Penwick

The brass instrument on Rafael's desk whirred softly in the lamplight, its intricate dials marking years, days, and hours, but not those left in the day. This clock, Tiko claimed, showed the time remaining in one's life.

The clock's hands moved with measured precision, their meaning indecipherable except to the trained eye. Time enough, he thought to himself, still time enough... Time enough to bridge the gaps. Time enough to right the wrongs. Yet never time enough to reclaim all he had forfeited.

Rafael listened to the soft whirring of the brass instrument for a while, wondering as he often had, if Tiko was telling the truth about the clock. Memisi weren't beyond cheating and so they likely weren't beyond lying either. Then again, he doubted Tiko would covet the instrument so much if it was merely a mechanism intent on deception.

Niko, another Memisi out of the four in his service, had been sent to deliver a discreet summons to Santiago. They really were marvelous creatures who could be almost as stealthy as a demiguise, if they so desired, and on this particular mission, stealth and discretion were of the utmost importance. No prying eyes or wagging tongues would mark Santiago's arrival if his younger brother possessed the wisdom to heed Niko's instructions. Together, they would take the long route, through narrow corridors and creaking doors known only to a few ghosts and the most mischievous of students, well away from anyone who might spark rumours about favouritism or family entanglements.

Rafael's gaze drifted from the clockto the picture frame on his desk. A younger Rafael stared back at him, handsome and insufferably cocky, grinning at the camera whilst cradling an infant swaddled in white blankets. There was a glimpse of his father in the background.

Baby Santiago had been asleep in his arms, his small fissts curled against his chest.

Rafael's throat tightened. The picture had been taken just weeks before everything had unravelled. Before the wandering days, before the excess, before the many years that had blurred into a feverish haze of unfamiliar places and strangers.

He had missed Santiago's first steps. The first spark of accidental magic had reached him only through secondhand accounts, the details already worn smooth by retelling. His brother's Sorting ceremony had passed without him. Every milestone had slipped through his fingers like sand whilst he wasted away in corners of the world that held nothing worth keeping. Many miserable years had passed before he had clawed himself out of that black pit.

Yet there had been moments, a few pinpricks of light in the dark.

A glimpse through a cafe window, Santiago must have been seven or eight, walking between their parents, small hands gripping their mother's. Rafael had nearly approached them that day, but shame and guilt had kept him away.

He remembered two more moments like it. Once in Diagon Alley, and once in Wyrdlan, but always from a distance, always in disguise, always silent. He had never spoken of those moments to anyone. Santiago wouldn't remember, he had not been given any cause to. Perhaps that was for the best.

He leant forwards, elbows settling on the desk's worn surface and steepled his fingers. He'd returned to Penwick for many reasons, to keep others from the path he'd trodden, certainly, to rebuild his name too. But he'd be lying if there wasn't some larger purpose to it all. Santiago had two more years ahead of him, two more years of opportunity for Rafael to get to know his brother before the opporunity would slip away.

The door to his study remained closed. Rafael forced himself to exhale slowly, to release the tension building in his shoulders. His parents' last letter had been cordial, congratulating him on his appointment with all the warmth of a formal business correspondence. They'd written to him, at least. That was something. And if he could somehow bridge the chasm between himself and Santiago, perhaps the rest would follow.

Rafael shook his head. He knew so little of who Santiago had become. Fifth year, he thought to himself, as if he needed to be convinced of the truth of it. Fifteen years old. An entire person had formed in his absence, shaped by forces and moments Rafael would never witness.

Any moment now, Santiago would arrive and Rafael would need to find words for a conversation that was fifteen years overdue, words that could somehow span the gulf of absence between them.

A soft shuffle of feet pulled his attention sideways. One of his Memisi emerged from behind a bookshelf, the small creature's turban sitting askew on its head. Gnarled hands carried a leather and brass contraption that gleamed in the lamplight.

"Ah, Tiko," Rafael said, extending his left arm across the desk. "Let's see if the adjustments worked this time."

The Memisi chittered something that might have been agreement and began fastening the device around Rafael's wrist. The brass was cool against his skin, the small gears clicking softly as Tiko tightened the leather straps. Rafael flexed his fingers experimentally.

"That's still a bit too tight around the wrist," he said, wincing slightly as the metal bit into his skin.

Tiko made a disapproving sound deep in its throat. His gnarled fingers moved quickly, loosening the mechanism with the practised ease of a craftsman.

Rafael flexed his wrist again, preferring the bite of leather and metal to the weight of silence. "That's better," he said after Tiko had made a few more adjustments to the spring-loaded mechanism. "But I'll have to try it properly later, thank you Tiko." He undid the straps and gestured vaguely toward the whirring life-clock on his desk. "Go on then, take it." Tiko's beady eyes widened in suprise. "I've long since tired of looking at it," Rafael said. "Consider it advance payment."

Tiko let out a small, pleased little noise, bowed, then gingerly picked up the life-clock and waddled away with the device clutched to his chest, leaving Rafael to once again wait alone in silence.

@Santiago Corvesso