a struck link // christopher lightwood {3}

seven // sunflowers

{ correspondence: Alan, to Pluto. }

Monday, November 30th, 1903

Pluto,

Thank you for the letter you sent. Brigitte and I are still trying to figure out just what we plan to do with it. Neither of us think that if affects our particular situation much, but it may make things interesting for you. The future ahead may, in many ways, no longer match the future of our world. Though perhaps that means that people who would want answers about the future from you may realize that and leave you alone. I find it interesting that no one has come to ask me those questions yet. I am as much a time traveler as you, and have lived longer, seen more things. I wondered if perhaps it's because of these psychic powers we've begun to think you might have, but Brigitte tells me that her own ability to see is limited in such a way that it wouldn't help much unless you were trying to predict events in the very near future. She tells me, going on her own abilities, any future-seeing power wouldn't extend beyond a month or two at absolute most.

At any rate, we've got a few more weeks planned here in France, but if there's any reason you need us to come back to London, just let us know.

Love,

Dad

< & >

{ castle. }

Lucie had no idea why Pluto wanted to talk to her, much less so badly that xe would actually invite her for tea. Tea! As if xe were Anna Lightwood, who invited people for tea all the time.

She'd never seen the house Pluto lived in before. While not the eccentric cottage lair Lucie liked to imagine (she fully intended to fit Pluto into The Beautiful Cordelia someday, she just wasn't sure how), it proved to be cozy and pretty and homelike, and the landlady who met her and sent her up to the second floor seemed like someone with whom she could be friends.

Lucie found Christopher already upstairs, sunk into an apparently man-eating sofa, his feet pulled up onto the seat so they weren't dangling above the floor.

"I got a letter from Brigitte and Da," Pluto said, rummaging in a cabinet. "Coffee? Tea? Parker House rolls? I don't have people over a lot, I'm not entirely sure what I have...anyway. I want your advice on magic."

"Magic?"

"I'm sure you heard about the whole well-now-I-might-not-be-from-this-dimension debacle."

"From Christopher, yes. He was talking about...test samples?"

"I had to sacrifice the trimmings from my fringe for that," Pluto muttered darkly. "Anyway, I wrote to Da and Brigitte about it, and among the other things they said in their response, Brigitte basically confirmed that she has some limited psychic ability of her own."

Lucie looked at Christopher. He looked back at her and shrugged.

"So I guess what I'm saying is I've been trying to figure out for a while whether I actually do or whether I don't. This has kind of confirmed that I do. So now I want to ideas about what I should do with that. From some people who aren't Brigitte."

"What's Brigitte saying?"

"She says I should just leave it be," Pluto said. "Let it run its course. That's...probably the best idea but I...I want to know more, I want to know exactly what it does, I want to know how much of it is her and how much of it is the liminal state I'm in and how much of it is just...me. Just me being a fluke accident. That probably happens sometimes."

"Well," said Lucie, "what do you do? You said it's magic, clairvoyance, what kind exactly is it?"

"I...the best way that I can describe it is that I see things I shouldn't be able to see, and I know things I shouldn't be able to know. Sometimes someone says something, or does something, or something is just...there in a space and I just know, this is important. This is supposed to be here. I don't know why it's going to be important, but I know that it is. Or I just get this hunch, this vibe...go here. Don't go here. Look at this. Ask that. It's the kind of thing that you can pass off as, y'know, I've been doing basically investigative work since I was fifteen. And that's...kind of just how I've assumed. That's what Brigitte says comes from her. But she says...because of the way I've chosen to be neither just a Shadowhunter nor just one of her kind, I've put myself into a sort of liminal state. Like standing on a border, or a bridge. And it means I start attracting things to me. And I start seeing beyond my given ability to see. It means...effectively, it means that I see magic."