Sands through the Hourglass

It's a beautiful day in Alexandria. The skies are a dazzling blue. Daeus's rays are somewhat mellowed by the fluffy white clouds overhead that blot the yolk-yellow celestial body from time to time. There's even a lovely breeze that passes through the city. Alexandria is, after all, a city on the water, and proximity to the sea means enjoying the cool breeze.

This means it's a perfect day for a picnic by the Tornmawr, or a dip in the river, or... Any activity that would see someone on the river bank.

Except there's one weird thing.

There's an hourglass, just there in the sand. Sitting there, like someone had set it down in the sand. Yet nobody is babysitting the hourglass. There's nobody at all there, in fact. It's just an hourglass. It has sand completely on the bottom chamber, nothing flowing at all. For the moment, that is.

Menel is enjoying a picnic of sorts. If one can call a blanket sprawled out on the ground without any sign of food or drink to be a picnic. He's enjoying the weather though, the cool breeze, the warmth. He sits comfortably on his blanket and thinks of nothing in particular at all. A warm smile on his lips as he decides that it's safe enough to lay down and sunbathe a bit.

His stomach rumbles, remembering the treats from the other day and his current lack of funds for a picnic today. Shame. It really is a beautiful day...

While most likely enjoy the bright sun, Culix is less of a fan. She's down here to take some shelter from it under the great bridge above, and is taking the opportunity to soak her feet a little in the water in the river- she's walking along the shallows at it's bank with her boots in hand, staying in the broad shadow cast by the bridge. She is a little better prepared for midday snacking, though, with a bit of jerky held in the other hand for her to gnaw on as she idles her time away.

Why struggle or debate between delightful picnics, cooling dips in the ware, or daily tasks like laundry? Bryn is seated in the wet portion of the bank, bare feet and legs in the water with some other clothing in hand between her knees. The stuff in hand is dunked and scrubbed against itself. A variety of a dozen meat-on-a-stick morsels from the relatively nearby trades are stuck into the ground within arm's reach between washing articles. Her pack sits behind her on drier ground as she hums to herself.

Summer was a great time to go for a swim down the river. so was winter, too. there wasn't a particularly bad time for swimming in the river when you were mostly fireproof and could sleep out in a blizzard without worry.

And so Eztli was rafting down stream with a pair of wings keeping them afloat on their back, having swapped out their robes for a two piece bathing suit. Culix gets a wave as they float past, along with various other people they pass by. The makari was feeling in a particularly lazy mood to do much else.

Something weird happens in the midst of the calm that are people eating food, people not eating food but thinking longingly of food, people engaging in leisure, and people engaging in laundry.

The hourglass makes a noise. A noise that makes absolutely no sense for an hourglass to make, not that hourglasses are known for making a sound at all. More accurately: it talks.

"Conducting time-lost experiment in: six... seconds." The voice is a rather monotone young boy's voice. Actually, he sounds somewhat bored.

Menel hears the voice and sits up, looking around for some sign of a boy... that he can not see. "Pardon?" He inquires, looking around for someone who might have talked to him. He waves absently to Eztli, but still can't find who spoke. "Weird."

Bryn looks up from her humming handwashing at hearing the unexpected voice, then turns her head to look around further. She hadn't noticed and hourglass before, and may still not have seen it, but she didn't notice anyone very near her, either. Who said that? To whom? And what did they say, exactly? So she asks a clarification question at ...around. "Uh, wha'?"

Culix offers Eztli a little wave as she passes by, opting to wave with the jerky rather than her boots, since both hands are occupied. She continues on her slow and aimless path for the time being, until she hears something about an experiment. Immediately, her hackles rise, and the glances around looking for any signs of gnomes in her immediate vicinity. The last of the jerky is shoved into her mouth and she starts hopping in place as she slips one of her boots back on, ready to run if the need arises.

Eztli attempts to slow their floating down, which is a rather undignified amount of flapping and splashing to actually get to a position where they can move normally again, somewhat like a bird that took an unintended dip in a body of water. "Oh, gods damn it all, where was that noise coming from?" The makari grumbles as she paddles closer to shore. "The river isn't a place to be trying out random experiments besides how big you can build a sand castle or what color swimsuit looks good on you."

Before anyone can react any further, the world goes... monochrome. The sky is light gray. The waters are dark gray. Shadows are drenched in dark gray and black. There's no more color. There's only levels of value in light and shadow.

More disturbingly, everything comes to a still. The waters are not flowing. The people elsewhere are frozen. Only Eztli, Culix, Menel, and Bryn are moving and breathing still. There's no more sound of the Tornmawr, and in the distance, ships that were passing have frozen in time and space.

"Thank you for your participation in this experiment." The boy's voice is speaking again from the hourglass. "Your participation is vital to my understanding of how mortals react to anomalies in time and space. For the duration of this experiment, I invite you to interact with this space that is locked within the flow of time. I am here to assist if you have any questions."

Menel feels the blood drain from his face - not that in this colorless variation of the world anyone is liable to notice. He rises to his feet a bit uncertainly, still looking for the source of the voice without much luck. He can hear the boy (but who would guess that an hourglass is the source). "I have no desire to participate in your experiment." His voice is stern. "Whoever you are... I request that you return things to their natural state."

It never hurts to be polite.

Culix hardly looks any different with the color drained from her- the only part of her with any color to begin with were her eyes and some of the brown bits of leather on her clothing. She picks her way back to the shore, watching with concerned curiosity as the water fails to fill in the gaps left by her extracting her feet from it. "This can't be good for the planar fabric..." she mutters to herself. "What are you?" she asks the disembodied voice, skipping the more obvious but less pertinent 'Who'

Bryn blinks singularly at the sudden change to ...everything. Almost everything? She bounces to her feet, looking around. "I don't know what -this- is, but I liked it better before." The few others that are still moving and speaking are now very conspicuous, and catch her eye. This prompts her to jab a finger at Menel while adding, "Put it back. Like he said." If it is a question of majority, that means they win, right?

Eztli finishes paddling to the shore of the river, which was a strangely disconcerting feeling with the water not moving how they expected it to around them. "It's a bit weird to thank someone who didn't agree to any testing." The makari huffs loudly. "So, the question is if they don't change it back themselves, how do we? Can't be something conjured unless it's messing with the ward, I don't know how much we can trust whoever put this like, well, this. I'm Eztli, I know the gobber there, so we need to work to fix this, right?"

There's a pause for a long moment from the hourglass. "May I inquire as to the source of your distress with your experiment?" the boy asks. "As for my identity, I am under experiment guidelines to not disclose such information. I sincerely apologize for this inconvenience."

GAME: Eztli rolls perception: (15)+5: 20
GAME: Bryn rolls perception: (7)+6: 13
GAME: Culix rolls perception: (15)+13: 28
GAME: Menel rolls Perception: (17)+1: 18

Almost immediately, Menel notices a strange vibration under his feet. The warrior is too attuned with his own body to miss something like that. He frowns at the voice and tries to pinpoint it, finally spotting the hourglass and motioning the others toward it. The voice seems to emanate from it; a magical item perhaps? "It is the fact of being experimented upon without consent." He says again sternly. "Acting against the will of another is inherently hostile."

"Loose grasp of the concepts of consent and boundaries, refusing to identify itself... could still be gnomes." Culix says and then draws he dagger from the frog at her waist and glances about at the sound of that thrumming. "Mmmm, don't like this." she decides as she trudges back along the beach, looking about. "That don't look great, either." she says and points at the Hourglass. "Wonder what mystery voice would say if I decided to smash it." she says, a little too loud and clear to truly be talking to herself.

"Yeah," Brn adds, now address the hourglass. "Ya didn't ask first." The thrumming under her feet is eventually noticed, maybe because nothing else around them is moving. She glances from it to the gobber and back, fists clenching. "Smashing it could put things back... or leave 'em stuck like this. Anybody know what -that- is?" Now she points at the hourglass.

GAME: Eztli rolls knowledge/arcana: (20)+9: 29

"Gods, where to even begin?" The small makari grumbles loudly, crossing her arms and taking a few more steps onto the beach, looking around at the hourglass. "First off, messing with time is just, that's how things go wrong and if any of those freaky creatures I've heard of show up because they're angry about people messing with it I'll be annoyed, too."

"Second, it's interrupting my very important floating down the river doing nothing time, because the water isn't moving and I can't leave people deciding to start sudden experiments alone. Doesn't really leave you in a mood to go looking around when you're not sure what effect this is potentially having on things."

The hourglass's sand is, bizarrely, moving upwards from the bottom chamber to the top chamber as the group of experiment participants (unwillingly as they are) put their full attentions on the object. The boy's voice from within the hourglass gives a first indication of real emotion: a sigh. "I would request that you do not attempt to break the hourglass," he says. "I am recording all of your comments and observations. This is information that is valuable for my purposes. I acknowledge that you do not appreciate the method of gathering participants for this experiment. I will change my methodologies in future experiments."

There's a crackling sound from within the hourglass, but nothing changes about the flow of sand. There's no appreciable reason for why it could be crackling. (There's also no appreciable reason for why a boy's voice is coming from the hourglass, either, but that's besides the point.) "You mentioned 'freaky creatures'. Could you provide more information?"

GAME: Culix rolls knowledge/the planes: (5)+8: 13

The sound of 'freaky creatures' doesn't sound that great to Menel either but then... He frowns. "Hey... wait a minute. Are you an observer?" He peers at the hourglass curiously, remembering a little boy in a library and some unfortunate birds.

Culix shrugs her shoulder, and rolls her dagger over her knuckles, "People tend to get more cooperative if you threaten to break their toys. Or less, and you end up in a scrap, but that's often just another route to the same destination." she says. She snaps her fingers at the mention of weird creatures, "Oh yeah the... uh... I guess they're like a planar watch? What are they called again?" she says, looking from Eztli and back to the Hourglass. "Well, fine, I won't smash it for now. But how about you explain why you're doing this, and what you actually expect from us?"

Bryn picks up her pack from the bank and throws it over her shoulder while stepping into her sandals. "Ye, what's this about freaky creatures?" she asks Eztli. Since it might be relevant. "If we're all stuck in this, how long's this gonna last?" That question is open to everyone, but mostly towards The Voice.

"I don't know if there's anything particularly magical about the hourglass." Eztli offers, sounding a bit disappointed. "Might not want it destroyed because it's some ritual focus though, but that's mostly a Navos thing, and they don't usually mess with time in spite of him being the god of time. Most of them have more sense than that."

The small makari sighs, and kicks at some sand, maybe to reveal what was making all the noise down below, or maybe just to see how it moved. "I don't know much more about it, and if I did, I don't know if I'd want to share more with a disembodied, re-hourglassed voice. It was just in some reports I was reading when the resurrectionists were talking to people, some thing got horribly corrupted by people messing with time, or something like that."

"The experiment will last as long as I need, but I anticipate it will be concluded soon." the boy responds from within the hourglass. And then there's a pause as Menel asks if he's an observer. "I see we meet again. My apologies for not greeting you earlier. My protocols indicate that I must be impartial when I conduct experiments."

The sand continues flowing upwards in the hourglass. "The purpose of this experiment is to record how mortals react to anomalies in time and space when an encounter with one is thrust upon them. So far, I observe that they are confused, angry, and liable to take actions against that which they perceive to be causing the anomaly." Oddly, there's some amount of reluctance in the words. Some kind of care that's creeping into the boy's voice.

Menel suddenly smiles. "Well, see there, it's a matter of how you present things. If you had introduced yourself and *asked* you might not have faced people being threatening. You seemed kind of dangerous you know?" He relaxes a little and motions to the hourglass to explain to the others. "I fought some witchcrows in the library recently and this kid was there. He seems to be... observing people in the area for some reason. Not that he has explained it, but he seems to be... not dangerous."

"Yeah, we're an ornery lot, we mortals." Culix says and she gives the hourglass a poke with the toe of her boot. "Don't take kindly to being experimented on, kidnapped, observed, prodded, poked, cajoled or taunted. Tend to react violently." she says, still rolling the dagger back and forth across the knuckles of her hand. "So, kiddo, how soon is soon?" she gestures dismissively Menel's way, "It'll make some excuse about the surprise being part of the experiment." she asserts.

Bryn eyes the hourglass and the upflying sands as she listens to the boy-voice. "Are seeing folks being calm when weird shit happens?!" she asks aloud. Probably rhetorically, since it seems common sense to her.. not that it's always so common for everyone. After the mention from Menel, she seems less tense and more just annoyed. "I get wanting to know things, but..." She rolls her shoulders in a shrug.

Eztli pauses, and sighs, loudly. "Look. As long as you're not hurting anyone and they're okay with being going along with a test, that's _fine_." Eztli huffs loudly, but seeing as things weren't getting worse for the time being, at least being less antagonistic. "Key word being not hurting or causing harm, and not against their will. Last fucker who was finding people for experiments, well let's just say they had neither of those things in mind and they should be counting their lucky stars they aren't a pile of ashes at the moment."

"I'll take your word for it for the time being, but I'm still keeping an eye on it." The sorceress warns, sighing loudly. "If things get worse, I'll see what I can do to stop it. Thankfully I'm not completely unprepared."

"It appears your assessment of mortals is consistent with my limited experience," the boy responds to Culix. "Although I ask that you not do _that_ again with the hourglass. It is physically unpleasant. While the hourglass is not my physical form, I am currently connected to it through a magical connection."

The boy's voice sighs. "I do not mean harm to people, and as I said before, I will be revising my experiment methodology going forward as a result of this experiment, which is giving me valuable information. The witchcrows were an unpleasant anomaly.”

The sands in the hourglass are ticking down (up) now. "May I inquire as to whether or not your opinions on time anomalies have changed as a result of this experience?" the boy asks.

Menel considers the question for a moment looking at the hourglass. With the promise to alter the method going forward it seems less harmful to answer the questions which are being posed. He gets down on his haunches and smiles at the hourglass as though it's the boy he can see in his minds eye. "Well this was far more pleasant than the previous experience I've had with time anomalies, so yes. Though I would have found it more pleasant to explore if I had more warning that one was going to occur." He might have liked trying to swim in a river that can't move itself for instance.

"This is the first one I've seen..." Bryn admits. "So.. yeah? Didn't have an opinion before. Now I know I don't like 'em." Menel having already described something similar, she looks to him first, then the others. "This sorta thing happen alot here?"

"Good, just keep it that way." The small makari sighs, rubbing hard between her eyes. "There's enough going on in the city and I don't need more fires to put out, because I'm really not good at putting out fires. Like, it'd be harder to be worse at the job."

"It's interesting, but like I said, you've got to consider what can go wrong too. Like, witchcrows? Or things that don't like messing with time. I can't say if my opinions have changed yet. Better for the time being, I suppose." The makari shrugs. "But I don't know what will happen when time's working normal again, either, so any judgment at the moment would be real premature."

"Oh yeah?" Culix says, tilting her head to the side. "It's not great when folks mess with your subjective experience on a whim, is it?" she asks, poking the hourglass with her toe once more for good measure before finally backing off. The dagger is spun across her palm and then slipped back into its sheath. "Something like this could be useful if you knew it was happening and were in control of it." she finally admits then, and shrugs, gesturing towards the frozen people. "Could slip past a guard, nab a key, do a little recon, even set up an ambush maybe. All in the blink of an eye, from their perspective.

"Blurgh!" The noise is a bit like a squawk, and the hourglass actually shakes for a moment before...

Color returns, abruptly. Noise returns, abruptly. Time flows, abruptly. And then a raven flies down from a nearby tree to the hourglass, landing on top of it and tucking its talons politely underneath its feathered body. It has black feathers like any raven does, but its startling blue eyes indicate that the raven is not ordinary at all. They're the same color of the sky: summer-day blue.

Then the raven opens its beak. "I have concluded this experiment," the boyish voice from before says, this time leaving the raven's mouth. "I am no longer recording the observations and results, and once again, I thank you for your participation. But... I was hoping you could answer a question for me that has nothing to do with the experiment."

He pauses. "Say you have an estranged relative. What would you do to mend the broken relationship?"

Menel is startled by the sudden arrival of the raven which is not a raven - no, those eyes which are very nearly the same color as his own are something which he notes with caution. More caution now than he had even shown before. He slowly rises to his feet and nods to the bird. "In a lot of human cultures a gift is appropriate. Something that expresses your wish to reconnect. I suggest food to share. A meal perhaps." He smiles slowly at the bird. "An apology costs nothing but time and effort, but a heartfelt one goes a long way."

Culix gasps as the color rushes back into the world, and she shades her eyes from the sudden streaming of light from the sun, turning away- only to spy the raven and follow it's movements with her eyes. She folds her arms across her chest at that question and her expression turns fairly sour- sourer than it had been when she was trapped in a time freeze, at any rate, and she looks towards the Talking Raven. "That depends. Who's fault is it, and what are they doing about it?" she asks then. "Forgiveness is a two way street."

The abrupt return of color, sound, and motion is disorienting to Bryn; enough so that she returns to sitting by dropping her butt back to the bank roughly where it was before. It's proof that gravity's working right again? "Ugh! Could warn for -that-, too!" After rubbing her face and looking back up, she sees the raven on the hourglass, and a talkin one at that. With... family issues? "Talkin. You figure out what was wrong and change it, or find out nothin was wrong 'tall."

There's an audible amused snort from the makari at the expense of the test giver, and the sorceress blinks when the raven drops onto the hourglass.

"Glad the experiment is over and things look normal. I guess it wasn't that bad." The sorceress admits. At the question though, the small makari pauses. Wings tuck in a bit closer, tail ceases moving. They spent some time with their eyes closed.

"If you're looking for an answer, I wish I could give you one. No one person is the same after all." she sighs, less irritated than before, and more disappointed. "Sometimes it's just unsalvageable, and you really see what someone's like. Not worth the time or effort physically or emotionally, even if it's just as exhausting trying to move on and trying to fix it would feel great in the short term."

"Other times you realize after the fact that you weren't trying hard enough, and didn't even try to communicate in the first place. That's a lot easier really, as long as you can accept your own faults." She continues. "Just know that it's not your job to take responsibility for their mistakes, and if they aren't willing to admit their own, then it's not worth your time. You might be able to compromise if the relationship means that much to you, but that's a decision you need to make yourself and live with the consequences of. Especially since you might spend so time mulling it over that you lose the chance to do that."

The sorceress stretches, resettling their wings and easing the tension they weren't entirely aware of, chuckling. "Anyways, real long winded way of saying that you need to decide for yourself if it's something that can be fixed, and if you want to fix it. But at the end of the day, it's not just your responsibility to fix, they need to be willing, too."

"It's... Complicated," the raven says in reply to Culix's question. "We were forced apart by expectations placed upon us. I wanted to succeed. As did he. But his definition is different than mine. And with what I'm observing more and more of mortals, maybe I should reach out before..."

The boyish raven trails off, thinking about Eztli's words as well as everyone else's. "I'll have to think about it," he says. "Really, I shouldn't be. An observer's job is to observe, not to act, and I worked hard to get this position."

The hourglass sparkles, and then it's gone, with the raven hopping onto the ground now that it's no longer propping him up. "I will take my leave. Once again, thank you for your participation, and your advice."

Menel nods to the bird. "It's up to you." He's not sure what the raven is or if it trying to mend fences with its family would be actually wise or not, but he doesn't judge either. He gives the river a thoughtful look but starts to pad over to his blanket. "Good luck!" He waves and throws himself down on the blanket again.

Culix nods her head then, "Always is." she agrees with the raven about family being complicated. "My brother thinks I betrayed him, even though he stuck with the folks who set me up to end up in gaol." she says then unfolding her arms to give a broad shrug. "Not entirely convinced I even want to reconcile with him, if not for the sake of ma and pops." she adds. "You never answered my question, by the by. And we've answered plenty of yours. What are you?" se asks again.

The comment of food from Menel remind Bryn that the whole time-stop experiment interrupted the last part of her soaking/washing/picnicking. One of the sticks of meat is plucked free so she can strip the meat off of it. She watches and listens until the hourglass vanishes. After returning the empty stick to the ground, she notes, "That was... something new." She then grabs another skewer to chew on. As a trailing thought, she pulls up another with her free hand and extends it out in Menel's direction. Are they family? No. Are they estranged? Nope. Is his thought of sharing food still a good idea? Yep.

"Family has a way of being complicated, yeah." Eztli nods, regaining a bit more composure and relaxing. "It's real easy for expectations put on you from someone else to be stifling. Sometimes necessary, sometimes not."

"Hope you can reconcile, if possible. If you care about them, that's the best outcome, right?" they nod. "And if not, then I hope you can find some piece with that. You're welcome I suppose, take care of yourself. Can't say I was expecting all of this, but it wasn't all bad."

The raven looks like it's about to fly off, but then he pauses at Culix's question. Blue eyes look at Culix for a long, long moment.

"Now that we are no longer in the stricture of an experiment, I am able to answer. I am Observer Number Two-Thousand, Nine-Hundred, Ninety-Nine, in the employ of #####. My name is Zenith." The employer's name is a harsh noise, like static, falling away from the brain before it can lodge in memory.

He takes flight. And the moment he takes wing to the sky, he vanishes. Not even the sound of his wings can be heard. Nor is there an imprint of the hourglass that had been there on the ground. It's almost like nothing ever happened.

For just a moment, however, one part of the river, on another bank... It's flowing differently. Isn't it? No--no, wait. It's normal. Huh.

-End