She’s staring the fobwatch down but it only sits on her desk with an impossible indifference, continuing to exist. How is a small metallic object warm to the touch after a walk through the wintry afternoon?
Her attention span is put to work when her friend sits in front of her, immediately turning around in his seat. Jaylon is handsome in his own way, she concedes. Everyone is beautiful, she muses, in their own way, too. He’s got the rouge-ish look, black stubble and shoulder length black hair. His eyes are dark- and she’s a stickler for eyes, loves looking into anyone’s- and she thinks he’s got one of the best dark browns she’s seen.
He wears a black hoodie all the time, unzipped and printed with what seems like a white sign of the sun printed on the fabric. He wears rock band affiliated t-shirts, and always jeans with normal converse. It amuses her, his constant streams of hats and his “invader zim’s” Gir belt. He’s always got plenty of metal rings on, the look completed with his ‘vintage ’80 shades’ that he treasures. Everyone has their own little treasures, even I.
They’re best friends, always hanging out in the mornings and sixth period by some weird chance of fate. She thinks his innuendoes and jokes are funny, and perhaps he just needs someone to understand his constant anger of their choir teacher. Someone he likes to tell jokes to, who won’t laugh at him and not listen, to laugh with him.
Maybe, though, it’s good to be laughed at every once in a while. She decides firmly. Or that’s my conscious speaking through the humility of Christmas Present.
“Sup.” Jaylon greets warmly with a wave of his hand, but his face is anything but. Ears and cheeks pink, he looks like he came out of Jack Frost’s breath. Knowing the weather, he might just have.
They’re in 6th period Spanish two, and although sometimes she likes to believe she knows more Spanish then him, she’ll admit she has no knowledge of current or past culture. They teach one another, in some ways, and the best days are when you can catch them both in a good mood during a day they have a sub for choir.
The sleezeball that is their choir teacher is constantly letting them both down with his ‘I can entertain a crowd’ like-mannerisms. They both know Mr.Parrott only acts like such a big dog because for now he is, but when they get older, they’ll realize he’ nothing but a bully- a Chihuahua in the scale of things.
“Hey, Jaylon.” She replies, leaning over, two arms deep into the mess of her book bag. He leans over her desk to see what she’s doing, why she’s working so hard to dig inside the cramped thing.
“You’d think that thing was-“
Everything changes.
“-bigger on the inside.”
I’m in class someplace far away but just as home. There’s a man pacing ahead, looking at what resembles a chalkboard in Earth terms. There is a boy besides me, on the right, snickering, and I feels an unfamiliar surge of affection for him- But I don’t know him, and yet I do.
The table we’re sitting at is in the back corner of the class, meant for two people. It’s covered in things I can’t possibly hope to make sense of, let alone read.
“Ennea,” the boy states and I almost fear he’s speaking to me in a foreign language. “Do you see Ushas?” And for some reason I can understand him and without thinking my vision moves to a small dark-haired girl. The teacher is watching her and she is struggling, struggling because the thing before her seems to look like a beaker filled with a bubbling compound.
I know enough about chemistry, and yet I don’t, to know something’s about to happen.
“Watch out!” I shout- unexpected even to myself- and it’s not exactly my voice, it’s younger and older, but the somehow same. The mixture bubbles and the explosion is in slow motion as everyone ducks beneath their desks.
“Danniele?” The voice is Jaylon’s, and she can breathe easy now when she hadn’t been only a moment before.
“I’m fine. Just a…” Dream? Vision? Flashback? It can’t be a flashback. “Day-dream is all. I was reminiscing over what you said, it reminded me of something.” She can’t recall when, but the pencil and binder she had been searching for a moment ago is on her desk, before her.
“You brought the watch today!” He exclaims, picking up the piece of metal off of her desk. She had placed it there after she came in, the weight somehow odd in her pocket, as if she were extra sensitive of it now when she hadn’t been before.
“Yeah.” She paused, then corrected him. “Fobwatch.”
“Sorry.” He apologizes, exasperated, with a roll of his eyes. Danniele sighed, watching as he turned it in his hands. “It’s warm. Any idea if this means something?” His thumb slides over the runes on the surface and she shrugs with a look that says, How should I know?
“Strange, huh? It’s warm all the time. Maybe it’s just… different.” Danniele remarks curiously, but something about the watch is off. Something strange, as if she’s never really looked at it until now. His fingers find the clasp and he’s about to open it-
“Don’t!” She whispers furiously, and the students around them glance- some glare or look on with curiosity- at them, attention drawn by the commotion. Jaylon’s fingers are one movement from peeling the Fobwatch open, but she holds a hand out expectantly for it. “Just don’t open it. I don’t want it opened.”
“Why not?” He says begrudgingly, and sets it on her desk with a pout. “Maybe we could find something about where it's from. Besides, it is pretty old.” Grabbing the watch, she quickly pulls her hand into her hoodie’s pocket, but then-
It happens again.
It’s dark and something is so wrong. Timelines are being messed with but not dangerously. As if time is being rewritten. I almost regret ever picking up this damned machine- a part of the console sparks in resignation- Sorry. I do regret picking up this damned temperamental sentient being, the way it just can’t help me work!
There’s something wrong with its coloring, the white circle-things are not-so-white now, a beige or egg-white color as if the machine is sick. The Capsule is shaking and I can’t shake them! No matter what point in time or space, no matter, I can’t run fast enough. Someone has misplace my timeline and I only have one solution.
It’s a good thing I like this body, because after I tell Christian the plan, I’m going to be stuck in it for a long, lo-
When she glances at the clock, class can’t end fast enough it seems.
She runs out of there when the bell rings, the rest of the day tedious and silent. Her friends glance at her with worry, some of them trying to dig up a conversation, but instead of rich bits of stories, they only come up with empty space.
When she rides the bus home, she examines the watch. It was warm, but it should have been cold. The face of the watch is inscribed with circular runes, beautiful and Danniele felt if she just looked close enough, she could read them. It had a strange feel about it, as if she could almost hear it whispering with a soft tick-tock. Every little whisper was just too soft to hear, begging to be opened and heard.
Danniele didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t trust things that whispered in dark, unseen places, things like nightmares and dreams.
YOU ARE READING
Moral'verse
FanfictionThis is very, very AU. I wrote it for a friend, but decided to publish it. Things aren't the same, no one is. It isn't the right Doctor, it isn't even the right companions. But even though it's changed, even though everything is different, it's st...
