The Universe's Mixer

Takes place immediately after this and this and at least a few days before this Part two to be posted soon.

( Battle of the Reds )

(Backdated to before the Spring Masquerade)

It was on its last flight. Once, things like people, automobiles, buildings, other winged creatures, or something as simple as the wind did not trouble it any. It soared across the street, on an unreachable height, on an untouchable speed, harboring ill will, cruel intent, and of course, the information it was tasked to collect. It was usually successful, easily through its inconspicuousness and insignificance.

Not until someone recognized it and knew what should be done with it.

And so, depending on one failing mechanical wing, it laboriously flew towards its source, the world suddenly bigger and far more threatening, more so when its poison was already extinguished. Its stinger stuck in a beggar's hand that made a grab for it. Surely he was already dead.

And it will soon be too.

Finally, it slipped through the slim crack of a window, one that was carefully kept open for its arrival, doubtful as it seemed. It was missing for almost a month. But still, there it was, bumping, buzzing low, spinning at minor collisions, landing on its mistress' lamp table. It tried to crawl to her with as much as one working leg but its golden body would move no more. Its body was now its cage, than its aircraft.

Its incessant buzzing woke its mistress from her shallow sleep, but it was the golden monkey who leapt to it and took it in its hand, quickly the fly spilt what it knew, like a venom, before shaking violently. The black hands of the monkey held it firmly as it did so. The woman was already wide awake enough that she was making sharp exclamations, fearful that the monkey would be stung. When the monkey could not control it any more, it cracked the fly open until it was at last, free.

*****

3 AM in the morning, Mrs. Coulter's face was pale against the lamp light. Her eyes were still and unblinking at the golden monkey who held the broken remains of her final spy fly. He had no choice, it would harm them if he did not break it. The spirit must be released.

But what occupied Mrs. Coulter's mind now was not so much her faithful servant's demise, but what it died transmitting.

( There was a child and a daemon in the City. )

(Backdated before the Spring Masquerade and after this)

She had barely slept the night before, and had hardly taken a bite of food, but none of this slowed Mrs. Coulter down.

But if weariness she can shrug off, her uneasiness she could not. She would not be still, her speech would quicken and rise, until she would catch herself and attempt to be calm.

The golden monkey was another story altogether, he was a dark cloud in the midst of a thunderstorm. He wore an ugly grimace and was quite unsettled, easy to bare his sharp teeth and glower.

They arrived at the site where there was once a massive compound. A Church-funded experimental station that Mrs. Coulter herself had built in her world’s far North so its important work will be concealed. Mrs. Coulter should already be seeing an avenue of lights, at the end of which should be a high metal fence, leading to a row of connected low buildings.

But there was only a wide, flat, open space.

The golden monkey not gently leapt from his human's clutch to venture forth, and explore the second time around.

"I've walked this whole stretch of this land, and I found nothing." Mrs. Coulter said bitterly, facing her companion, "It's just gone, like a sand castle swept by the waves." Her eyes stared past the horizon, as far as her gaze could take her for an outline, a little sign, or a little interruption of that vacantness. "Not an evidence of debris, or a show of force, it was siphoned like a small thing. Like it never existed!"

He had his hands in his pockets, where he ran the flat of his thumb over the grooves of a poker chip, a habit of his which kicked up when the City was up to its tricks. He looked at Mrs Coulter from the corner of his eye.

Eames had the style of one of her own world's gentlemen explorers-- the tailored tweeds, the Cathay linens and the fine wool sporting coats, even the blue-blooded Jordianian swagger-- and like them, he tended toward the metaphysical, although his was the language of the mind, not the divine. And like those learned gentlemen before him... Eames appeared to have no good advice for Mrs Coulter.

( “It might have moved,” he said, doubtfully. )