Pandora's Box
Warning for: fillerish chapter
Ha’tak at Valley of the Kings, 22nd May 2004
“Harry! We have been searching for you! Where have you been?” Whirlwind-Hermione ambushes me right after I reemerge into the main part of the ship.
Déjà vu, much?
I was retrieved by a frantic Sai’yo, thankfully after I had stashed the contents of the hollow – not only the jar and tank but also six other artefacts and weapons – into my new personal-flat trunk, which I returned to my mokeskin-pouch pendant just in time for the upset Jaffa to burst into wherever Black had kidnapped me. With all the problems and complications and responsibilities I have been saddled with, I do not want Pandora’s and her children’s fates to be added to the load, and they surely would if anybody else knew about it. And with how interrogative Hermione is being, apparently I have done the right thing, at least for the short term… which may be all I need, to put a stop-gap measure on all these new people dumped on me.
At this rate, I am going to have to found a brand-new city for all my people… or maybe even relocate us to another planet like Pandora and her allies once meant to do.
Huh.
“Ask Black that, Mione,” I retort huffingly to the bushy-haired young woman I call friend, then make a beeline to the bridge of the ship after Sai’yo.
Seeing that the rest of my friends and my entire entourage are tailing after me, I spare an eye for updates and return Hermione’s question to her: “What happened after Black kidnapped me? Are those people still asleep?”
And, just so, she launches into a detailed verbal report, which keeps wanting to veer off to various tangents, which makes me figuratively jump in to correct the course time and time again. – The people stored in the many, many barracks are still in stasis, as nobody had any idea what to do with that many people while we are yet to settle the ones that we have already. Bill declared that the remains of the sacrificed could be moved safely out of the ritual sites, as those sites are inert by now, and so they have been moved from various spots in the ship, respectfully laid out in one of the cargo bays. The hangars are populated by a quarter of the ships that should have been there, as many have been lost during the flight of the refugees to this place, according to Arga. The ship is still spaceworthy, technically, but nobody knows what effect all the wards and the ever-present ambient magic will do to everything, or even if those will follow us to the outer space. And groups of Jaffa have been dispatched to guard the barracks and engine room, also to patrol the seven decks of the ship, by Arga’s order, though recallable at a moment’s notice.
The report brings us to the control area of the ship. But, before I can do anything else, I must dismiss the Jaffa who have been tagging after us like lost ducklings, as they have been ridiculously clogging the corridor leading to the bridge. “Please catalogue the consumables left in this ship,” I end up saying to the nearest one. “Other supplies and facilities, too. But make sure you don’t damage them or move them away. This ship isn’t ours.”
The Jaffa looks puzzled at the end, but he bows neatly and backs away, soon joined by many of his cohorts. It still leaves lots of Jaffa loitering in the corridor, but at least they don’t look so ridiculously jammed together anymore. Now….
I look round the bridge, at all the stations set with their own humongous viewscreens along all wall-space, and let out a drawn-out sigh. “Sai’yo,” I admit to the Jaffa standing placidly beside me, “you know I know nothing about operating a spaceship, right?”
“I could instruct you, my lord,” he replies, then motions to the gaudy golden throne set on a circular dais set on the centre of the bridge. “The throne has the master control and the master screen.”
“Can you operate the ship?” I inquire as we make a beeline to the gaudy thing.
He hesitates briefly before affirming.
“Well, take the chair, then. Go slowly, though, and don’t go into space. We’re risking too many people, here.” I push him to the said chair barely two steps away. It’s like pushing a mountain without the aid of magic, though… and the said mountain is too stubborn to move on his own volition.
“My lord?” He sounds faintly scandalised, to prove it all.
I huff at him. “We don’t have much time, you know,” I point out. “The goblins will come here soon, if they aren’t already here, after the wards were modified.” Well, I’d like to be avoid being ambushed by Tony, too. The strange familiarity that I felt towards him and that bit of déjà-vu-like moment was creepy, and I could also do without his incessant chatter, after what Black dumped on me recently.
But still, my new, improved relative doesn’t budge, arguing softly that his instructions could suffice and I need to be seen to be in charge to be believed by the present Jaffa, who will gossip to their absent friends during their down time.
Okaaay, my patience has run out.
Without another word, and admitedly with a lot of help from my magic, I trip him and push him into the chair.
The shocked look that breaks through his calm façade is beautiful.
I never thought to be figuratively stabbed in the back by Hermione, though….
I only have time to squawk her name and flail a little, before she manages to dump me on Sai’yo’s lap in pretty much the same manner.
“Stop bickering about semantics. Just bring us out of here,” she orders crisply. And judging from the light in her eyes, Arga totally agrees… with everything.
Potter Sands, 22nd May 2004
Moving a humongous spaceship from a desert to another desert may sound ludicrous, but it’s what happens, as nowhere else I own do I have flat enough land for a makeshift landing pad for the thing. Now, at least, the ship is within Potter wards, which currently can be accessed only by me – and Sai’yo, to a limited degree, since he’s not the Lord, and not a wizard, too… as far as I know, at least.
“Huh. Maiden voyage as your ship, and here you fly her to,” George remarks from beside the chair where I and Sai’yo are still seated in, apparently unimpressed with the view of the sandstone cottage perched on a low sandstone cliff on the main screen on the bridge. “You haven’t even named her.”
“Well, I wasn’t focused on naming anything, was I?” I gripe back. “Evading the goblins trumps nearly anything, in any case.”
“What will you tell them, anyway?” Bill breaks in from farther away, sounding rightfully concerned. “You should think about it now, you know, and make sure it doesn’t sound like a lie.”
“No problem,” I wave the fretting away, smiling. I’m used to obfuscation, lying by omission and plenty more, after all, while surviving under the roof of the Dursleys. If I overlay memories of the Dursleys on the goblins, which is sadly rather easy to do, I believe I can treat the latter likewise pretty well. “Now where’s that button for the ramp? – Oh, thanks, Sai’yo.”
“Pick a name before we leave, Harry,” George insists, more seriously than before, much more seriously than I thought he’d treat this naming business. “It’d feel wrong otherwise.”
“Oh, all right, then,” I concede, though privately I agree with him, especially because the ambient magic is subtly but increasingly noticeably pooling round me – and by proximity, Sai’yo – as if in anticipation.
I prod at the alive-seeming thing with my own tendral of magic, even as I muse aloud, “Pandora’s Pyramid?” Hermione – or is it Arga? – gasps from somewhere behind George. “Hmm, no, all right, then. Ah, I know! Pandora’s Box!”
And the name settles deep in the ship’s magic that cocoons me, received with happy contentment.
And Hermione-Arga squeaks, “Harry!”
It’s music to my ears.