Reaping Time

21.

At the core, Owen Grady has always been a practical being. Ewan, too.

And then someone came and told him and his twin they are fucking wizards, and Ewan fell in love with a weird maybe-spy maggy to the point of producing a sprog legally, and… well, it didn’t change things very much, really, and still doesn’t, but it also means Owen can’t scoff at the dreamers anymore. Because, who knows, what they dream is maybe actually real somewhere – or even somewhen! – like all the stories of magic and witches and wizards!

John Hammond proved it, too, with the dinos.

And, now, the family – along with who knows how many other families and individuals – are doing a cross-dimensional travel.

Or maybe even cross-universal.

Who knows, maybe the new whatever-it-is has timelords in it, or sentient robots, or laser guns, or ion bombs, or animals in space, or sentient planets, or… well, maybe he ought to stop “inciting” his twin and nephew. Their scary overlady looks ready to throttle him, as high-strung as she is right now.

Case in point: “Are we there yet?” Mitch asks for the umpteenth time, and Owen winces empathetically when May glares at the poor boy.

She does check their current bearings again, though, this time.

And this time, none of them recognises the dating system, or the location, though the time seems normal.

But, wait….

“Coruscant?” Owen echoes the writing in the air out loud, frowning. The name sounds familiar.

“Coruscant! Coruscant! Coruscant! Coruscant!” Mitch sings, wriggling in his seat.

“We’re in a different universe entirely,” Ewan notes, his voice and face blank. And, just so, reality crashes down on Owen like a huge bucketful of ice water on a hot day.

“We’re in a different universe entirely,” he mouths along, tasting the shape and vibration and sound of each syllable separately, trying to internalise it that way.

Because otherwise nothing feels different. All four of them are still gathered in the kitchen of the house May is in charge of keeping for the Potter family, and nothing round them – or even in them – feels different.

“We are in a different universe entirely,” May confirms, solemn and… joyful. Anticipatory, even.

Owen frowns quizzically at her.

She grins wolfishly back.

“We are no longer barred from interacting with Lord Potter, or I assume it is Lord Black Potter now, and we will make sure that it stays that way.”

Owen stares at her for a long moment, warily mute.

It feels like coming face to face with a recently fed wild lionese with no protection between them and on him.

Which is… rather exciting, really.

22.

Luna said, “They are all so sad. They have been betrayed by their own.”

Professor Sprout said, “We may have landed on either a favourite funerary field or an odd battle site. There are so many burnt remains of living matters here, mixed with some kind of metal. We need to dig very deep to reach the topsoil; and, even then, given this environment and what might have happened to make it this way, it might not be viable.”

It all makes for an ominous start on this new life of theirs, perhaps, but Neville Longbottom is not one for such superstition. Gran did not raise him that way. She would have said, “Poppycock. It is needful, therefore we do it. longbottoms do not shirk away duty or baulk from hardships.”

So, with Gran’s… encouragement… ringing at the back of his mind, he organises scouts that will map out this place on foot and from air. And then, although he longs to find out for himself what their potential new home is like, he tasks himself to both soothe Luna and ask her what she has seen that made her cry on arival. In detail. As much as he does not wish to upset her more by indirectly forcing her to dwell on it. The information might be pertinent. She is quite perceptive, after all, however loony she appears.

Her subsequent description of this place’s former inhabitants – who are not ghosts but somehow still visible to her as echoes? – is… somewhat odd. He knows that certain individuals used to wear armour, magical and muggle alike, and people still wear a variety of robes until now. However, he has never heard of people wearing armour and robes at the same time. And the relevant image she helpfully sketches him on a scrap of parchment does not help his lack of comprehension at all.

Only, it sadly matches the unusual amount of metal in the sand all too well. Also the unusual amount of burnt living matters. And her story that the people here were burnt alive by fire from the sky. Which… maybe also caused this place’s air to be toxic? Maybe like the muggle bombs back in the 40s that trapped two Japanese magical enclaves for years and poisoned an overbold bunch of them by air and water?

`Are we next in line? Or was it a one-off situation? She did say those poor sods were betrayed by their own, no? should we just take steps to ward ourselves from the same fate?`

He frowns. And frowns even more when the scouts trickle back into the meeting room in the habitation trunk and give their reports. Because Katie has ventured the farthest from this landing spot of theirs, and she says she has spied a bunch of people in weird armour sneaking among the dunes.

“Can’t remember all the details,” she continues as she sketches the armour on a muggle parchment with what she called a pencil when he braved himself to ask her in second year. “Looks somewhat familiar, but I don’t know where I saw it.”

“Oh.” He agrees with her. The armour does look familiar.

Newly familiar, in fact.

Wordlessly, he fishes out Luna’s sketch from his robe’s pocket and slides it onto the table the scouts are all gathered round.

Their discussion shifts, just so. Especially when the scouts get Luna’s story out of him.

“I think I found a cave opening not so far away,” a newly arrived, newly de-dusted Susan offers, breaking into the jumbled talks of safety measures, ways to get to a better place and even offensive measures. “Let’s stay there for a while. It’s better than out in the open like this. We can ward and conceal it, like before, so we can buy the time we need to consider what we should do next.”

Neville sends her a grateful look, then verbalises it, and follows with, “You’re in charge of security then, Sue? Like before?”

She shrugs. “Maybe,” she hedges. “But it’s more complex here. More complicated. I don’t think I can do it alone. Someone needs to find out more about this place and its people, while someone else needs to keep us all safe. We can’t just hide without knowing anything. And we can’t just listen in like before, in case people here are aliens or something.”

He returns the shrug with his own. “You’re in charge of them, then.”

She gives him an ungrateful look, for that; an unspoken promise to make his life difficult.

But, eh, it is needful, is it not? There is no way but to go forward, then.

23.

Ayuningtias stirs a huge potful of Solonese chicken soto*(1) and sindens*(2) her prayers for the food to be good, fulfilling and strengthening at the same time to those who will eat it. Beside her, her sister Ayuningsih does the same with a potful of beef rendang*(3).

It’s just as per usual when it comes to preparing food for themselves and all the other employees in this plantation, really.

But, at the same time, it is… not.

Tias is very aware that what they are doing now – hell, even the chicken and the beef and all the other ingredients that went into these two pots – are a very tiny remnant of the world they have left behind, preserved in multiple spelt trunks stored in a spelt tent held in the spelt backpack of the teenage boy that holds their ultimate allegiance. How not? They met Gusti*(4) Harry for the very first time quite recently, something which would never have happened where they had been before for the machinations of someone named Albus Dumbledore and a few other reasons. Furthermore, during that meeting, he had not only a baby with him but also a robot’s head. And then select few – including Rangga, that lucky sod – went magically fishing for more alien things, and succeeded. There is even a living alien child scampering about in the back garden beyond the kitchen right now, resulting from one of the attempts.

It's all bittersweet… and she has to not think about it right now, lest she ruins the blessing on the food and the food itself. It would be unconscionable! They do have plenty of supplies at present, but it doesn’t mean the supplies are endless, as they have to feed a lot of people and have no supplemental suppliers yet. Not when Gusti Harry is lying unconscious in one of the trunks like this, recovering from the “fishing,” and not when they still know practically nothing of where they have ended up in, although one of the bule*(5) workers seems to suspect something.

For that matter, given that the alien child – who is now… sniffing the ground over the herbs patch? – seems to subsist solely on insects, they must regulate their insect population, too! Because they did not think to stock up on those beyond what is necessary for pollination and the natural cycle, fearing a pest problem. But, at the same time, of course, they do not wish the poor skittish, far-too-skinny thing to starve, nor do they wish to ignore the said child in the effort of trying to provide more food for them.

Come to think of it again… “Ning, arek iku wis mangan urung?” (“Ning, has that child eaten yet?”) she nods towards the little shadow flitting outside the kitchen window, deeper than the late afternoon shadows, once the sinden has concluded.

Her sister concludes her own in a high, wavering note, then pauses.

Not a good sign, that, Tias thinks as guilt squirms in her chest and down to her belly. It means they have left the child alone and unfed for too long already, while Nada – on behalf of Gusti Harry – entrusted the poor little one to them.

This morning.

While it is already near dinnertime.

`oh.`

The sisters’ eyes meet, alarmed and so, so guilty.

Tias looks away first and scrambles for the boxful of crickets she has bartered with her enterprising son for a batch of her piping-hot serabi*(6), which she stowed on the topmost shelf. Then, as her sister hums notes for warmth preservation at the stove, she hurries out of the kitchen altogether through the back dor.

Fortunately, the little one – Kondo, Nada said – is still there, loitering close to the kitchen window, from which the aromas of dinner’s menu no doubt have been wafting out of for some time by now.

Very, very hungry, likely. Because they have been avoiding everyone, otherwise.

Feeling very, very guilty in turn, Tias crouches down and calls softly for her charge, with the box of crickets extended in her hands.

She switches to balancing it on one hand and miming eating with the other when a pair of golden eyes, shining lamp-like in the late-afternoon glow, home in on her with predatory precision.

She shivers, too. She can’t help it! Tiny and timid as the little thing is, that stare screams danger-danger-danger to her hindbrain.

And the little menace’s attention sharpens, just so. On her, instead of on the probably delicious live crickets chirping away in the box in her hand.

Maybe they mistake what she means with her miming?

Damn, she is not for eating!

With that in mind, she shakes her head emphatically while patting her chest over her breastbone, then pats the side of the box and mimes eating the crickets in it. to be more inviting and safe for her, she puts the box on the grassy ground afterwards and scoots back a few paces.

Aaaaand, success!

After a palpably contemplative moment, the child stalks forward warily, straight to the box of crickets.

Golden eyes flash up once more just as a pair of tiny, green-striated grey hands rest on the lid of the box, like a pair of signalling torches.

She nods again, just as emphatically as before, while pointing at the box then the child.

“Makan,” (“Eat,”) she verbalizes as clearly as possible at the same time. Children learn languages fast, right? Her English is not good, barely on the edge of being understood, but her Indonesian is fluent if thickly accented. Gusti Harry could always teach this new child of his English by himself, she figures. She just needs to have something to connect with the little one right now.

And, surprisingly despite the expectation, the child parrots her word verbatim, down to the thick Javanese dialect and insistently slanted imperative.

Now she wants to laugh, and coo, and gather the scrawny little thing into her arms.

She hasn’t forgotten the predatory look, though, so all she does is to hum approvingly and watch as the child carefully inspects the box from all angles, then peers into the little holes dotting the sides, then extends a couple of the green-with-grey-stripes fleshy hair-like things ringing their bald, bony pait towards the said holes.

She wonders if those are for hearing, since she can see no ears on their head.

She wonders, too, if food in their original time – original time! – was so scares, or if meals were conditional on good behaviour or doing some chore. Because one tiny hand then darts into the box whose lid the other hand lifts slightly, grabs a no-doubt-surprised cricket, clasps the lid back down, de-wings and de-legs the poor insect, stuffs it into their lipless mouth full of sharp teeth, and nudges the box back to her with a clearly conveyed expectant look.

She chooses to think kindly of the child’s previous guardian, and tries to convey how glad she is that they are eating by look alone, even as her hand motions them to continue eating.

But they do not. And the expectant look remains.

Cursing inwardly, she racks her brain for something easy, quick and light for the tiny, skinny little one to do, just so that they will continue eating.

And, just as a thought begins to crystalise in her brain, someone comes striding out of the dormhouse – Ningsih, by the somewhat-stompy footsteps – while… bouncing a ball aloft on her palms, it sounds, and sing-songs, “Sapa arep dolan bal?” (“Who wants to play ball?”)

Kondo straightens up, tenses.

Tias sighs, gets up to her feet, glances to the side and gives… yup, it’s her sister… a dirty look.

Still, it’s… not a bad idea. It’s play, and everyone knows children love it.

So, even as she gives Ningsih a glare, she motions the other woman to throw the ball to her, which she then throws to Kondo.

Fortunately, Kondo seems to be a bright, bright child, and they catch up to the unspoken simple rule almost instantly. They toss the ball back to Ningsih, if far harder than the two previous examples – serves her brat of a sister right, though! – and the little game is on.

In fact, it is how the other inhabitants of the dormhouse find the three of them come dinnertime: running round, trying to catch the ball that is thrown with increasing swiftness and difficulty of angle, squealing – in the sisters’ case – and laughing.

It’s fun.

And, better yet, at the end of the little catch-and-pass-the-ball game, Kondo eats four more crickets.