The success with his father's toothache was a seismic event in the small universe of Lysander's existence. It transformed him from a prisoner who tested his bars into an architect who knew he could, with effort, reshape his cell. The world was no longer a rigid, pre-ordained script; it was a complex, living document, and he had just proven he could add a marginal note. The despair that had once threatened to swallow him whole was now a distant memory, replaced by the relentless, humming engine of his purpose.
His mission was twofold, a sacred quest with two intertwined objectives. The primary, driving goal was to understand and break the loop, and that path led directly to the door of the alchemist, Alistair Finch. He stored every whispered mention of the man, every rumor of his strange purchases and reclusive habits, like a miser hoarding gold coins. He was amassing a treasury of information, waiting for the day he would be old enough to spend it.
But the second objective was the one that gave his struggle its soul, its emotional fuel. It was Elara. The memory of her was no longer just a source of pain; it was a lodestar, a fixed point in the swirling chaos of his reborn life. He knew, from the timeline of his previous life, that their paths were not destined to cross in any meaningful way for over two decades. The thought of waiting that long, of knowing she was growing up in the same city, living a life completely separate from his, was a unique form of torture. He wasn't just waiting to meet her; he was waiting for her to become her.
He needed a glimpse. A single, confirming sighting to prove to the part of him that still felt like this was all an elaborate dream that she was real. That the future he was fighting for had a face, a heartbeat, an existence independent of his memory.
He knew where to look. She had spoken of it once, a casual story told in the warm intimacy of their bed. A story of chasing a gander around the yard of her family's home, a modest house near the watchmaker's district, where her father plied his trade. She had described the blue door, the small, hanging sign shaped like a pocket watch. It was a memory she offered as a simple childhood anecdote; for him, it was a set of coordinates.
The opportunity came on a blustery day in early autumn. Clara was taking him on a rare trip to the larger market, a major expedition that required planning and a sturdy basket. Lysander, now a year old and possessing a determined, if unsteady, command of his legs, knew the route. And he knew a detour.
The market was an overwhelming symphony of chaos. The cries of fishmongers, the clucking of chickens in coops, the haggling of housewives, the sheer press of bodies—it was a tidal wave of sensation. Clara held his hand in a vice-like grip, her focus on her shopping list. Lysander's focus, however, was elsewhere. He was navigating by a different map, one charted in his mind from stories told in another life.
As they moved from the bustling main thoroughfare onto a slightly quieter lane, his heart began to hammer against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat of anticipation. This was the street. The third house on the left. He could see it in the distance: the blue door, the small, swinging sign.
He stopped dead in his tracks, his small body going rigid.
"Lysander, come along now, don't dawdle," Clara said, giving his hand a gentle tug.
He didn't move. He lifted his arm, his finger extending with an unwavering certainty, pointing down the lane towards the blue door.
"We are not going that way, my love. The spice merchant is this way." Her voice was firm, a mother's pragmatic tone.
Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through him. He couldn't lose this chance. He couldn't. He let out a sound, not a cry of frustration, but a single, sharp, wordless syllable of demand. "No!" He pointed again, his entire being focused on that one, simple gesture.
Clara looked from his determined face to the empty lane and back again. A battle warred on her face—practicality against the uncanny certainty her son so often displayed. "Lysander, what is it? What could possibly be down there?"
He just pointed, his eyes wide and imploring. He put every memory of Elara's laugh, every echo of her touch, every shred of his love for her into that silent, desperate plea.
With a sigh of exasperated surrender, she relented. "Oh, very well. For a moment. But only a moment! The light will be gone soon."
She scooped him up into her arms, settling him on her hip, and turned down the lane. With every step she took, the world seemed to grow quieter, the sounds of the market fading into a distant murmur. The air itself felt different, charged with a potential that made the fine hairs on his arms stand up. His eyes were locked on the blue door. The small, fenced yard was visible now. It was empty.
A cold knot of disappointment tightened in his stomach. Had he been wrong? Had the memory, over time and across the chasm of death, become distorted? Was his mind, in its desperate loneliness, playing a cruel trick on him?
Just as the hope was about to curdle into despair, the blue door opened.
A woman, older, with a tired but kind face, stepped out, shaking a dusting of flour from a rag. It was not her. It must be her mother, or a servant. The disappointment was a physical blow, so sharp it made him gasp.
But then, a small whirlwind of energy shot past the woman's skirts and into the yard. A little girl. She couldn't have been more than three years old. She had a wild, unruly mane of dark curls that haloed her head, and her face was smudged with what looked like dirt. In her chubby hand, she clutched a piece of charcoal. Without a moment's hesitation, she dropped to her knees on the stone flags of the yard and began to draw.
It was her.
It was Elara.
She was so impossibly small, a miniature version of the woman he knew. But the essence was there, unmistakable and pure. The intense concentration that furrowed her brow, the fierce focus in her eyes as she dragged the charcoal across the stone, the slight pout of her lips—it was all her. She was drawing, not the simple scribbles of a child, but a form. A bird, its wings outstretched in flight. The lines were bold, confident, alive with a primitive energy that spoke of an inner vision.
Lysander stopped breathing. The bustling market, his mother's arms, the chill of the autumn air—everything dissolved into a meaningless blur. The universe contracted until it contained only this: the small figure in the yard, the blue door, and the agonizing, wonderful distance between them. He was looking at the living, breathing proof of his past. The embodiment of his future. A love that had somehow survived the death of one world and was now, miraculously, blooming in another.
He felt Clara's arms adjust around him, a solid, warm anchor in the sea of his emotion. She followed his rapt gaze.
"Ah," she said softly, her voice a gentle intrusion into his reverence. "The watchmaker's daughter. A quiet little thing, I'm told. Always has a bit of charcoal in her hand, that one. Quite the little artist, even at her age."
Lysander could not have spoken even if he had possessed the ability. He could only watch, his eyes drinking in the sight of her, memorizing the curve of her cheek, the way her tiny fingers gripped the charcoal, the absolute absorption in her task. He was a cartographer, and he was mapping the features of his own heart.
The little girl, as if she had felt the weight of his devotion, suddenly looked up. Her eyes, the same warm, intelligent sherry-brown he had fallen into a thousand times, met his across the short distance. For a long, suspended moment, they simply looked at one another. The one-year-old boy with the soul of a thirty-year-old man, and the three-year-old girl who held the key to his salvation.
There was no recognition in her gaze. How could there be? There was only a child's brief, flickering curiosity. She saw a baby in a woman's arms, nothing more. Her eyes held his for a second longer, and then, as if a more interesting thought had occurred to her, she looked down again, completely forgetting him, lost once more in the world she was creating on the stone.
The spell was broken.
"Right then, my little love," Clara said, her voice brisk and normal, turning them away. "We've seen the artist. Now, we really must get to the market before all the good cinnamon is gone."
As she carried him back towards the noise and the crowd, Lysander kept his head turned, his eyes fixed on the small, kneeling figure until the corner of a building obscured her from view. The ache in his chest was no longer one of despair or longing, but of a fierce, protective, and overwhelming certainty.
She was real. The timeline was fixed, but so was his purpose. He would live these thirty years. He would endure the slow, agonizing march of time. He would find Alistair Finch and confront the architect of this prison. But he would do it all for this. For the chance to walk back into that yard not as a stranger, but as a man. To see those eyes light up with recognition, not just curiosity.
The scent of the market spices, mud, and humanity washed over him as they rejoined the throng. But as Clara shifted him on her hip, he caught, or perhaps imagined, a fleeting whisper on the wind, a ghost of a scent that had no place here, a memory made real: the faint, clean, and utterly heartbreaking fragrance of lavender.