Death's Puppeteer

3rd April 1901 (1911-1914)

I promised I hadn't abandoned this baby! This chapter may be a little shorter than most but it's where it felt appropriate to leave it. I've also decided to add the timeframe in the present alongside the loop date for the titles to add more variety and context.

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"Enoch! Hey, wake up!"

Enoch woke suddenly in a cold sweat to someone shaking him by the shoulders. His skin was damp and sticky with sweat and he was trembling slightly as he shot upright in his own bed in his bedroom, in his own Loop. The room spun as he tried to get his bearings. Nigel was standing beside his bed, messy haired and in his nightclothes staring at Enoch like he'd never seen him before.

"You were shouting. 'Faith' and cursing and a whole bunch of...unintelligible stuff."

"Was I?" The empty eyes and the bizarre, cold, and nightmarish nature of his dreams spun around in Enoch's head and for a long second it was all he could do to regain control over his breathing. Then suddenly he snapped back to reality and he scowled, humiliated by the fact that he'd been caught out in a sleeping moment of weakness he was too proud to want to acknowledge.

Enoch clenched his jaw and tried to straighten his back, jerking his shoulder away and pursing his lips as he looked determinedly at the wall instead of his roommate.

"We've all had them." Nigel spoke again, a comment to which Enoch paid no heed and just glared at the wall. His hands had curled into fists in the tangle of covers over his legs and a bead of sweat was threatening to run into his eye before he furiously wiped it away from the curls that stuck to his forehead.

The older boy sighed and ran a hand through his messy hair as he turned, muttering to himself, and crawled back into his bed on the other side of the room.

When he was satisfied that he couldn't be seen, Enoch let out a long, slow breath and dropped backwards. His head hit the pillow with a soft thump and he stared up at the ceiling, his eyes adjusting to make out the shapes of the beams in the darkness. Unwilling to close his eyes and try to sleep again, he rolled onto his side, reached under the bed and pulled out one of his clay soldiers. Enoch pressed his thumb to the little chest and the homunculus sprung to life in his hand. He released it and it immediately began to explore the whole expanse of his bed, climbing over his ankle, with some difficulty, and scouting out the territory. Enoch had been in Miss Nightjar and Miss Thrush's Loop for over a year now and it was still surreal at times like this to think about time passing as it always did for everyone but them.

The days passed and melted together so smoothly after a while that a whole month could pass before they knew it had. Someday, in the not too distant future, his own little sister would be older than he was, physically at least, someday she really would think he had died somewhere and never know the truth. Which she couldn't. One day she would forget about the things he could do, about the dolls he made dance for her, about the little toy unlike anything the other kids had that made her laugh when she was sick. Enoch and his peculiarities would be nothing but a distant memory that any normal would assume had been exaggerated and made up in time because how could it have been real?

Then one day, everyone Enoch had ever known in his youth, his family, the good and the bad would all be dead and gone in some future time that Enoch would probably never see while he, and all the other peculiar children remained preserved in their youth for who knew how long, safe from the creatures that hunted them and from exposure to normals. A place that accepted him.

For the most part.

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Over time, the stories of the other children began to come out. Though amongst each other most of them already knew the lives of the others, even the second or the third retelling did not seem old to them.