Midnight Calling

❍ 𝟔 - 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐖𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬

Mangled wings flopped open onto the crushed remains of Noon's clock.  Pursing his lips, Midnight blew off the tiny yellow splinters clinging to his palm. 

The child dropped to her knees within an eddy of stardust and gently picked up the wrenched cuckoo to cradle in her hand. Her glance flickered to the now silent Twelfth Hour whose eyes were closed in a pale, expressionless face. Only the edges of Twelfth's golden robes moved in the twinkling wisps of wind.

"Do you believe me now, Zoe?" Midnight said. "Clocks are fragile and easily broken."

The girl leveled him with a curious gaze. "Did you make her go to sleep?"

Midnight nodded.  The child stood, gently slipping the cuckoo into a pocket at the front of her jumper.

"She was really, really mad at you. She said there would be kay-oz. Why did she say that?"

The question carried through the silence like a haunted echo.

Midnight looked down at the child. She did not appear to expect an answer from him, gazing as she was upon the sun and moon overhead, seemingly lost in her thoughts.  Her eyes, so like her mother's, were surprisingly calm.  He'd expected hysterics of some sort after witnessing what happened with Noon. Why wasn't the girl crying or throwing a --what was it called again?-- a tantrum.  Didn't mortal children do that all the time? But Zoe was proving to be an exception.

Indeed.

Why hadn't she reacted other than clutch that toy contraption of hers tighter to her chest when her mother had transported them to this place earlier?

"Is the raven here?" had been the question she'd asked when they'd first arrived at the Circle, her glossy black curls bouncing as she glanced about.

"Do you mean this?" The umbrella tucked under his arm transformed back into his cane. He raised the carved raven head handle to her.

The girl had shaken her head.

"No, it was sitting in the tree outside." The child looked around some more. "Is mommy here?" 

And wasn't that the most intriguing of all. Had she known all along he wasn't who he appeared to be when he'd arrived at her school, her day care --another quaint expression-- to fetch her?

He'd successfully used Eleventh's memories to learn where Zoe would be during the day as well as to assume the guise of her mother's mortal human appearance. Not knowing what garments Twenty-third had worn that day, Midnight had chosen the last garb Eleventh had seen her in. Blue jeans of Levis and a Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon tee.

The dark side of the moon. How apropos.

So what was it that had given him away? Was it her mother's change of clothes? If the child had known from the start that he wasn't Twenty-third, it meant she'd been playing along with his ruse and willingly left the day care with him.

He would never have expected such a scenario.

As there'd no longer been any need to continue with pretense...

Twenty-third's long, auburn tresses he'd donned shrunk back and frosted to silver, her delicate facial features growing craggy and timeworn. Midnight's beard and brows twirled lightly in the breeze as his appearance returned to that of his true self.

Though he'd stood there in all his magnificence with ebony robes and silver staff, the child had been totally nonplussed. She'd barely spared him a second glance.  In fact, she'd yawned and rubbed at her eyes.

Could he have ever expected a reaction like that?

But then he hadn't expected either to see what he had come back to after leaving the child here alone to fetch Noon. He'd returned to the Circle with the Twelfth Hour in tow to find the girl quietly seated at the center of the Circle, still holding her toy.