they’re saying,” she said. “I’m going to go over there and listen.” She stood up, brushed the grass and dirt off of the skirt of her nurefye, and casually walked down towards the temple. Stealth seemed to be unnecessary; the priestesses were too engaged in their argument.
Qhoroali waited a moment longer, and then said, “I want to know what they’re saying, too.” She cast a brief guilty glance at Setsiana, and then followed after Liselye.
Setsiana stood up and watched them go. Liselye had said she had to stay out of sight of the priestesses and wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone, but if she lingered near the archway, maybe she could hear what was going on without being seen. She cautiously walked down the hill and along the front of the dining hall building until she was just at the edge of the archway, and there the voices began to more clearly form words to her ears.
“The meaning is entirely clear,” the priestess standing on the chair was saying, turning to face one of the others. “You’re just being obtuse. Sapfita objects to this practice, has objected to it for all of Time. She is just reminding us of that fact.”
Another one of the priestesses, the older woman who Setsiana recognized as the one who had laid the paper out, stood to the side with her arms folded, wearing an unamused expression. “Do you presume to know more about what Sapfita approves of than your seniors who have been studying Her for longer?”
The priestess on the chair turned back to face her. “You may have earned the right to administer the temple, but you have no basis upon which to claim superior knowledge to the rest of us. I have read that dreamreading, recently. Have you? How many years has it been, now?”
Liselye had positioned herself amidst the throng, and inched closer to the table to get a look at whatever was on the paper. Whatever it was took only a few seconds for her to process, and she then drew back. The others were all focused on the priestess on the chair, and did not notice. Qhoroali stood a little ways further back, behind most of the others; she peered inquisitively at the paper, but seemed unwilling to push into the crowd in order to see it.
“Did you read that dreamreading recently, now?” asked the older priestess, with eyebrows raised and a glint of suspicion in her eyes.
The priestess on the chair gestured to some of the others. “There are plenty who can vouch for my whereabouts last night,” she said. “I like to return to the fundamentals sometimes. I find it keeps us grounded in what’s most important.”
The head priestess was still looking at her with a steely-eyed expression. “Come down from there, Laiyona, and cease this fuss. You may find that if you cause fewer disruptions, good things will come your way one day. And if you continue with this kind of behavior…” She shrugged.
Laiyona looked at her in unhappy resignation, but said, “You will not be here forever, you know. Perhaps the younger generation will make different choices and put us all in a better timeline.”
“Perhaps,” agreed the head priestess, and waited patiently while Laiyona climbed down from the chair and returned it to the table.
The other priestesses seemed to take this as the conclusion of the argument, and began to drift away, mostly in the direction of the dining hall. The head priestess considered the paper still laid out on the small table, and after only a moment’s hesitation, ripped it to shreds.
Setsiana made her way back to the park as unobtrusively as possible, and waited for the other two to return. The three of them moved to a more sheltered location that was hidden from the sight of the temple to talk. “So, did the slaves escape after all?” Qhoroali asked.
“They did,” said Liselye. “But obviously not through the front entrance. The Liberator also left that paper in the head priestess’s room, as a calling card, I suppose.”
“What was on the paper?” Setsiana asked.
Liselye frowned. “I don’t know what it means. It just said ‘Fänyea, 36, 6.5 minutes’.”
“‘All humans must have agency to choose their own destiny,’” quoted Setsiana, in perfect synchronization with Qhoroali. They looked at each other, and shared a smile.
Liselye looked from one of them to the other in confusion. “What?”
Qhoroali gestured to Setsiana. “If what we learned differs, you’ll probably have learned the more relevant version.”
“It’s from a dreamreading,” Setsiana explained. “A very famous one. ‘36’ is the year, and Fänyea was the dreamer. Dreamreadings are recorded as literal descriptions and interpretations of the dream, written alongside minute-notations in the margins, to show what relative time each message occurred at. At six and a half minutes into that dream was a message that’s well-established as meaning ‘all humans must must have agency to choose their own destiny.’ It’s the principal thing that led to our understanding of the doctrine of Free Choice, and the imperative to choose the best timeline with our actions.” She paused, thinking back to the argument in the temple. “I guess you can read it as a condemnation of slavery, as well, since making a person a slave removes their ability to choose their own destiny. Traditionally, we see the ‘must’ as referring to the imperative to choose well, but you could also interpret it as the imperative to let others make their own choices.”
“And they understood that meaning immediately, with no other clues,” Qhoroali said, thoughtfully. “Or at least, Laiyona did, because she had been rereading it recently. I wouldn’t expect that to be a given, in the general case. Whoever left it must have some intimate knowledge of this temple.”
“Maybe it was Laiyona who left the paper and freed the slaves somehow, then?” suggested Liselye. “Who else could have done it?”
Setsiana shook her head. “If she hadn’t had some iron-clad alibi, I don’t think she would have said anything. The head priestess looked like she was just itching to pin it on her.” She thought for a moment. “Someone could have gotten in and out with the slaves and with the paper using time travel, the way we do it. Just start at a time before the temple was built, and travel into the future until you are in a cell with some slaves, or in the head priestess’s room. Right?”
Liselye laughed. “Not remotely. Things move around way too much inside a building, you’d bump into something — or someone — and hit your head before you’d gone so much as 20 years, let alone the amount of time you’d have to travel to get to this time from a time before the temple was built. Rou and I had some misadventures like that when she tried showing me how it worked, the first time.”
“You could do it with a Mirror, I’m pretty sure,” Qhoroali said. “It’s a direct tunnel of some sort, I believe it cross-cuts through a lot of dimensions to avoid having to travel the whole timeline, like we do. So you wouldn’t necessarily wind up passing through every point in time in that same location.” She chewed her lip for a moment. “That means there must be two people involved, at least, if they were using a Mirror. You have to have one person to operate the Mirror while the other person travels.”
“They keep Mirrors under a lot of security,” said Setsiana. “If one of theirs had been misplaced, or touched, or used by someone who wasn’t supposed to be using it, I’m sure there was no way they wouldn’t have known.”
Liselye shrugged. “Maybe they stole it from another temple where this sort of thing doesn’t happen regularly, then.” She looked back towards the temple. “Anyway, it seems like Laiyona’s hopes for the future were for naught, since that temple is still taking slaves as of 1912.”
“Well, in our timeline, anyway,” said Setsiana.
“Even if it’s just our timeline, that’s still one timeline too many,” said Qhoroali, darkly.
Liselye nodded in weary agreement, and went back over to where they had spent the night to gather their things.
Setsiana looked over in the direction of the temple again. “I bet I could time travel though a building like that,” she said. “I bet Sapfita would know just how to Guide me so that I didn’t bump into anything.”
“Maybe,” said Qhoroali. “But no one else can do that but you, and you didn’t do this, right?”
Setsiana shook her head. “Maybe there is someone else out there who can, though. There’s so many people in the world; it’s got to be possible.”
“Sapfita told you there wasn’t, didn’t She?” said Qhoroali. “Do you think She might have been lying?”
“No, not exactly.” Setsiana struggled with how to put it. “I just can’t accept that I’m the only person who’s ever existed who can talk to Her like that. I know She said it’s just me and there’s some reason for that, but… I can’t make myself accept that.”
“Fair enough,” said Qhoroali. “We still don’t have a real explanation for how that works, anyway.” She started back across the park to join Liselye, and Setsiana followed.
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Thanks, haha, I'm glad you liked it!
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walking the 1789 city seemed almost like returning to quaint town she remembered from her childhood, but had left some time ago. - that's a nice comparison.
Also lol at is Liselye just going to waltz in and ask if the slaves are still there.
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Thank you! And yeah, there are a few different simultaneous plot threads running through this part. I'm glad you're enjoying it.