TRAS Chapter 114: A Teacher and Friend

Bea’s past life was a short one. 

Diagnosed with a life-limiting medical condition at a young age, she slowly came to understand the reality of her prognosis. With proper care, her chances of reaching adulthood were high. And until her disease reached its late stages, she could likely live a relatively normal life. 

But in the end, her health would deteriorate rapidly.

The future was never hers to keep. Yet with its surrender came clarity—the recognition that nothing was as precious as the present, and that it was hers and hers alone.

So rather than dream, she read. The girl with limited time wanted to understand what made a life worth living. Often confined to bed, she sought knowledge instead of experiences, her mind sharp and restless even when her body demanded rest. 

She found philosophy. 

Over time, her friends from school stopped coming to visit. To the outside world, she had already faded from memory. But in books were the words of those who continued to endure. The geniuses of the ages were her company, the lively and vicious debates of intellectuals who in truth lived centuries apart vividly playing out in her mind. 

In that world, the girl chose her legacy: her thoughts, her writings. Her ideas. With the strength she had, she came achingly close to finishing her undergraduate degree—yet even when she knew she wouldn’t, she refused to wilt away. 

She dove deeply into questions of epistemology, wanting to understand what we could truly know. As her time neared, she began to ponder—with trepidation—metaphysics. What are we really? Where did we come from, and where are we headed? 

Yet it was always ethics and its quandaries which resonated with her the most. When the theses of being or belief had tired her out, the language of consequence still made her heart beat fast—the threads humans pull at, untangle, and follow as they try to find their way into the future. 

It was her last attempt to live on in a world that would soon move on without her. By speaking to the echoes of a conversation that began long before, she left herself as a penpal for those yet to come. 

Perhaps she, like those grand intellects she admired, would one day become a lonely thinker’s friend. And if they lived a long life, faced tough decisions… then if her words endured and offered guidance, she would have done her part. 

Her life would matter.

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So one life ended, and another began. The remnants of the girl who lived before lingered as a voice, a quiet whisper in the mind of the little girl born in the Singing Mountains. 

There were always big thoughts in Bea’s head begging for expression—words she didn’t know, and truths she didn’t quite understand. Something deep inside her called out for her attention. 

Bea didn’t trust it. The small voice had big opinions, and it gave Bea a headache. 

It wasn’t until the village priest came one day, carrying a gift for Bea, that the voice in the back of her head would find a mouthpiece. 

A stuffed animal. A turtle with grandfatherly eyes and a hard nosed look that reminded Bea of something—someone. Was it one of the village hunters? No, there was something wise in the turtle’s eyes. 

Something clicked in Bea’s mind. The bossy whisper in her head suddenly took on the gravelly wisdom of a tortoise who’d seen the rise and fall of conquerors and city-states. And finally the vivid inner monologue of the terminally ill scholar who’d lived her life in thought… 

Properly met the vibrant, colorful world of a little girl who just wanted to play. 

“Aris… Aristurtle…” Bea rasped out, as she reached out to hug the turtle. “Aristurtle wants… to teach me.”

“Ah, does he now?” the priest had smiled at her kindly. “And what is it he seeks to teach you?”

“How to… be good,” Bea replied slowly, her small voice filling with solemnity. “...How to live good.”

A tiny smile crossed her lips. And she hugged her new friend tighter. 

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At the age of three, Bea developed a special talent—one that confused her very much.

Bea was out with her mother at the pond near the crags. And she was watching one of the fishermen when a strange feeling came over her.

It felt a little like when she was sleepy in the middle of the day. For a second, the world looked fuzzy, as if everything had been knit by thread. And the clumsy fisherman hooked his own foot with a yelp.

Then Bea woke up. At least she thought she did, because she assumed it was a daydream. But moments later, the fisherman hooked his foot—for real this time. 

Puzzled, that night Bea convened an important council.

“Aristurtle says… time is fake, ‘cause it’s just us counting,” Bea said, dutifully relaying her first advisor’s opinion. She tilted her head, frowning. “But time happens even if I don’t count… That’s silly, Aristurtle. You should just say when you don’t know stuff.”

Cant the Dog interjected with an explanation that the nature of time could never be known, anyway. 

Nitty the Donkey suggested that time might be resetting, and Bea was having a vision of the past that was actually the future. 

Bagel the Owl had a lot to say about time as it related to space, and thought, and ‘dialects’… but Bea just didn’t see how the way people talked was relevant to the discussion at hand. 

“Bagel…” Bea shook her head at the owl’s obtuse words, and gave a weary sigh. “You always make it too complicated… Next time you might not be invited.”

Thus, Bagel was unfortunately pushed out of Bea’s inner circle (though the little chairman made sure to phrase it as if the decision were out of her hands).  

Of course, the whisper in the back of Bea’s head had an endless number of thoughts about time and its implications. But Bea only had so many toys. And at the end of the day, she resolved that there needed to be less thinking and more action. 

Bea ran some experiments.

When she had a vision of her mother knocking over a jug, Bea helpfully moved it beforehand. Her mother bumped the table, but the jug never broke. 

When she glimpsed a future where the mayor’s son Iain dropped a hammer on his toe, she poked his knee trying to warn him. This led to him dropping a hammer on his toe. The future was tricky. 

Over the next year, Bea came to understand her visions—the threads which she could grasp fleetingly and pull at. The world became a symphony of sensation and a kaleidoscope of possibilities. 

It was a lot for a little girl to handle. All the special things playing out in Bea’s mind were almost too much for her, even with her extensive moral council of stuffed friends. The past continued to whisper in her ear, while the future danced before her eyes. 

But it was alright. 

Because Bea’s mother Ciel loved her in the present—and in her every gesture promised to love Bea forever. 

Ciel held her in her arms when she was overwhelmed, stroked her hair when she couldn’t sleep. She talked to Bea when she was lonely, giving her the space and security she needed to ponder big questions about a big world.  

Her mother gave her the wings she needed to soar. And so the day Ailn came visiting their little home in Venlind, Bea saw her uncle for the first time, glimpsing a vision that tugged at the quiet hopes and fears in her heart. 

She found herself yearning, and because of it, decided to fly. 

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The young philosopher’s escape hadn’t just relied on pluck and luck. 

If Bea was actually present in the future she saw, then her vision became more extensive and engaged all her senses. When she wasn’t, she could only catch fleeting glimpses into other people’s futures—and it strained her eyes more. 

But if she needed to be stealthy, all she had to do was avoid futures where she saw herself getting caught. 

Using her powers, Bea snuck on the cart, watching a future where the knight was tempted away by salted pork. Glimpsing the futures where the knight found her struggling to climb in, Bea avoided them by bringing a little stool. 

The knight, assuming it belonged in the cart, placed it inside himself. 

Once she was in the cart, it wasn’t hard to peek through its entrance flaps and eventually get an eye on every knight. She caught a glimpse of Camille, and with it, the diverging threads of their shared futures. 

That was how she knew to hide under the driver’s bench when Camille came into the cart. There was a future where she found Bea under the tarp. 

At the ark-Chelon estate, things got a bit trickier. There was no way Bea would see every single servant. Getting into the kitchen, she actually had to sneak in, peering around corners at maids busily preparing the feast. 

She spotted a single group, and caught the thread into the future where she climbed beneath the table right as they walked in. Then she knew from that thread, she could simply keep watching maids passing through.

It wasn’t every maid. But it was enough that Bea felt comfortable finding a room to sleep. In the room she finally picked, Bea peeked in—and saw no futures where the maids entered it. If she slept in that room, she wouldn’t get caught. 

What she did see was a future where she could talk to her Uncle Ailn. 

She didn’t understand why, but Bea knew this much: there was a single thread into the future that didn’t end with her being sent back home. So long as she met her Uncle Ailn at the right place, at the right time, she knew he’d let her stay.

And past that she could see the deep future—still fuzzy. There was Uncle Ailn, patting her head and smiling.

‘We’re going to see your papa, alright?’ 

Her father wasn’t in the vision, because Bea had never seen him. And until she did, he’d remain a phantom. 

The feeling both tickled and itched, the sense that he was right there, just out of sight. Because if she saw him, just once… Bea could see into his future. She could follow the thread, no matter how thin. 

The problem was, when she actually got to her uncle—and peered further into that future where he was patting her head—she saw something she didn’t anticipate.

Which led to the present moment where she was sitting on the couch in Ailn’s suite, surrounded by her stuffed animals and bawling. 

Ailn scratched his head, watching as Bea broke into tears once more.  

He wasn’t bad with kids. But he was having a hard time here. No matter how much cheese he tried to offer her, Bea was inconsolable. She seemed utterly convinced she’d unwittingly condemned her father to death.

“Come on Bea, let’s not be too hasty,” Ailn said, keeping his voice gentle as he picked her up. “Explain to me what’s going on, alright?”

Bea wiped her tears—and snot—on Ailn’s detective coat, as she tried to explain everything to her uncle. 

“‘Cause I can see… the future,” Bea rasped out. “And I thought I could see papa…”

“...The future, huh?” Ailn mumbled. “Did you see a vision of your dad getting hurt?” 

“I saw—I saw you,” Bea said. Her breath kept catching as she tried to speak, like she was telling on herself. “You were patting my head and smiling, telling me we were gonna go see papa. I just—I wanted to see him.”

She bit her lip, as more tears welled up in her eyes. “I just… wanted to see papa with me… and mama…”

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with that,” Ailn said gently. 

“But then… you picked me up and I saw more and I heard mama crying…” Bea’s voice continued to crack, her face screwing up while big tears kept falling. “And I saw a box…”

She let out a tiny whimper which crumbled into a sob. “I think papa was in the box…”

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It took a long time for Bea to calm down and fall asleep. She’d left him with a lot to think about, and normally he’d like to take a chance to smoke and think things through. 

Unfortunately, he had to watch her. Clearly this child was capable of incredible feats in the one or two minutes when no adults were watching. 

Everything tracked. He’d seen her sapphire eyes, which was a type of shard Ailn hadn’t come across yet. And it would make perfect sense if the sapphire represented Time. Among the other facets that Ailn knew—Psyche, Truth, Union—Time fit pretty well.

From what Bea explained to him, the futures she saw weren’t fixed. So theoretically, all they had to do was keep following Bea’s visions until she saw one where Sigurd lived, and nudge the future in that direction. 

The hard part was, they didn’t even know how Sigurd would die. Ailn couldn’t fully follow Bea’s scattered and childlike explanation, but the rough gist Ailn got was this: she’d never seen her father, so she couldn’t see visions of his future. 

All she saw was Ailn’s future, where Sigurd ended up in a coffin. And she didn’t see what put him in there. For all they knew, Sigurd could be swallowing poison right that moment. 

He tried to unravel the logic. Had Bea actually been the cause? Ailn wasn’t completely convinced that her jumping on the supply cart and coming to Calum had actually led to his death. 

It was entirely possible Sigurd was destined to die anyway. And now that Bea had come to Ailn in a desperate attempt to see her father, they’d stepped onto the timeline where Bea was brought to the funeral. 

In the other timelines, her mother might simply have let her stay blissfully unaware. 

At any rate, whether it was fated or not, Ailn couldn’t simply hang around and let Sigurd die. If there was any chance of preventing it, they had to try—and their first step was by figuring out how it was going to happen. 

Suddenly, Renea’s letter where she worried over Sigurd’s disappearance carried a lot more portent.

With how little information they had, the odds were stacked against them, but at least they had Bea’s visions. The more certain a future was, the more clearly she could see it. That meant they had to try and make her vision of Sigurd’s funeral blur, step by step, until it disappeared altogether. 

The good news was, before Bea had fallen asleep, she and Ailn had figured out the first step. The problem was, it was a step Ailn really shouldn’t take. 

Bea had gazed into his future before announcing something that made his temples throb.

“You’ve…You’ve gotta skip work tomorrow,” Bea told him, dead serious.