The Defender of Time

One

BEFORE YOU READ:

The following story is broken into four parts. The first part is slower than the others. Part Two starts at Chapter Seventeen, which is where most of the action starts building up. Thank you for your support and for reading!

-Annie <3

PART ONE

In which she starts anew.

December 22, 1892

"Just sit there and look sad."

She looked forward toward her friend, her arms folded knowingly and her head cocked a bit to the left in waiting.

"Like this?" He pouted comically, his large head wrinkling with the effort as he adjusted himself in the snow.

Alessia Oswald laughed merrily, watching him as he earned himself nothing more than concerned looks from passersby. "No, Straxy!" She giggled. "More like this." She sat herself up to her full height, pulling the hood of her cloak over her snow kissed dark hair and pointing her chin toward a woman who was walking by with her son. "Excuse me, miss," she said softly. "My mother is ill, may you please spare some change for her medicine?"

The woman hesitated for a moment, before smiling warmly and dropping a silver coin in Alessia's hand. "Just like that, Strax."

The butler, her longtime friend and current student in Street Urchinism sat astonished, watching her observe her newly earned wages. "Your mother is not ill," he said matter-of-factly. "Is she still alive?"

"Some things are for me to know, not you," she responded curtly. "Plus, it is not proper etiquette to ask a dead girl about how alive her mother is."

Her voice remained steady over the carefully placed lie. Obviously, Alessia was very much alive, but Strax did not have to know that. Plus, it was a bit funny to watch him try to figure out her existence.

"I'll make you a deal," she said, turning her body to face him fully, the snow crunching under her weight. "If I earn you two more coins, you have to take me for a ride in the carriage tomorrow night."

He mulled over the idea before nodding sharply. "Deal."

And so, expertly, she turned back toward the bustling streets, put on her best "I'm poor and my mother is ill" face, and briskly earned two more shiny silver coins. Dropping them in Strax's hand, she smiled at him and he smiled back, although she couldn't tell if that was due to the money in his hand or maybe he was even having fun.

"I'll see you tomorrow night, Straxy," she said, standing up to brush herself off. She almost reached out to help him up too, before realising he was convinced the devil would eat him up if she touched him. Her hand on his shoulder a month and a half ago had caused two weeks of pointing a blaster at her whenever she arrived.

Alessia was a smart girl. At the age of seven, she spent her days climbing from windows and meeting Strax outside the house he worked in every night, her only friend besides her mother, who was, for the record, very much alive and not ill. According to the general public, Alessia did not exist. She didn't attend any school, she lived on a mattress next to her mother's bed, and she knew very well that her close friend would be the first to unknowingly blow her cover. So, she'd done what any girl would do. Convinced him she had died in 1812 and she was only visible to him because he was lonely. He fell for it, somehow missing the fact that every interaction she had with people involved them seeing and talking to her, and kept her a secret.

Her walk home employed all of the alleys that no-one knew existed. She crept through the dark, cramped spaces, catching occasional glimpses of families eating their warm dinners through back windows. Her stomach grumbled, seriously hoping her mother had food to spare for her tonight. She wasn't in a mood to be stealing, her time with Strax had put her in an unusually good mindset, and she snagged a candy cane from a nearby Christmas wreath, sliding it into her pocket as a gift for her mother, since she supposed she should probably get her something.