A Second Chapter

49 Snail, 11 Rabbit, Hour of the Bear

What a year it has been.  I wonder that we made it through in one piece, wonder if the final dark is waiting in the corners about to fall as soon as the shock wears off and the pain sets in.

Time passes faster and faster each year.  I look at the Master and I still see a tiny mite in wee boots, still see his father and his father's father and his father's father's fathers in a line of homonculi, lifting their hands to be taken up on my shoulders.  A long cold line, the rulers of Schadelthron, and I pride myself on having served them well.

Once more, though, I find myself between Moloch and the manger.  I was not on patrol as Little Mistress took dinner with the Master, but I made sure to place one who would serve as my eyes and ears there.  I heard what was said, and equally importantly, what was not said between them. About the organization barely out of the egg, as it were, and about the role she played in deceiving those who would bring back the darkness. Spike, you  play a dangerous game with a man who could have written the rules in his own hand.

She spent the day with the doctor, mewed up in Wolfgang's laboratory from just past breakfast until I had to fetch her back for a quick bite before bedtime. Talking of double helices, of history, of blood and hair.  I understand the last well enough and have lived more than my fair share of history, but the shapes she described sounded like advanced Arithmancy to me.  Pure science, not something I could begin to grasp.  "Verra schtupeed monster, me."

She sleeps now, nestled in the down comforter and the snowy pile of pillows while I steal a moment here at her desk by the fire to write in this book that is never far from my heart.  No further than she is, truth be told.  I watch her sleep and I think I can see the future in the light of the flames.

--Totenberg