Today is my birthday, and so begins a novel.

Comments are appreciated; please be at least one of: Kind, constructive, curious. If constructively critiquing, please skip over the part where you potentially only give feedback and advice commensurate to your judgement of my current skill + 1 and just give all feedback you think I could action on instead (though of course I may not always implement it etc).

I have a significant amount of the thread that links this plot into coherence put together, specifics less so. Suggestions may be incorporated if you mark them as acceptable for use [AFU]. The entire work is also open to heavy editing if the need arises, until such a time as I reach chapter 12, though I will announce edits in new posts if they do happen.

Contact/Discord/etc pending my reaching chapter 6, I'll sort that out if I get that far, which I hopefully will but I don't want to get ahead of myself. Currently this work is being mirrored on AO3 at this link.

Housekeeping - bookkeeping? out of the way, enjoy.

Shards of moonlight reach through a window, striking the face of a sleeping child, lying peacefully beneath a sea of grey linen, submerged in the land of dreams.

This child is named Thyme, though they left the typical path of adolescence long ago.

Two of the walls in this room are filled by floor to ceiling bookcases, covering the entirety of the walls in what was as close to optimal as they had been able to get with the bookcases they’d found here and there.

The bookcases themselves are filled with books on science, psychology, mathematics, chemistry, philosophy, and an assortment of other topics that had produced individual volumes worth keeping on their shelves, ordered by subject and all perfectly upright.

One of the other walls is occupied by the double bed the child is still sleeping on, a painting of two dragons framed and hung above and behind their head, while the other has only the door to the room, on which hangs a long grey overcoat, and a chest of drawers, presumably for clothes and the few personal possessions besides books that they own.

And then the child’s eyes are open, blearily, slowly, fighting to push sleep out of their eyes and mind, wondering why they felt confused, quickly followed by the realisation that the moon had been what pulled them out of a rather nice dream, as opposed to the usual sound of a shrill alarm clock muffled beneath pillow cloth.

Waking up at midnight was not the oddity it would have been for most people. No, the sleep schedule of this particular child had fallen into this particular pattern years ago - perhaps not helped by many a late night spent trying to read just one more book. Indeed, they appreciated rising early - the night air was cool, the people sparse, and the potential for quiet reading and reflection much higher.

Reaching under their pillow to pull the slim rectangular prism out and firmly pressing the button to make sure it wouldn’t chime for far too long in their absence while they got ready for their usual walk to the library, they then began their morning routine in preparation, forcing themselves off of the linen and up into a reluctant stretch before striding over to and opening their drawers.

Inside were stacks of neatly folded and quite similar shirts, jeans, rolled socks, undergarments, and a rather neglected looking tie they’d been forced to wear once before ripping it off and declaring a war on office workers. They weren’t identical, that would have been too cliché; the concern had not been the effort of choice but rather feeling comfortable with whatever they wore. Buying five of everything had just been the obvious choice, as they’d had to explain to their mother when they emerged from the changing room looking like they thought they had four fraternal quintuplets.

Pulling a set out and piling it up neatly on the end of the bed, they then quietly opened the door to their room before entering the bathroom and closing its door behind them, stripping off as they did so in preparation for a shower, which was thankfully warm this morning. It had been a cold autumn this year, with people already dreading the winter, and there had been the occasional incident of the water being quite cold when they had turned it on, resulting in a yelp that had woken their parents before they fell back asleep.

Then the shower was over - quickly, since it didn’t do to waste nor risk waking people - and they were getting dressed, pulling on their more mundane attire alongside the long grey overcoat that they’d gotten a year ago almost immediately after trying it on, and a blue-green scarf tinged with flecks of pure black that had been handed down to them by a now-dead grandparent shortly after they’d been born. Both were, in typical fashion, quite comfortable.

It was as they were walking down the stairs to the kitchen after grabbing their keys and a handful of other essentials that it happened. 

They were about halfway down, thinking idly about whether it was worth it to continue their reading on psychology or if they should put it on hold in favour of a book their father had recommended to them (which was doubtless going to contain nothing of value but would provide conversational fodder for a few days), when their foot inexplicably caught on something and they tripped.

And it was as they were careening towards the ground, eyes wide in realisation that it was going to be their face that hit the floor and they really should have watched their step and wait that hadn’t felt like the stair at all- that they abruptly came to a halt, frozen by some invisible force mid fall.

And they were of course shocked and confused for a moment, adjusting to this new branch of reality, before their higher thinking kicked in and slowly, tentatively, unsure of whether they were going to equally abruptly unfreeze and immediately begin careening again, they tried to move their leg to stand on a step.

Surprisingly, it moved, and they stood.

Less slowly now that it seemed as if the force wasn’t going to cease as soon as they tried to break out of it (though it could be time limited, or likely some other unknown condition), they maneuvred themselves back into a normal standing position and continued to carefully descend the stairs; they would have gone back up to their room, but it wasn’t as if this event altered what they wanted to take with them, or where they would be going.

Only once they finally reached the hopefully safe floor of the living room did they permit themselves to think about whatever had just happened, as opposed to staying in the probable area of any potential further “accidental” trips.

Okay, came one of their mental voices, we should really be thinking about the cause of whatever just happened, starting with that fall - are we sure it wasn’t actually an accidental trip followed by a sudden burst of freezing-in-mid-air magic, as opposed to the more unlikely explanation that it was some potentially malicious magic followed by a burst of helpful magic? I know we think we felt something unusual cause it but it’s not as if people don’t trip unexpectedly with some frequency, stairs only need to be out by 2 millimetres to cause a stumble, even ignoring potential human discrepancies like tiredness or lack of focus. Also, how sure are we that it was magic - it was certainly unusual but we should try and prove it to some extent before running with that hypothesis.

By this point they were out the front door, quietly locking it behind them as they began the ten minute walk to the library.

Yes, came another, there is some potential for stumbling of our own accord, but that’s ignoring that these stairs are unlikely to have changed since we measured them two years ago, not to mention that we were descending and felt a tug on our right leg - that’s not how people usually feel before they accidentally trip, that’s how people feel after the stereotypical bully holds out their leg.

And in terms of magic, a third decided to contribute, this lines up reasonably well with what we read in that rather odd book once, and, more importantly, there’s not really a better hypothesis available - falling down the stairs like that felt weird when it happened, and definitely distinct from other occasional stumbles. No, I’d give magic or some other thing beyond our understanding a high likelihood here.

The book they were referring to was one they had read a year ago, Thyme idly observed; it had seemed rather out there at the time, but it had stuck with them, and this felt like it might be related to some of the concepts the book had gone on about at great length.

The first voice returned. Okay, let’s assume it’s magic for now then. What do we think about freezing mid air - that seems like a significantly bigger violation of physics than everything else, and I don’t see how you would fake it, but I also find it unlikely that it was caused by the same force that tripped us - was it an outside force protecting us? An accidental outburst like the book mentioned? Some odd combination of events, or maybe the tripper also actually wanted to stop us for whatever reason?

They were at the crossing now, halfway down the path to the library, trees and buildings passing by as they tried to keep track of their feet and their mental conversation.

The second voice, quickly becoming the adjudicator of today's internal discussion: Occam's razor tells me that it’s the first or second, I think, though I’m not sure which; hopefully some research will clear that up, though I don’t think the library has many books like that one, maybe none at all. We should probably shelve blame for later, once we know more - and that’s assuming anyone but ourselves is to blame to begin with, I should point out; it may all have been something within us misfiring, and indeed it’s a bit silly to assume that someone thinks we’re important enough to interfere with, any pleading of exceptionalism aside.

The library was close now, a two storey building that had seemingly always had the answers when Thyme needed them most. Hopefully in that, at least, they could trust, no matter prior events.

And then the third voice, jumping back in at the end - okay, so we know what we need to find out, namely (in order of priority) what tripped us, how that was stopped/what froze us, and then if we can find anything, who or what might have done some or all of that besides potentially ourselves. Does that sound good to everyone?

(The voices nodded to themselves, and then it was just Thyme again.)

Thankfully the library was in front of them by then; trying to think well did not mean they couldn’t fall victim to extended rumination, they hadn’t yet trained that out of themselves despite some amount of effort.

Instead they simply took a moment to take in the somewhat stout building before them, and specifically thinking about if it was a good idea to climb the steps before deciding that staying irrationally afraid of stairs based on one unreproducible event which probably hadn't been their fault wasn’t going to do anything except posture to the part of themselves that wanted to feel careful, rather than actually be sensible. Staying more aware of stairs for the day though… that felt reasonable, and so they carefully made their way up to the main entrance to the building, a large revolving door that always spun slightly when the wind blew.

The door gave way easily under their insistent push, and so a moment later they were inside the library, warm light contrasting nicely against the starlight they had just departed from, both soothing in their own way.

On the immediate right of the door was the librarian’s desk, seemingly perpetual home to Ms. Abreso, self-described Queen of the Shelves and Ruler of the Rows, and a friend, if not an especially close one, who seemed to be busy filling some forms out at the moment, though they gave Thyme a wave which they absentmindedly returned.

The library was made up of two floors, the upper one with a balcony that overlooked the lower at about halfway, and was full of orderly rows of shelves sorted according to a supposedly sensible but sometimes indecipherable system that occasionally required a visit to the front desk for assistance. Amidst the rows were scattered chairs and sofas and all manner of other comfortable places to read in what looked to be another terribly confusing system but that always somehow resulted in an armchair being nearby the moment you needed one.

They had asked Ms. Abreso how she had managed that once, and the only response had been a coy wink before she turned back around to sort more books they had returned. Questions about the art of lounge placement, it seemed, were not to be answered by librarians, lest they betray their field.

Or something like that, potentially. Thyme was definitely extrapolating from fiction, rather than concretely weighing reality, but it was a nice thought all the same.

Many an evening had been spent in this place, huddled up in an absurdly cozy armchair with an absurdly interesting book under the watchful eye of Ms. Abreso, sometimes waiting for their parents to return from whatever unimportant task they were doing, sometimes just in the pure pursuit of knowledge. Coming here in search of answers to a likely magical event had not happened before, but it fit into the latter category all the same. It was comforting, in a way, to know that their oldest tradition, stretching back to as soon as they could read, lived on, even now in the midst of what they could feel, on some level at least, was going to turn into a pivotal moment, even if the logic and reasoning hadn’t quite caught up yet.

Pulling themselves out of the past (this was not the time for rumination, they mentally chided themself, not when answers to the present are within reach), they took in the whole of the space, trying to remember where the book they needed had been, all those months ago - though it’s not as if it would have moved, given how orderly Ms. Abreso kept her prized books and how empty the library usually was.

It took longer than they would have liked, but after turning on the spot this way and that, trying to remember their past selves’ path through the library and systematically eliminating options when they couldn’t remember, they eventually decided that it was probably on the second floor near the balcony, and if it wasn’t then they were just going to do a breadth first search until they either found it or it would have been suspicious not to ask the librarian, whichever came first.

About half an hour later, as they were about to give up and resort to consulting Ms. Abreso after trying desperately to find what they remembered as a dark red tome (though given the time gap it could have just been their brain playing fill-in-the-colour and pattern matching from other equally interesting books that had been coloured similarly), they turned around and finally noticed that, for the first time in a not insignificantly long time, one of the other armchairs in the library was occupied.

More specifically, it was occupied by a girly looking boy (or boyish looking girl?) sat quite contentedly reading a dark red book, gently flipping the pages over faster than even they would have been able to read.

“Excuse me”, Thyme finally uttered after standing still for a moment trying to figure out if it was worth the risk of asking a revealing but direct question (their thought processes eventually converging on the fact that at the very least something unusual had probably happened to them too if they needed the same book on the same day after never having met before). “Excuse me, but is that the book on supposed magical history and its potential occurrences within people?”

The boy-and-girl child turned around, seemingly also startled to find out that someone else existed in the library, before making an attempt to compose themselves and then saying “Well yes, it is, but also who are you, I’ve never seen you here before, and why is your expression so painfully neutral, you look as if you’re trying to appear as emotionless as possible despite your being a person, and also did you really have to just pull me out of the book so abruptly, I know you’re probably also very confused as to what the chances are of both of the two patrons needing the exact same book out of thousands and I know I would also be painfully curious but it really is quite an interesting read, I was really engrossed in this section about channelling-”

The day, it seemed, had refused to decide on a normal weirdness deviation and was going to be quite content rocketing upwards for a while.