Throughout Time
Chapter 11; The Hand of Time
"Hiro?!" Lucy exclaimed.
"I'm surprised you know of me, though I shouldn't be, considering you two claim you're from the future. Although that also means you must have met me." Hiro spoke, moving closer. Dark onyx eyes stared at the man with a tense concern. Despite knowing the future him, he was surprised at the earlier version of the man he knew. They had met a while ago back on a mission where Lucy had introduced him. Apparently he looked after her for a long time as a child, playing alongside his own son. He had mind magic which had the power to make people forget or change their minds or create barriers and read minds and such.
"You're really Hiro," Lucy sighed, in relief and nostalgia combined. Her soft brown eyes looked up at the man with an adorning smile.
"I am indeed, and you must be the Heartfilia child." Hiro return the smile in more of a polite way than in recognition.
"How did you- You read my mi-"Lucy exclaimed, her thoughts interrupting half her sentence.
"Read your mind?" Hiro interrupted. "Heavens no. If you are from the future as you say you are, then it would be a huge mistake to do such a thing." He moved closer underneath the shelter of the canopy above the three, closing his umbrella. Water leaked down over the material into a steady stream hitting the grass.
"Then..." Lucy left the end hanging open, since the question was so obvious.
"I know of the hand of time." Hiro explained. "Layla had a fate predicted long ago of her child, part of which hinted towards you being the hand of time."
"Prediction?" Lucy wondered. "Why did she get a prediction?"
"Since the future me seems not to have told you yet, I cannot tell you either." Hiro refused. "All that matters now is getting you to your own time."
"You know how to do that?" Natsu exclaimed, leaping forward ever so slightly. Hiro's eyes fell onto the pink haired boy with a small smile.
"You're Natsu, right?" Hiro asked. Within his eyes there seemed to be small cogs turning, trying to fit together the answer to his curiosity in his mind. "Your father is..."
"Igneel." Natsu answered cautiously.
"The fire dragon?" Hiro exclaimed in surprise. There must have been some kind of invisible click in his head where a few pieces came together as his surprise faded almost a second later. Yet, there was still some confusion hidden in his eyes. Hiro dismissed it, and returned to the blonde. "It's cold outside, why don't we go inside?"
Lucy looked up at the mansion behind its veil of rain, and felt a little hesitant. "How long has it been? Since we were last here, I mean?"
"It's been almost a year and a half." Hiro answered, watching the blonde girl's face turn in worry. A sigh came from his moustache hooded lips. "Layla should not recall anything about her meeting with the two of you."
Brown eyes jumped up to his face in surprise. "It would be bad for her to know of her daughter's birth and future. It would have been dangerous leaving that knowledge with her. So, with her consent, she let me remove her memories."
"With her consent?" Lucy repeated softly.
"She said she was happy enough to meet her little girl." A smile passed on Hiro's lips, reassuring the girl. However, Lucy couldn't help but see in his eyes that it might not have been all that it was. There was something else he wasn't telling her, but just like he had said earlier; If the older him didn't tell her, the younger him probably wouldn't as well.
"So, Shall we go?" He asked, handing a second umbrella to the pair. Natsu took it and opened it above him and Lucy, blocking the small trickles of rain escaping through the canopy. Hiro opened his umbrella as well, and turned, walking off towards the house. Rain crashed over both umbrellas as it cut through the downfall.
After a small while of walking through the wet grasslands of the Heartfilia estate, they came to the all too familiar back door of the house. As Natsu had once before, they slipped in, taking down their umbrella's leaving them beside the door in their own little puddles of water. Instead of how it was last time he came through, they were more secretive and quiet. As well as the house.
It was a lot quieter compared to last time he came; people rushing in and out of the servants doors holding all sorts of mugs and jugs. Instead there were a few people, dipping in and out of the rooms, but none of the paid them any attention, they didn't even look their way. To most it may have been suspicious, but since they were in the company of a man who could manipulate minds, it wasn't all that hard to put the pieces together.
Although it had been a year and a half, the corridors seemed different and almost unrecognisable to Natsu. There were different smells around the house and Natsu couldn't help but be confused. Nevertheless, he managed to keep up with Hiro and Lucy who seemed to dart through the corridors with familiar speed.
Eventually, Natsu came to recognise where they ended up; the library.
As the door opened, the dragon slayer found that he was utterly speechless. It had grown. The massively huge library he had came into only a year and a half ago was even bigger. "How?" Natsu uttered.
"Natsu, come on!" Lucy called from above, waving his hand towards him. The dragon slayer shook of his shock, and quickly hurried after her. There were books already set out at the big oak table, sacked in piles so high it was almost impossible to see over them.
Hiro took a seat at the top of the table with Lucy sitting on his right. Natsu thought it would be best to sit on the same side as Lucy, considering the fact that he wouldn't be able to see her over the book if he did sit on the other side.
One book in particular stood out to the celestial wizard, lifting it from the top of one of the piles. Its red spine was wrinkled with golden swirly handwriting over the wrinkled cover. "The hand of time..." Lucy uttered, stroking her hand over the letters as she said each one. Natsu could faintly read the letters through her transparent skin, and gave both the book and the nostalgic expression on Lucy's face a weird look.
"Layla handed it over to me when she first called me here, asking me to give it to you." Hiro explained. A small pulled on Lucy's lips, looking down at the book.
"By the way," Lucy looked up with a perplexed expression. She turned towards Hiro and set the book on the table. "How did you know we would skip to here, or even come back for that matter?"
"This," he said, passing her an old, yellowed notebook. It had only a few pages in it with little writing and instruction with a few dates on the side.
"What is it?" She said, looking at the first two dates, both were rough and were written in black ink.
"Isn't that your handwriting Luce?" Natsu asked, looking over her shoulder. He plucked it out of her hands before she could respond, a lifted it to his face. He took in a big sniff of the book, and handed it back to the blonde. "It smells like you too."
"I could say the same thing," Lucy growled back, slightly irritated at the slayer. "All the edges are burnt." It was true; the edges of the paper were scorched with black including the last few pages written about a date much earlier than when they had arrived. It mentioned something to do with a fight and how to defeat someone, but not much else.
"You're both right," Hiro interjected, catching their eyes. "It was written by the both of you after all."
"What?" They exclaimed in unison.
"This book was delivered to me a few days before you both arrived. It seemed I was late in arriving though. By the time I got here, you had both skipped to here." Hiro explained.
"But how would a book written by us, end up even further back in time than when we arrived. We seem to be jumping forwards in time, not backwards." Lucy countered, setting the book uncomfortably back in front of Hiro. His slightly scarred and aged hands picked it up, flipping through the pages.
"I'm not sure," Hiro replied, examining the book thoroughly and familiarly. "But it seems it was left to help you two."
"Right..." Natsu muttered, looking at the book.
"Help us how?" Lucy asked.
"It seems it was all written in a rush, so there aren't many specific details on what you two need to know." Hiro grumbled. "Your handwriting is so illegible, Lucy."
"Hey! I wrote it in a rush right? And stop criticising me; I'm not the Lucy who wrote it!" Lucy growled irritably, snatching the book out of the man's hands. Brown eyes glared at the handwriting, trying to pass through the half burnt patches. "It mentions the book," She said, resting her hand on the red cover. "But I can't really make the rest of it out..."
"See?" Hiro muttered.
"It's not my handwriting!" Lucy exclaimed, pointing a finger towards the dragon slayer. "It's him who's burned half of the pages!"
"I didn't do it!" Natsu shouted back, raising his hands in surrender.
"Okay, okay." Hiro intervened. "We should just have a look at the book."
Lucy and Natsu both sighed, sitting back down into their respective chairs. Lucy tossed the notebook to the dragon slayer, who gave it a glance and thought it best not to try bother reading it. Brown eyes glanced towards him, before sending a lunging hand to snatch the book back, passing it to Hiro. Before Natsu could argue, Lucy turned towards him. "You've burnt the book enough as it is, I don't want it burning anymore."
"I told you it wasn't me!" Natsu growled, but his voice just fell on empty ears. The two book worms were already opening the red book with their full attention. A pout fell on the dragon slayer's lips, but his sulking didn't last long as curiosity set in. Dark eyes leaned forwards, looking over the blonde's shoulder at the book.
It was a surprise to the two men, when they looked inside the cover. "They're all blank?" Natsu said, looking at it confusion.
Lucy turned towards their face with a perplexed expression. "It's not blank?" Lucy responded, looking from their confused faces back to the book.
"It is." Natsu said, leaning even further forwards that he was practically pressed up against the girl. "Oh wait...no it's not." He said.
"Hm..." Hiro mumbled thoughtfully. "Natsu, move away from Lucy for a second." Just as he was told, the dragon slayer hesitantly backed up until he wasn't touching her anymore. All the ink on the pages that he had just seen dissolved back into the paper. Once again, it was blank.
"All the writing's gone!" Natsu exclaimed.
"What?" Lucy questioned, still confused, looking at the book and the slayer. "No it's not."
Natsu ran back over, touching Lucy on the shoulder. As their skin came into contact with each others, the ink bled out from the page again until words and images formed. To test it, Natsu kept removing his hand and replacing it, watching the colour drain and reappear on the page.
"It seems, you can't seem to read it unless you're touching Lucy." Hiro muttered curiously.
"What? You haven't read it?" Lucy turned towards the middle aged man, stroking a hand across his stubble jaw line.
"I couldn't, nor could Layla, or her grandmother." Hiro answered. "This book has been passed down for generations, not that anyone could read it."
"But-" Lucy uttered.
"The prophecy of the hand of time being born into this family is an old one." Hiro added, looking at the girl deep in thought and approaching realisation as he began to figure it out. "This was book meant just for you, not that I know much about it."
"I'm the only one who can read it because I'm the hand of time?" Lucy asked.
"Not necessarily. It seems that anyone who is touching you can as well." Hiro countered.
"But how is this supposed to help me? It's just a children's picture book mother always used to read to me." Lucy said, still giving the book a perplexed look.
"What's the story about?" Natsu asked, leaning over her shoulder to look at the book. A sigh escaped the blonde's lips, and looked down at the page. Hiro moved to her side, setting a hand on her arm.
Lucy began to flick through the pages, reading the captions.
Long ago, the God of time, Chronos, did not like visiting the human world and thought bad of humans. Izanagi, the creator of Gods, transformed Chronos into a small golden dragon and sent him to the human world for a day.
When he visited the human world, he ended up in a forest full of beautiful trees and forests with flowers.
As he was travelling through the forest, a group of hunters had spotted him. They hunted him and despite his small size, they thought they would get a large amount of wealth for its pure gold scales.
As he kept running and running, he came across a field of flowers.
Within those flowers, he saw a young girl.
She had soft blonde hair and warm brown eyes, singing a beautiful lullaby. Creatures from all across the forest had gathered around her, listening to her sing as she planted little purple lilies within her garden.
When she heard the hunters, she stopped singing and noticed the little dragon hiding in the flowers. At first, it thought she might hurt him too, but instead, she held out her hand. He wasn't sure why, but the dragon trusted her and crawled out onto her hand. She hid him in a small crevice in a tree.
When the hunters came, she protected the little dragon and would not give up where she had hid him. No matter how much the girl was hit by the men, even when they trampled all over her flowers, she never gave up where he was.
Eventually, the hunters left, leaving the girl behind.
At that moment the sun had sent, ending the day and Chronos appeared before her.
The girl was surprised, but also happy to see the dragon's true form. Chronos apologised for not being able to do anything to help her, but the girl shook her head. Chronos spoke of punishing the men, but the girl refused. "The reason they hunt, is to earn money to feed their families. They only did what was human." She said with a gentle smile, despite the wounds on her face.
"Only human, huh?" Chronos sighed. Since he could not help the girl, he instead gave her a gift for his thanks. A small golden dragon appeared by her side. "It is a guardian for you, it will protect you while I cannot." Even though he, even as a God, could not go against the flow of time, and correct his mistakes, he was determined not to prevent them from happening again.
Years later, the girl built a shrine for the God of time, Chronos and worshiped it every day. The girl had fallen in love with Chronos, and Chronos had fallen in love with her.
Once a year, he would visit the girl and she would tell him of the human world and its knowledge. Chronos would take her on trips to visit the past and tell her of the other gods.
Because of all the time she had spent with the God and the times she had used his powers to visit the past, she had developed her own limit of powers.
Chronos warned the girl of the powers, and told her she could not use them. Her power would allow her to travel back in time for a day, but to do that, she would have to remove her life force from the river of time permanently. It would cause all the people she had ever come into contact with to forget her. And despite it not being able to change the physical world, the girl wouldn't be allowed to transgress into the spiritual world either. Therefore, the girl made a promise with the God, and said she would not use her powers.
Years went by until one day, while the God was in heaven, a fire began. It destroyed all the flowers and trees and attacked the nearby village. The girl, who had sworn not to use her powers, couldn't bear to sit and watch the village that she had grown up in, be destroyed.
Even though she loved the God and despite making a promise with him, she used her powers to go back in time and stop the fire. And so, the village was saved and the girl was forgotten.
"That's not fair..." Natsu uttered, looking at the book disheartened. "Why did she have to disappear?"
"To change time, time is needed itself." Hiro said softly, removing his hand from the girl's arm.
"But- How could the God just forget her? He loved her didn't he?" Natsu exclaimed.
"There were rumours," Lucy said so softly it was almost inaudible. Both men turned towards her, catching her sad gaze stoking the blank pages of the book that must have still head colour for her."The God Chronos would visit the Earth on the same day every year and that the Golden dragon still protects the shrine."
"Is the story true?" Natsu asked softly. "And the rumours?"
Lucy thought back to before she had jumped time. She thought back to the golden dragon, Custos Tempos; The guardian of time. Although she couldn't be sure about the rumour of Chronos, she had a feeling there was a reason that shrine was still standing after hundreds of years. A soft smile pulled on Lucy's lips as she wiped away the tears. "It's true."
So Lucy and Natsu have finally found out the truth about the tragic story of the origional hand of time, but what can the story do to help them? Find out in the next chapter.
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-A-ccentric