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.
xxxXxxx
"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.
Victoria, whose parents had died when she was only an infant, had been raised in a children's home until her telekinesis began to develop when she was six. Books and broken toys she wanted would suddenly fly towards her, and, out of her control, scant bowls of food would begin to tremble uncontrollably. They'd shut her up in a sparsely furnished room, afraid of what she would do for over a year until Miss Thrush had found her.
Oscar, as Cockney as Enoch, had grown up in the same end of London. He had been born with his gills, which unsurprisingly doctors had been unable to diagnose. Even on warm days he'd been forced into scarves and high collars and never allowed in public alone. He discovered he could breathe with them when he'd fallen into the river at twelve years old. His older brother, a dock worker, had watched as he slipped into the grimy depths and, Oscar said, had only watched with scorn and disgust on his face as Oscar slipped beneath the surface and did not come up again.
Cara had been an unusually quiet child, and from a young age had discovered she heard things no one else seemed to, quite by accident. It wasn't until she was twelve years old that she had realised they were the thoughts of people around her. In telling her family, she had been met with derision and scorn. Unable to control it and silence the noise, she began to repeat it aloud as people thought it until her very Catholic family were convinced she was possessed. She, like Victoria and many other peculiars, was kept in solitude. When she was fifteen, and overheard the thoughts of her mother and father outside her locked bedroom door, who were planning to be rid of their demonic daughter, she fled through an upstairs window. Miss Nightjar had discovered her wandering Ireland alone at sixteen years old, and brought her to Wales where, under guidance and friendly company that she was not accustomed to, she learned to hone and control her peculiarity.
Whenever it came to Enoch's turn to share, he would say nothing further than, "Ye should see their faces when the corpse just shoots up again." And when pressed, albeit politely, for anything else, he would simply cross his arms, stare out the window and pretend he couldn't feel Cara's familiar strange, and irritatingly sympathetic stare on the back of his head. He wasn't alone in his silence. He'd never heard so much as a peep out of Cecilia or Nigel about their former lives outside of the Loop.
Few peculiars came from happy homes with cheerful stories to tell. But the progress of once broken and scared children without a clue what was happening to them, under the care and protection of an ymbryne was undeniable. Children who were once shunned, abused and isolated opened out of their shells and formed fast friends. Restraint over previously unfamiliar and uncontrollable gifts, telepathy and telekinesis alike, was taught, practiced and embraced. The ymbrynes were mothers, teachers and guardians whose very presence created an atmosphere of safety and lazy contentment in everyday life that few had experienced before.
This odd assortment of peculiars in all shapes and sizes were the only family each of them had now, and the closest thing to friends Enoch had ever had at all. Friends. He supposed he had to call them that at least, after months and years began to pass.
Sometimes he would even join in a game of football or cricket, the likes of which Alexander never refrained from cheating in and almost always turned into a game of seeing who could trip him up. But despite sharing a room with Nigel, whose opinion of him rapidly seemed to lessen as time passed, and semi getting along with a few of the others, Enoch couldn't say he was close with anyone. His peculiarity was confined to small things, using the hearts of creatures the likes of mice and birds, which he had to be sure not to kill anywhere within sight of Nigel or risk an extremely cold shoulder the likes of which he was more accustomed to giving than receiving. While Earnest stuck to anything he touched with bare fingers, Cara read minds and Victoria's telekinesis was improving gradually, Enoch's peculiarity was messy and gruesome and so very different from the others that he still greatly preferred the company of homunculi.
He could have pretended it didn't bother him, and it honestly hadn't at first as this situation was still vastly preferable to the reality he'd lived before, but the irksome frustration grew over time. His very palms itched sometimes, buzzing with an energy they longed to expel into a heart larger than the tiny one of a seagull or the slightly larger one of a red kite. Enoch frequently found himself watching from a corner or across the yard at Victoria who, under Miss Nightjar or Thrush's watch would juggle bottles in mid-air, or Eliza, stretching and bending her limbs to greater extents, and feel a pang of jealousy he wouldn't admit. Not because he particularly liked the idea of being telekinetic, he didn't think he'd give up his peculiarity for anything, but because they could practice. They could hone their skills and improve while he just repeated and repeated the same basic skills he'd mastered years ago.
It wasn't fair.
With 1914, came an occurrence that lessened Enoch's bitterness considerably, or at least distracted him from it. Outside the Loop, Britain was plunged into war. It wasn't uncommon to see or hear planes streaking in formation through the skies on any brief excursions into the present.
Enoch's interest in soldiers and warfare had been roused many years ago when he was a child and heard tell of exploits in Africa and India. His homunculi were not mere dolls or playthings that he preferred the company of over other people, although he did, they were soldiers and he was their general.
This war was not like others. It was not a British invasion or assistance in a strange, far away land but a war in which much of Europe, and indeed the world, had been thrown.
Not for the first time, Enoch found himself thinking what it would have been like to be able to enlist himself. He would have been an unstoppable soldier, and, without a doubt he assured himself, would have been promoted quickly. But there wasn't a point in dreaming those things anymore, the future of peculiar children in timeloops didn't often entail a career.
It didn't particularly bother Enoch now, though. He was too interested in sticking his head out of the loop entrance in time to catch a fighter plane flying overhead, or spot a ship out at sea if he looked for long enough and strained his eyes. For once, he became a scholar of sorts where he'd never cared to learn more than he needed to. As a direct result of his sudden interest in all things military, Enoch's literacy skills improved dramatically. That wasn't to say he couldn't have been an adept reader if he had tried, and by age twelve he had already had more education than either of his parents had. But the humiliation of being a young man of sixteen, and indeed older now save for physically, and having to go back to school under an ymbryne's tutelage despite the considerably more enjoyable environment had pricked Enoch's pride. But now he had found an interest, something aside from preservation formulas and dead bodies that immediately sparked his interest to learn more.
"What are you reading, Enoch?"
The boy sighed and turned his head a miniscule amount from where he'd been leaning on his elbows over a book at the dining room table. Victoria stood at his side, her head and shoulders only just peering over.
"Nothin' you should bother wiv."
"I'm just asking, don't be mean."
"That wasn't mean." Enoch ran a hand through his dark curls before dropping his elbows and lowering his forearms to the table. "I can show ya mean and ye'll see."
"Don't be so grumpy all the time." The little girl pouted and narrowed her eyes in concentration. The book twitched beneath Enoch's outstretched hand and he sighed as it jerked out from beneath his hand and flipped up onto its end so Victoria could read the cover.
Her brow furrowed ever so slightly and she tilted her head curiously at him. "Why are you reading about warships?"
"Never you mind." Enoch replied and caught the book before it could topple backwards onto the wood of the table.
"I hate the war, I'm glad we're away from it."
To Enoch's irritation, Victoria's curiosity did not seem to be sated and she wasn't leaving him alone. He sighed and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye as he tried to go back to his book in peace. "Mmm." He hummed noncommittally and furrowed his dark brown eyebrows ever so slightly.
"It's nasty and loud outside now, I don't know why you like the guns and ships so much."
Here Enoch thought he'd been making himself clear about wanting to be left alone, or at least in quiet. He lifted his head and stared coolly at her.
"Did I do somefin' to you? Can you go away now?"
"Stop being mean!" Victoria's eyes shone with water but she pursed his lips stubbornly and the chair to Enoch's right wobbled menacingly. "Fine!"
Enoch just stared stoically at her retreating form as she ran from the room stubbornly, rolled his blue eyes and returned to his reading.
xxxXxxx
"Steady aim..." Enoch muttered to himself, keeping his eyes trained on his target, a grazing Welsh Black cow across the field. He lay flat on his stomach in the dirt and grass, the top two buttons of his shirt unfastened to free up movement in his shoulders just slightly. The long stick he was envisioning as a P1914 Enfield rifle pressed firmly below his deltoid muscle on his right shoulder as he looked over and through an imaginary sight. "Fire..." He made a soft boom with his tongue to mimic the firing of a gun and sighed, propping himself up on his elbows and letting the stick fall to the ground. What he would have given for a cow heart and something to use it for.
"What are you doing?" Soft laughter behind him made Enoch swear suddenly and almost jump out of his skin. He had not been paying attention to anything around him save the cow, which had raised its head and looked over in slight interest at the noise, and his own imaginary warfare.
Enoch's ghostly pale skin flushed with red suddenly as he rolled onto his side and looked over at the intruder.
Cara stood there, wearing a simple dress of robin egg blue cotton that ended just past her knees. Of all people who could have caught him in the act of pretending to live out a fantasy of being in the army, it would have been the mind reader with a social filter that was completely absent fifty percent of the time. Although, his own social skills, despite the four years of living in the loop, were almost certainly worse.
"You would know, wouldn't you?" Enoch grumbled, pushing his chest out of the dirt and sitting up on his knees in the grass, half squinting up at her against the sunlight that was peering out behind a sea of grey clouds.
"I wouldn't, I didn't look." Cara huffed, sounding the slightest bit offended at Enoch's assumption, an air to which he responded only with a scoff and the raising of one eyebrow.
"Really?"
"Yes, really! I'm not always nosy, ya know?"
"I'm inclined to disagree."
"Fine." Cara's Irish lilt rose slightly in pitch as she fixed Enoch with the focused stare he was so accustomed to seeing on her. "You asked for it then-"
"And you're provin' my point exactly-"
"Aren't you a little old to be playing pretend soldier?"
Enoch pursed his lips stubbornly and looked away from her again, his face still holding the faintest hint of pink. "At least I don't snoop."
"No, you just lurk."
Cara raised a red eyebrow and wrinkled her nose in an effort to keep from laughing at Enoch as he pushed himself up to his feet and dusted his trousers off. Enoch rolled his eyes, the blue irises still fixed behind her head as he determinedly did not look her in the face.
"Do you want somethin'? Either way, go away."
Cara sighed and tugged at the hem of her dress to flatten it against the breeze that had swept up, blowing her hair back from her shoulders and sending Enoch's loose bracers, which hung from his trousers, flapping softly against each leg.
"Miss Thrush asked me to fetch you for dinner, as a matter of fact and I'm sure the birds will be cross if you don't come."
"Fine, I'm coming." Enoch straightened himself up, standing tall as the embarrassment of being caught playing soldier at his age began to ebb away. Without waiting for Cara to follow, he marched away passed her, his feet crunched the Moorish grass underfoot.
She ran a few paces to catch up with him but to Enoch's immense relief didn't try to coax him into a conversation as he had strongly suspected she might.
They walked along for a little over five minutes until the house came back into view, Enoch making a substantial effort to keep his thoughts as centred on warfare and animal hearts to ward off any invasive mind reading. To her credit, he had to admit, Cara's invasiveness had greatly lessened the more years they spent in the loop.
They ate a handsome meal of roast beef and vegetables, prepared by the evening's dinner roster which consisted of Earnest, Cecilia and Nigel, who stuck to preparing the vegetables and bread.
"How long do you think they'll fight for, Miss Nightjar?" Darcy piped up from his seat at the end of the long dining table, and all heads at the table followed him to Miss Nightjar at the head.
"Yes, it's rather nasty, I don't like hearing airplanes out there." Victoria chimed in, wrinkling her nose.
"Then don't go outside the Loop, stupid." Oscar snorted before flinching under the glare Miss Thrush shot him.
"Don't you call anyone that, Oscar, that's enough."
"I think it's great." Enoch muttered, spearing a roast carrot with his fork, popping it into his mouth and chewing thoughtfully.
"Yes, you would. You wouldn't care that people are dying." Eliza rolled her eyes from her spot across from Enoch and beside Nigel. Enoch shot her a look before merely shrugging and pushing a potato around in some gravy.
"Well it doesn't really affect us does it?"
"You're such a-"
"That's enough, everyone, what nonsense to be talking about at the dinner table." Miss Nightjar chided, fixing each offending person with a hard stare that never failed to make them cringe and mutter apologies. "We needn't worry about such things at all, that's precisely the reason we're safe here, children."