A bit from a thing:

[gen_is_gone]

Ushas was being morbid again. This was far from out of the ordinary, with Ushas, but it got irritating after a while. She kept droning on and on about her Cousin who’d been executed for treason, how he’d been force-regenerated until he’d just keeled over, a man no more two thousand and two, dead at the High Council’s feet. It would have been easy to offer sympathy for her, but she was too fascinated by the mechanisms of his death to be all that concerned that he’d died. Ushas could be like that.

Theta Sigma rolled over, sat up and brushed the grass from his tunic, got to his feet and walked away. It was as easy as any method for getting her to shut up.

“Are you even listening to me?” she yelled to his back, when her brain caught up to her mouth and realized that the person she’d been talking at was making an escape.

“No”. He went for honesty rather than excuses on the basis that it would be better for all involved if Ushas was mad for a day, than if he made some excuse that made her believe he cared at all, and seek to further pursue the subject. Theta thought it best not to encourage her when she started in on death or experimentation.


The day was glorious. Despite the better part of an hour devoted to Ushas pontificating with unbecoming relish on a particularly gruesome subject, he was rather pleased at his call to skive off. The new professor of Ancient Cosmology and pre-Rassilonite History was, in Theta’s mind, overenthusiastic about the subject to an alarming degree. Better to let the woman ramble at the poor rule-abiding idiots wasting their time indoors.

He left Ushas to sulk under the silver-leaved aspen and let his feet take him where they would. He sucked in the scent of turned spring soil as he walked, eyelids half-closed as the wind teased the curls in his hair. By the time he’d left Ushas out of sight and hearing, with a few decent-sized hills between them, he was sweating just slightly in the heat. Cresting another mound of dark umber grass, he flopped to the ground again and looked around. In the distance, he could see the shine of the Dome, impossible to spot until it blinded the eyes with its glare. Beyond the Dome, if one were to squint, on a good day one might see the faint outlines of the pauper cities, clustered outside the glittering bubble. Smoke rose from them constantly, Theta knew, along with a royal stench, but from here it was difficult to tell.

He hadn’t been outside the Dome since he was a Loomling, and even then, it was a rare occurrence. Brax had taken him to a freakshow on his hundredth Name-day, and then of course there were the days with Kan-po, and the time Koshei had dared him to slip out the gates on his own, to prove he couldn’t do it. Theta had, and Koshei had fumed for weeks. And one night-but he cut off that thought, too creepy for a day like this, with the suns pouring light and heat from directly above and just above the horizon.

There wasn’t all that much to see, really. The mayflies in their cramped cities all looked the same, faces pinched and clothes worn. He spared a moment of distant horror at the concept of living for so short a time. Poor things! What kind of life must they have, with barely a century to experience it? But that was something Ushas would think of, and he shook his head as if to tumble those ideas from out of his mind.

Theta breathed in deeply again, huffed a dreamy sort of sigh, and pulled a flask from an inside pocket. The wine was still mostly chilled, and refreshing after the hike. He gulped it faster than maybe he should have, thirsty as he was, and wiped his mouth on the back of hand, just because Brax wasn’t around to disapprove.

“Can I have some?”

Theta twitched more violently than he would ever admit later, and turned guiltily to see who was doing the asking. He stared. A little girl, couldn’t be more than fifty, dark skinned and round faced, had apparently made her way up to his side without his notice. He glared at her.

“Wine isn’t for children,” he said shortly, indicating (or so he hoped) that she’d go away without fuss. How had a Loomling this young wandered so far without a Cousin or a caretaker of some kind? The girl stuck out her lower lip.

“My Gran lets me drink wine sometimes,” she batted her eyelashes. Theta rolled his eyes.

“Do I look like your Gran?”

“No,” she said. “Nobody looks like my Gran”.

“I’m sure,” he snapped. “I’m busy. Don’t you have a grownup somewhere looking for you?”

“You don’t look busy,” the girl said, ignoring his question completely. He closed his eyes and let out a slow breath. “If I give you a sip of wine, will you go away and not bother me?”

She shrugged. Theta chose to accept this as an affirmative. He handed her the flask. The girl raised it to her lips and practically chugged from it, until he reached over and yanked it from her hands.

“That’s enough. You’ll make yourself sick”.

The girl lay on her stomach, chin in hands. “I’m Iris,” she said. “Who’re you?”

“I thought you said you’d go away if I gave you something to drink,” he said in resigned annoyance.

“Didn’t say anything. You assumed I’d go away”. Iris grinned at him. Her gray tunic had the red smudges of grass stains on the seat, and Theta noticed her shoes were gone, her stockings stained as well. Her hair was bunched in place on either side of her head by what he presumed to be two very sturdy white ribbons, and she had even more grass stuck to the top of her head.

“Why in the name of the Other are you so dirty?” he asked. She shrugged again. It seemed to be a habit of hers.

“I was rolling down the hills,” she replied. “It’s fun”. She rolled over on her back and fidgeted in the grass, wiggling her toes.

“So. Who are you,” she asked again.

Theta gave up and scooched to face her. “I’m Theta Sigma, Prydonian Third Decade, of House Lungbarrow,” he held out a hand. Iris took it.

“Iris Wildthyme, daughter of Sally Wildthyme, of my Gran’s house” she said imperiously, and formally took his hand, shaking it vigorously.

“Daughter?” Theta repeated, brought up short. “You mean you’re a mayfly? But then how did you get inside the Dome?” Iris looked affronted.

“I’m not a fly! Anyway what would you know about anything, Mr. Theta Sigma of House Wheelbarrow?”

“Lungbarrow,” he muttered.

“Whatever. I’m going to be a Time Lady”. Oh. Well that would be it.

“So you’re a Scholarship girl,” he asked, with sudden interest, and not a small amount of pity.

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “I am not! What’s a Scholarship?”

“It just means that you came to the Academy from outside. That your family aren’t Time Lords. It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he added quickly. “Much”. Iris looked puzzled.

“What’s the Academy?”

“How could you be training to be a Time Lady and not know about the Academy? For that matter, again, how could you be living inside the Dome and not know of the Academy?”

“Wow,” said Iris, “You ask more questions than I do”.

Suddenly burningly curious, Theta pressed her. “No, really, how?”

“My Gran,” she said simply, shrugging again. Theta laughed, perhaps not kindly. “Oh I’m sure your Gran knows all about being a Time Lord”.

“Lady,” Iris cut in.

“Oh, absolutely, Time Lady” he nodded along, mock serious. “I’m sure she’s studied the Scrolls of Rassilon, and understands all about temporal theory, and can unlock the Vortex all by herself”.

“Exactly,” said Iris brightly. “Well, I dunno about the Scrolls of Rassilon, but Gran knows way more about the Web of Time and how to travel the Vortex and the in-tri-ca-cies of the fourth dimension”. Theta gaped at her.

“Are you joking,” he asked, half-annoyed and half-baffled. “Did a girl called Ushas put you up to this?”

Iris wrinkled her nose. “What kind of a name is Ushas?”

“A name for stuck up dilettantes obsessed with dissecting things,” he muttered. “Not important. Who sent you? This is just a stupid prank, isn’t it? Because you aren’t making any sense”.

Iris looked suddenly furtive. Theta pounced on the opportunity. “Who was it, hmm? Someone sent you”.

“You have to promise not to tell. Really promise, with blood,” she whispered—melodramatically it seemed to him. He waved a hand dismissively.

“Of course. Whatever you want, Iris of Wildthyme”.

“That’s not my name,” she snapped, then looked down. “Promise?”

He sighed. “I promise”. She held out her left hand expectantly. Theta stared at it for a moment, then it clicked. “Oh right, sorry. Blood oath and all”. He stuck out his own left hand. She pulled a pin from her hair--so that’s how she’d been keeping it in place, he thought—and poked his palm with it. A drop of orange-red beaded up, and he gasped at tiny, sharp pain. He hadn’t quite expected her to do it. She did the same to her own hand, then clasped his, and shook once, firmly for such a little girl.

“Well then,” Theta prompted, acutely aware of the sting in his palm, and suddenly also aware of everything else around him, from the heat rolling beads of sweat down his forehead, to the mild itch of the grass on his knees, to Iris’s soft, dry, very small hand in his.

“My Gran sent me to spy on you,”

He frowned. “Your Gran sent you to spy on Time Lords?” he asked, the How briefly overwhelming the Why.

“No,” Iris corrected, her voice still lowered as though someone could here them, alone though they were in the sunshine. “She sent me to spy on you, Theta Sigma. But I was hot and thirsty and I forgot I wasn’t supposed to let you know I was here”. She looked quite miserable, all of a sudden, and Theta had the bizarre impulse to put an arm around her shoulders. It was quickly drowned by more pressing matters, however.

“Why would anyone want to spy on me? Especially a mayfly?”

“I told you,” grumbled Iris, “I’m not a fly. I’m a Time Lady in-training. And Gran saw the future around you”.

“Ordinary people aren’t supposed to Gaze,” Theta said distantly. He was latching onto irrelevant details and he knew it, but felt the need to say it anyway.

“Oh, Gran’s not ordinary,” said Iris, “But she doesn’t like to anyhow. She says it gives her terrible headaches”.

He giggled a bit, mind still a blank. “Oh I’d imagine it would. Takes twelve trained Seers to properly grasp even the slightest bit of the Unmapped future, but your Gran can do it all by herself as long as she keeps plenty of willowbark on hand”.

Iris looked puzzled, but didn’t comment. Theta came down from the heavens. “Why though?” he stared at her, jumping back to the point. “Why would anybody want to spy on me?”

Iris shrugged again, the little motion endearing and infuriating at once. “How should I know? Gran doesn’t tell everybody all the things she knows. That would be rather silly”.

“Of course. Very silly of her. Tell me Iris, what are you going to tell your Gran about all of this?”

“Erm, probably that you skipped class today to play outside?” she looked down. “I shouldn’t have talked to you.”

Theta sat back, trying and failing to take it in. “Well I’m glad you did. If someone’s spying on me I think I want to know all about it. And what I’m going to do someday that makes Gazing at me so interesting”. He looked at Iris again, young and dirt-stained, epitome of innocence—or so he’d thought.

“Why you,” he asked her, anticipating the shrug this time.

“I’m young and sweet, Gran said. And small, and good at hiding. And I like sneaking inside the Dome. It’s not that hard”. It had been nearly impossible for him. He wondered what her trick was.

His mind raced and he could think of no immediate solution. “Eum, tell you what, Iris. Would you like to keep your little job?” he asked. She nodded. “Well, then why don’t you tell your Gran that everything went fine today, and don’t say anything about us talking. I won’t say anything about you to the Imperial guard, and you can tell me all about your Gran in return. Sound fair?”

His voice rose a bit at the end, and she clearly noticed it when she said, “I’m not a baby. And I’m not going to tell you about my Gran so you can spy on her—”

“But she’s spying on me! She started it,” he retorted. Iris glared at him. “I wasn’t finished, Dummy. I promise I’ll ask Gran not to spy on you anymore if you can let me in sometimes. Not,” she said hurriedly, “to spy on anybody, just to play. I like hanging around inside the Dome. It’s nice”.

He looked at her, and thought about it. She squirmed uncomfortably while he deliberated. Eventually he came to a decision.

“Blood-oath that you won’t spy on me again, that you’ll at least ask your Gran?”

“Blood-oath,” she said solemnly, and they repeated the gesture. “I want to make sure,” Theta said, and put his palms to the sides of her temples. She jerked away. “I said I promise! We did an oath and everything!”

“Yes, well that might work for children and your Gran, but I want to know you’ll keep to your promise,” he said. She folded her arms, obviously unhappy, but she let him lay his hands on her head.

Her breath hitched at the invasion of privacy, but Theta didn’t stay long. The whole telepathy concept creeped him right out, and rummaging in a little girl’s head held no appeal. He satisfied his doubts, and lifted his hands away, but not before something slipped from her head to his.

“Hey…” he said, woozily, as Iris continued to frown at him. “Wha’ was tha—” and tipped gently over.



He woke with sun in his eyes, squinting. A little girl leaned over him worriedly, and poked him in the face. He swatted her finger away.

“What happened?” he asked the girl. Iris, that was her name, he recalled.

“I dunno. You were drinking a lot of wine and then you fainted,” Iris said. “Are you okay?”

Theta rubbed at his forehead. “Yes, I’m sure I just got too hot, or something.”

He stared at Iris. Iris stared back. “I’m sorry, who are you again?” he mumbled, still light-headed.

“I’m Iris Wildthyme. I’m a Scholarship girl from where the mayflies live. I’m going to be a Time Lady”.

Theta blinked, and studied her face. It held nothing but slightly worried confusion and earnestness.

“Theta Sigma, Prydonian Third Decade, of the House Lungbarrow,” he muttered, passing a hand in front of his face. “Nice to meet you Iris”.

She grinned at him, showing many small teeth. “Maybe you could show me around? It would be nice to have a friend”.

He sighed, but got to his feet and pulled her up as well. “Alright, Iris Wildthyme. I’ll be your friend”.