Clockwork

In the deceptive province of my birth, I had seen yes turn to no...

So exhausted, and so awake. Hopefully I can go out into the night and come back with something for writing. Amber Poe bubbles like acid on my lips; I'm so close to her after so long. I can almost reach out and touch...

But there's something else golden and sparkling, with many golden teeth, just in the corner of my vision. Could it be the griffin cast in precious metals that C discovers down the chain of a hazy future, flashlit and forgotten in the dust of shuttered warehouse (or, is that a bunker? Is that a subterranean dark gripping you, dear, that you are not afraid of?), his throne inscribed all around in a tongue she doesn't speak? Or, fragments of the time engine that A's grandfather built and lost some steps outside the stream of days? Perhaps a glimpse of the wondrous and terrible treasure that broods on an uncharted island hemmed by the stormy waters of the Great Northern Sea. Or maybe it is something else entirely.

Wish me luck; it's going to be a long night.

But here, the Snow Queen's cold, prodigious will commands me, and your face has lost its power; dissolving to its opposite like the rest.