Well... here it is! I was starting to wonder if I'd get it done in time, but here I am so I guess that answers that, right?
I hope everyone likes it, because I tried hard to make this a worthy ending to the rest of the series. And as a side note: Bippo, if it looks like I'm mocking you... I probably am. ^^v it's all part of the fun.
Most of the notes are at the end.
---------------
~Hourglass~
---------------
1258 hours::[Timber]
(she said)
We pulled up smoothly, the train coming to a neat stop perfectly aligned with the platform. Seifer disembarked the second it halted. I was right behind him.
Amidst the hustle and bustle of other passengers, exiting, boarding, calling for children in the crowd, we edged over to an adjacent track standing empty.
"This is where Squall's train will arrive," he said breathlessly.
"Private track. Unscheduled. Remember, tell him and get him over to the comm tower. Not before 1302."
I nodded. "Right, right." Then hesitated. "Seifer... what are you going to do? Will you be all right?" I hate to admit it but I'm scared. I can't say I've seen firsthand how dangerous this person is but irrationally I feel I have.
He brushes my cheek gently. "I'll be fine," he tells me softly. "I've got a few questions to ask her. Don't worry about me, okay?"
A nod.
In an oasis of open space on a swiftly tilting planet, he kisses me roughly, and the taste of all the words he can never say is on his lips.
Then he's gone, and I stand alone.
1300 hours::[comm tower]
(he said)
Ultimecia was standing in the center of the room, fancying herself unobserved, fiddling with that ridiculous attire of hers. And laughing to herself. I'd long suspected that her grip on sanity was tenuous at best. Of course that only made her more dangerous.
I needed to startle her, catch her off guard, make her wary and desirous of talking, finding out exactly what made me different from the Seifer she was expecting. Postpone her reflex reaction to blow me three ways from next Sunday. Not that it would work quite so well against me; the body protection of the knight is the last thing to go, so she told me.
But it would be kind of hard to have a conversation then.
So when I spoke to her, it was not in the common tongue.
/Kon'nichi wa, Ultimecia-sama./
She spun like a viper, arrowing in on me instantly. I could see the wheels turning in her head: why hadn't she sensed my approach? Why wasn't I dragging President Deling in tow? And, by far most importantly, how had I been able to greet her in the ancient language?
/Kon'nikhi wa,/ and her reply was exactly what I wanted, suspicious and wary. She cocked her head to one side, studying me. "Poor little boy," she murmured.
I outright laughed. "Stow it," I recommended. "Been there, done that. Not going to work this time."
Her eyes widened, and I could feel the lash of her powers. "Your time signature is all wrong," she breathed. "You've... you're... Time Kompression?"
I strode a few paces closer, smiling in a friendly manner. "Now now, sho'cala, you should know the answer to that."
The name was what really caught her; I doubt she even heard anything I said after that. Sho'cala literally meant 'sorceress', but it was an informal term that really could only be used in a non-offensive manner by one's knight.
Her eyes flew to my right arm, and the fingertips of her left hand came up to brush hers. A simple gesture, as if brushing lint away, but even such a simple touch caused her mark to flare up, lighting the dim room in silver. The mark of the sorceress, complex and irremovable. She had the grace not to let her jaw drop when she saw the same mark on my arm. The mark was the same for anyone gifted with sorcery, but the location varied.
"You're my knight," she breathed. "But how--" then her eyes narrowed predatorily, and I could see pieces going /click-click-click/ in her mind. "You've done all this before." It was not a question. "Very well. What did I send you to tell me?"
I wanted to laugh again; so self-assured, confident that she'd win if only this time, this way, she did it right. Unknowing of her failures, boundless confidence and desperate need drove her to reshape the past in her own image, unaccepting of failure.
"Do you remember Trabia Garden?"
She blinked. This was clearly not what she was expecting, but still laboring under the delusion that this would lead to her eventual success, she paused to try to recall the information. It was almost frightening how much she seemed like a normal, ordinary person who happened to possess extreme powers. In battle, when using those powers, she seemed otherworldly, cruel, maniacal. But alone, secluded, in a conference with someone she trusted to help her and care for her, she showed a disarmingly human side.
And she did trust me, damn it. Ultimecia was deranged, crazy, amoral and cruel, but she was that way because she had no other choice. Prosecuted from childhood onward for powers she couldn't help inheriting, besieged for years by SeeD forces in the magical castle she had constructed out of fright, she had never learned to trust, never learned kindness or mercy or love. She had deserved none of it. But impressed upon her as a child was the strength of the knight bond, her parents who had died together leaving her the burden to carry and no one to lean on. She trusted it, trusted me, as she did no one else. I meant to shatter that trust, but I meant also to save her if she could be saved. First, I knew, she would have to be defeated. Once she knew I was no longer her loyal slave she would turn against me just as quickly and easily, and be all the more jaded for it; but in the end, if she could be given a normal chance at life... the world after the war had become almost accepting. That attitude would be lost centuries before her birth, but if she could stay here...
But first, the battle.
"Trabia! Yes! I remember." Her face cleared. "I had to destroy it."
Anger ran through sympathy. "So you knew, when I launched those missiles."
Puzzlement. "Of kourse."
A step forward. "You told me Garden wouldn't be harmed." Angry.
"Ah!" Understanding. "Balamb Garden. It's mobile. It won't be harmed. Trabia, yes, that must be destroyed."
I turn away in disgust and take a deep breath. "It won't happen this time."
"Why not?"
"I'll warn them in advance."
"You'll-" she gasped, and I look at her sideways. "You kan't! I forbid it!"
"Sorry, not taking your orders anymore."
"In a few moments you'll kome through that door and join me again," she said confidently.
Now I let myself laugh. "I am the one who came through that door. I am the Seifer of this time period. And I know what you don't."
"And what is that?" her whisper suddenly shows her age. So many people thought she was older because she was in Matron's body, but I know I'm conversing with a fifteen-year-old girl who only knows what she's doing because she read it in a history book.
I turn to her and tell her the truth. Because she deserves to know it. "You're going to lose. No matter what. You chose me and you chose wrong. You never had a chance to win."
Her eyes were suddenly bleak. "No."
"I'm sorry," and I really am, beneath the anger and the frustration and the guilt for everything I did, everything she did, everything she caused, I still feel sorry for this child-sorceress. "I'm going to try to make it better, but you can't do things the same way this time."
"Watkh me," she shot back rebelliously. "So you're the Seifer of this time, and khoosing you was my mistake, was it? So in a few minutes Squall Leonhart the Hero's going to kome through that door. Maybe bonding him will work better. I've..." she looked tired. "You must know I've got nothing else left but to try."
"I know," I tell her sadly. "You know I can't let you succeed."
Childlike eyes in a centuries-old face regard me sadly. "We shall just have to find out, sha'nt we?"
I nod. "Afterwards," I said, "promise you'll stay for a while. There's got to be a better way."
Then I hear the door swing open, and we both instinctively look over.
They've arrived.
1302 hours::[Comm Tower]
(o n t o i n f i n i t y)
The moment Squall stepped into the room, everything ceased to exist except for he and Ultimecia.
"Poor little boy," she murmured. "Poor, lost little boy."
"I'm no a little boy," he said warily, one hand on his gunblade. "I'm a SeeD."
"But you're lost all the same," she said dreamily. Almost as if she wasn't talking to him at all. "You're lonely, and skared, and tired... I kan feel it. You kan be more," she said with sudden viciousness, golden eyes peering straight into Squall's own, through the storm into his soul. "You are a lion, waiting to be released. Strike at those who kaged you!" She stretched out a hand, pleading and commanding all at once. "I kan help you! I kan!"
The force of her presence overwhelmed him, pressing in on his senses. Images burned into his eyes. Respect, love, devotion. Peace. Rest. Friendship. And power. Breathtaking power. To never have to worry about loss, never to lie awake at night dreading that your decisions will send someone to an early grave. To be a lion. She offered him this.
Ultimecia watched his eyes widen, his lips part. He was tempted, so tempted. Warnings and reasons flew out of his head and he took a step, the first step, towards her.
Her lips curved upwards in a cruel mockery of a smile. "Hai," she whispered. "Kiele'kuei."
He paused.
The words triggered something else in him, something ancient and very nearly primal. Amid the whirlwind of what she promised him came something new, overlooked the first time. Buried beneath as if irrelevant came a hereditary bequest of language, old language, lost since the time of Hyne but passed down by those who succeeded her in both blood and magic. The gift of sorcery in ancient tongues.
/Kiele'kuei/ meant "come to me."
He found himself remembering other words, spoken hastily, syllables stumbled over by one who knew only the sounds, not the meaning. Quistis' voice hit him out of left field, a mental foul ball clocking an unsuspecting spectator. Accent cleared through understanding. Realization achieved by danger.
/Liel'aie ikuen/ meant "don't go with her."
Double perspective cleft his vision in twain, choices arrowing into infinity. But in the end it was a question of trust, and so, really, no question at all.
He took a step backwards.
///////
Fourteen years old. Garden. Just finished with his basic combat prerequisites. That meant it was time for a rite of passage-- an introduction into the Training Center.
His guide for the journey was a bigger, blond-haired boy he was sure he knew from somewhere, even though he wasn't quite sure where. Halfway through he'd met his first challenge, a monster he'd later learn to recognize as being common, annoying and called a Grat.
"Huh," said the elder youth, inspecting the corpse. "Not bad, I guess. You'll get better."
Years later those words would be grounds enough for violence, blood on sharp blades under a stormy sky. But the younger Squall only continued staring at the corpse. "He was no match." Voice already so emotionless, so closed off, unreadable to the other. "It wasn't very fair."
The blond leaned down, wiping his Garden-issue basic training knife on the grass. "It doesn't matter," he said unexpectedly.
Something flickered in grey eyes as they lifted to regard the elder coolly. "Why?"
A grunt. "SeeD is a mercenary force," he said finally. "We fight for money, not for morals. People pay us to beat their problems until they can't stand up again, and that rarely means playing fair. If you can't accept that, you'd better get out of here while you're still young." Silence- no way to tell his reaction. "You just can't do both, is what ya gotta accept. Can't be a man and a SeeD at the same time."
Silence.
///////
Silence.
Squall looked up at the sorceress and saw, through the power and the deception, what was truly there. Someone who had made the choice and lost. Someone who had become something greater and given up everything they were, everything that mattered, in exchange.
/Liel'ch'ye mysse nai,/ he said flatly, not realizing that he spoke the ancient tongue as fluidly as if he had grown up with it. Caught in the whirlwind of power and choice he said only what was needed in the only way she might understand. "I don't need you."
/Liel'kiele leon./
"I am a lion."
///////
You unlock this door with the key of imagination.
Beyond it lies another dimension.
It is trapped between light and dark, between shadow and substance, between life and death.
It is neither here nor there, neither now nor then, neither yet-to-come nor never-to-be.
It is the crossing point between things and ideas, the transfer of dreams from reality, a place utterly of mind yet completely of body.
In the total silence and deafening noise, the last grains of an hourglass has long since run down.
A phrase, a choice, and a course.
A new glass is poised.
This glass is larger; the sand, more voluminous. Meant to last longer.
As it is turned over, the Third Sorceress War has begun.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is that.
I know some of you were hoping I'd wrap it all into a brown paper package tied up with string, but that's low on the list of my favorite things, so you'll just have to use your imagination. ^_-
If there is anything you desperately must have answered, ask me in a review and I'll include it in the ANs.
Also, for an interesting twist: by my count there are three plot holes in ~Hourglass~. One is a silly mistake on my part that a decent first-grade education should have (but didn't) prevent, one is a small one that I did deliberately to make things work, and one is pretty big (actually, it wrecks the whole continuity if you think about it) and most certainly was NOT done on purpose. I was rather expecting people to call me on one of them, but so far not a peep. Now that I've told you, see if you can spot it. The silly one will be fixed when I post the ANs, but the other two are in there to stay because they're just part of the story and it's too late to make it any other way.
There were a few people asking me if there was going to be a sequel. Well, not now, at any rate. I have a feeling that if I tried to keep right on going my creativity in this style would run out and it just wouldn't measure up. I want to try a few other things. If, however, after I've taken a good break, there's still a lot of support, I wouldn't mind writing another fic in the ~Hourglass~ universe. It wouldn't be a direct sequel, I can tell you that, but I've got a pretty good idea of what happens as a result of all this (even though I din't tell you... evil, aren't I? ;) and I do have rough outlines hanging around. I just don't want to do anything more with it right now, but feel free to bug me in reviews of my next project.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
[Cue Kermit the Frog!]
Lyaka: "Today's fanfic has been brought to you by the suffix '-ing'... as in 'violating'; 'copywriting'; but also 'forgiving', and 'not suing'."
And let's not forget: 'reviewing!'
R
i
g
h
t
d
o
w
n
h
e
r
e
.
.
.
I hope everyone likes it, because I tried hard to make this a worthy ending to the rest of the series. And as a side note: Bippo, if it looks like I'm mocking you... I probably am. ^^v it's all part of the fun.
Most of the notes are at the end.
---------------
~Hourglass~
---------------
1258 hours::[Timber]
(she said)
We pulled up smoothly, the train coming to a neat stop perfectly aligned with the platform. Seifer disembarked the second it halted. I was right behind him.
Amidst the hustle and bustle of other passengers, exiting, boarding, calling for children in the crowd, we edged over to an adjacent track standing empty.
"This is where Squall's train will arrive," he said breathlessly.
"Private track. Unscheduled. Remember, tell him and get him over to the comm tower. Not before 1302."
I nodded. "Right, right." Then hesitated. "Seifer... what are you going to do? Will you be all right?" I hate to admit it but I'm scared. I can't say I've seen firsthand how dangerous this person is but irrationally I feel I have.
He brushes my cheek gently. "I'll be fine," he tells me softly. "I've got a few questions to ask her. Don't worry about me, okay?"
A nod.
In an oasis of open space on a swiftly tilting planet, he kisses me roughly, and the taste of all the words he can never say is on his lips.
Then he's gone, and I stand alone.
1300 hours::[comm tower]
(he said)
Ultimecia was standing in the center of the room, fancying herself unobserved, fiddling with that ridiculous attire of hers. And laughing to herself. I'd long suspected that her grip on sanity was tenuous at best. Of course that only made her more dangerous.
I needed to startle her, catch her off guard, make her wary and desirous of talking, finding out exactly what made me different from the Seifer she was expecting. Postpone her reflex reaction to blow me three ways from next Sunday. Not that it would work quite so well against me; the body protection of the knight is the last thing to go, so she told me.
But it would be kind of hard to have a conversation then.
So when I spoke to her, it was not in the common tongue.
/Kon'nichi wa, Ultimecia-sama./
She spun like a viper, arrowing in on me instantly. I could see the wheels turning in her head: why hadn't she sensed my approach? Why wasn't I dragging President Deling in tow? And, by far most importantly, how had I been able to greet her in the ancient language?
/Kon'nikhi wa,/ and her reply was exactly what I wanted, suspicious and wary. She cocked her head to one side, studying me. "Poor little boy," she murmured.
I outright laughed. "Stow it," I recommended. "Been there, done that. Not going to work this time."
Her eyes widened, and I could feel the lash of her powers. "Your time signature is all wrong," she breathed. "You've... you're... Time Kompression?"
I strode a few paces closer, smiling in a friendly manner. "Now now, sho'cala, you should know the answer to that."
The name was what really caught her; I doubt she even heard anything I said after that. Sho'cala literally meant 'sorceress', but it was an informal term that really could only be used in a non-offensive manner by one's knight.
Her eyes flew to my right arm, and the fingertips of her left hand came up to brush hers. A simple gesture, as if brushing lint away, but even such a simple touch caused her mark to flare up, lighting the dim room in silver. The mark of the sorceress, complex and irremovable. She had the grace not to let her jaw drop when she saw the same mark on my arm. The mark was the same for anyone gifted with sorcery, but the location varied.
"You're my knight," she breathed. "But how--" then her eyes narrowed predatorily, and I could see pieces going /click-click-click/ in her mind. "You've done all this before." It was not a question. "Very well. What did I send you to tell me?"
I wanted to laugh again; so self-assured, confident that she'd win if only this time, this way, she did it right. Unknowing of her failures, boundless confidence and desperate need drove her to reshape the past in her own image, unaccepting of failure.
"Do you remember Trabia Garden?"
She blinked. This was clearly not what she was expecting, but still laboring under the delusion that this would lead to her eventual success, she paused to try to recall the information. It was almost frightening how much she seemed like a normal, ordinary person who happened to possess extreme powers. In battle, when using those powers, she seemed otherworldly, cruel, maniacal. But alone, secluded, in a conference with someone she trusted to help her and care for her, she showed a disarmingly human side.
And she did trust me, damn it. Ultimecia was deranged, crazy, amoral and cruel, but she was that way because she had no other choice. Prosecuted from childhood onward for powers she couldn't help inheriting, besieged for years by SeeD forces in the magical castle she had constructed out of fright, she had never learned to trust, never learned kindness or mercy or love. She had deserved none of it. But impressed upon her as a child was the strength of the knight bond, her parents who had died together leaving her the burden to carry and no one to lean on. She trusted it, trusted me, as she did no one else. I meant to shatter that trust, but I meant also to save her if she could be saved. First, I knew, she would have to be defeated. Once she knew I was no longer her loyal slave she would turn against me just as quickly and easily, and be all the more jaded for it; but in the end, if she could be given a normal chance at life... the world after the war had become almost accepting. That attitude would be lost centuries before her birth, but if she could stay here...
But first, the battle.
"Trabia! Yes! I remember." Her face cleared. "I had to destroy it."
Anger ran through sympathy. "So you knew, when I launched those missiles."
Puzzlement. "Of kourse."
A step forward. "You told me Garden wouldn't be harmed." Angry.
"Ah!" Understanding. "Balamb Garden. It's mobile. It won't be harmed. Trabia, yes, that must be destroyed."
I turn away in disgust and take a deep breath. "It won't happen this time."
"Why not?"
"I'll warn them in advance."
"You'll-" she gasped, and I look at her sideways. "You kan't! I forbid it!"
"Sorry, not taking your orders anymore."
"In a few moments you'll kome through that door and join me again," she said confidently.
Now I let myself laugh. "I am the one who came through that door. I am the Seifer of this time period. And I know what you don't."
"And what is that?" her whisper suddenly shows her age. So many people thought she was older because she was in Matron's body, but I know I'm conversing with a fifteen-year-old girl who only knows what she's doing because she read it in a history book.
I turn to her and tell her the truth. Because she deserves to know it. "You're going to lose. No matter what. You chose me and you chose wrong. You never had a chance to win."
Her eyes were suddenly bleak. "No."
"I'm sorry," and I really am, beneath the anger and the frustration and the guilt for everything I did, everything she did, everything she caused, I still feel sorry for this child-sorceress. "I'm going to try to make it better, but you can't do things the same way this time."
"Watkh me," she shot back rebelliously. "So you're the Seifer of this time, and khoosing you was my mistake, was it? So in a few minutes Squall Leonhart the Hero's going to kome through that door. Maybe bonding him will work better. I've..." she looked tired. "You must know I've got nothing else left but to try."
"I know," I tell her sadly. "You know I can't let you succeed."
Childlike eyes in a centuries-old face regard me sadly. "We shall just have to find out, sha'nt we?"
I nod. "Afterwards," I said, "promise you'll stay for a while. There's got to be a better way."
Then I hear the door swing open, and we both instinctively look over.
They've arrived.
1302 hours::[Comm Tower]
(o n t o i n f i n i t y)
The moment Squall stepped into the room, everything ceased to exist except for he and Ultimecia.
"Poor little boy," she murmured. "Poor, lost little boy."
"I'm no a little boy," he said warily, one hand on his gunblade. "I'm a SeeD."
"But you're lost all the same," she said dreamily. Almost as if she wasn't talking to him at all. "You're lonely, and skared, and tired... I kan feel it. You kan be more," she said with sudden viciousness, golden eyes peering straight into Squall's own, through the storm into his soul. "You are a lion, waiting to be released. Strike at those who kaged you!" She stretched out a hand, pleading and commanding all at once. "I kan help you! I kan!"
The force of her presence overwhelmed him, pressing in on his senses. Images burned into his eyes. Respect, love, devotion. Peace. Rest. Friendship. And power. Breathtaking power. To never have to worry about loss, never to lie awake at night dreading that your decisions will send someone to an early grave. To be a lion. She offered him this.
Ultimecia watched his eyes widen, his lips part. He was tempted, so tempted. Warnings and reasons flew out of his head and he took a step, the first step, towards her.
Her lips curved upwards in a cruel mockery of a smile. "Hai," she whispered. "Kiele'kuei."
He paused.
The words triggered something else in him, something ancient and very nearly primal. Amid the whirlwind of what she promised him came something new, overlooked the first time. Buried beneath as if irrelevant came a hereditary bequest of language, old language, lost since the time of Hyne but passed down by those who succeeded her in both blood and magic. The gift of sorcery in ancient tongues.
/Kiele'kuei/ meant "come to me."
He found himself remembering other words, spoken hastily, syllables stumbled over by one who knew only the sounds, not the meaning. Quistis' voice hit him out of left field, a mental foul ball clocking an unsuspecting spectator. Accent cleared through understanding. Realization achieved by danger.
/Liel'aie ikuen/ meant "don't go with her."
Double perspective cleft his vision in twain, choices arrowing into infinity. But in the end it was a question of trust, and so, really, no question at all.
He took a step backwards.
///////
Fourteen years old. Garden. Just finished with his basic combat prerequisites. That meant it was time for a rite of passage-- an introduction into the Training Center.
His guide for the journey was a bigger, blond-haired boy he was sure he knew from somewhere, even though he wasn't quite sure where. Halfway through he'd met his first challenge, a monster he'd later learn to recognize as being common, annoying and called a Grat.
"Huh," said the elder youth, inspecting the corpse. "Not bad, I guess. You'll get better."
Years later those words would be grounds enough for violence, blood on sharp blades under a stormy sky. But the younger Squall only continued staring at the corpse. "He was no match." Voice already so emotionless, so closed off, unreadable to the other. "It wasn't very fair."
The blond leaned down, wiping his Garden-issue basic training knife on the grass. "It doesn't matter," he said unexpectedly.
Something flickered in grey eyes as they lifted to regard the elder coolly. "Why?"
A grunt. "SeeD is a mercenary force," he said finally. "We fight for money, not for morals. People pay us to beat their problems until they can't stand up again, and that rarely means playing fair. If you can't accept that, you'd better get out of here while you're still young." Silence- no way to tell his reaction. "You just can't do both, is what ya gotta accept. Can't be a man and a SeeD at the same time."
Silence.
///////
Silence.
Squall looked up at the sorceress and saw, through the power and the deception, what was truly there. Someone who had made the choice and lost. Someone who had become something greater and given up everything they were, everything that mattered, in exchange.
/Liel'ch'ye mysse nai,/ he said flatly, not realizing that he spoke the ancient tongue as fluidly as if he had grown up with it. Caught in the whirlwind of power and choice he said only what was needed in the only way she might understand. "I don't need you."
/Liel'kiele leon./
"I am a lion."
///////
You unlock this door with the key of imagination.
Beyond it lies another dimension.
It is trapped between light and dark, between shadow and substance, between life and death.
It is neither here nor there, neither now nor then, neither yet-to-come nor never-to-be.
It is the crossing point between things and ideas, the transfer of dreams from reality, a place utterly of mind yet completely of body.
In the total silence and deafening noise, the last grains of an hourglass has long since run down.
A phrase, a choice, and a course.
A new glass is poised.
This glass is larger; the sand, more voluminous. Meant to last longer.
As it is turned over, the Third Sorceress War has begun.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is that.
I know some of you were hoping I'd wrap it all into a brown paper package tied up with string, but that's low on the list of my favorite things, so you'll just have to use your imagination. ^_-
If there is anything you desperately must have answered, ask me in a review and I'll include it in the ANs.
Also, for an interesting twist: by my count there are three plot holes in ~Hourglass~. One is a silly mistake on my part that a decent first-grade education should have (but didn't) prevent, one is a small one that I did deliberately to make things work, and one is pretty big (actually, it wrecks the whole continuity if you think about it) and most certainly was NOT done on purpose. I was rather expecting people to call me on one of them, but so far not a peep. Now that I've told you, see if you can spot it. The silly one will be fixed when I post the ANs, but the other two are in there to stay because they're just part of the story and it's too late to make it any other way.
There were a few people asking me if there was going to be a sequel. Well, not now, at any rate. I have a feeling that if I tried to keep right on going my creativity in this style would run out and it just wouldn't measure up. I want to try a few other things. If, however, after I've taken a good break, there's still a lot of support, I wouldn't mind writing another fic in the ~Hourglass~ universe. It wouldn't be a direct sequel, I can tell you that, but I've got a pretty good idea of what happens as a result of all this (even though I din't tell you... evil, aren't I? ;) and I do have rough outlines hanging around. I just don't want to do anything more with it right now, but feel free to bug me in reviews of my next project.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
[Cue Kermit the Frog!]
Lyaka: "Today's fanfic has been brought to you by the suffix '-ing'... as in 'violating'; 'copywriting'; but also 'forgiving', and 'not suing'."
And let's not forget: 'reviewing!'
R
i
g
h
t
d
o
w
n
h
e
r
e
.
.
.