The knowledge of Elara's proximity was a constant, low-grade hum in Lysander's blood, a magnetic pull that oriented his every thought. The brief, silent communion across the lane had not been enough; it had been a sip of water for a man dying of thirst. He needed more. He needed to hear her voice, to see the light of her mind, however nascent, in her eyes. He began to engineer reasons to pass by the blue door with the hanging watch sign.
His campaigns of persuasion became more sophisticated. He learned that the bakery his mother frequented had a rival, one whose bread was marginally inferior but whose location was, conveniently, on the route that passed Elara's house. On market days, he would become inexplicably, stubbornly opposed to going to the usual baker.
"No! Other bread!" he would insist, his vocabulary having expanded to include these crucial concepts.
"Other bread?" Clara would say, exasperated. "Lysander, Mr. Higgins has the best rye loaf in the parish."
"Other!" he would demand, pointing resolutely in the direction of the inferior bakery, the route to which was everything.
Sometimes he won. Sometimes, shaking her head and muttering about the strange whims of children, Clara would relent. Those days were triumphs. As they approached the blue door, Lysander would fall into a breathless silence, his eyes searching the yard, the windows, any glimpse of the small, dark-haired girl.
He saw her often. She was a creature of quiet industry. Sometimes she would be on her knees, drawing on the flagstones. Other times, she would be seated on a small stool, her little brow furrowed as she attempted to untangle a knot of colorful threads. Once, he saw her father, a thin, precise man with spectacles, showing her the tiny, glittering innards of a pocket watch. She wasn't bored or restless; she watched with an absorption that was deeply familiar to Lysander. She was learning. She was always learning.
He ached to speak to her. But what could he say? A perfectly articulated philosophical query would only terrify her and his mother. He had to find a way in, a bridge between their worlds that would not betray his own.
The opportunity came on a blustery day. A sudden gust of wind snatched a piece of paper from Elara's hand, a drawing, and sent it skittering across the lane, coming to rest against Clara's skirt.
"Oh!" came a small, clear voice from the yard.
Lysander's heart leaped into his throat. He looked over. Elara was standing at the fence, her hands gripping the wooden slats, her eyes fixed on the escaped drawing.
Before Clara could react, Lysander squirmed out of her grasp and dropped to the ground. He snatched up the paper. It was a drawing of a cat, but not a childish scribble. The lines were observant, capturing the lazy curve of its back, the alertness of its ears. It was good.
He walked to the fence, his steps deliberate. He held out the drawing to her through the slats.
She looked at him, her sherry-colored eyes wide with surprise. She made no move to take it.
"Your cat," Lysander said, his voice carefully calibrated to sound like that of a very bright, but still childlike, two-year-old.
She blinked. "You talk."
"I talk," he confirmed.
"You're a baby," she stated, a fact she found clearly at odds with his speech and demeanor.
"I am small," he corrected gently. "You draw good."
A flicker of pride illuminated her features. She finally reached a small hand through the fence and took the drawing. "His name is Shadow. He sits on the wall."
"I see him," Lysander said, though he had not. "The lines are good. For the fur."
She looked down at her drawing, then back at him, her head tilted. No one, it seemed, had ever critiqued her work before. "I used the soft charcoal. For the soft parts."
Clara, who had been watching this exchange with a look of profound astonishment, finally found her voice. "Lysander, don't bother the little miss." She offered Elara a kind smile. "I'm sorry, dear. He's very forward."
Elara ignored Clara, her attention fully on Lysander. "Do you draw?"
Lysander considered this. In his past life, he had been competent, but his talent was for words, not images. That was her domain. "No," he said honestly. "I like words."
"Oh." She seemed to find this acceptable, if uninteresting. "Words are in books. Papa has books."
"I have books," Lysander said, though his were cloth and wood. The conversation was stilted, simple, but to him, it was a symphony. He was talking to her. He was building a connection, however fragile.
"Elara!" a woman's voice called from the house, the same woman who had shaken the rag. "Come inside now!"
Elara's face fell. She looked at Lysander one last time, a look of reluctant curiosity in her eyes. Then she turned and ran back towards the blue door without another word.
Lysander stood at the fence, watching her go.
Clara came and took his hand. "Come along, my little philosopher. That was very kind of you to return her picture." She looked down at him, her expression a complex weave of awe and worry. "You are the strangest and most wonderful child in all of Christendom."
As they walked away, Lysander replayed the conversation in his mind. "You talk." "You're a baby." "I am small." It was a beginning. A tiny, fragile thread had been spun between them. He had looked into her eyes and spoken to her, and she had spoken back. It was not the intellectual communion of their previous life, but it was a start. He had found his bridge. Now, he just had to make sure it could bear the weight of the impossible truth he would one day have to place upon it. The hunt for Finch was a mission of desperation. This, the slow, careful cultivation of a relationship with a watchmaker's daughter, was a mission of the heart. And for the first time since his rebirth, both missions felt, however distantly, possible.