The Lacuna Coil

[Trillian]

The portal opened up into a domed room.  There were no windows, but there was light.  The light came from the walls themselves, which were made from a metal called Luminoria - something that Kerr, or any scientist on earth, would recognise.  There were a few spaces on the known periodic table that allowed for it, but it was in one of the spaces generally referred to as Unobtanium, left for the writers of science fiction to imagine the properties of.  In this world, that Kerr had entered, it was simply a source of light.  There was no need for electricity here.

Stacked crates packed with fragile goods and straw filled some of the spaces.  Kerr hadn't even had the chance to ever open them since Halen's death.  It was unknown if Halen himself even knew what had been in those crates anymore, so long had they been in storage.  Now they were in the ultimate store-room.  Still other artefacts were strewn about the place, filling it utterly, like a haphazard warehouse.  Whatever space was needed was the space this room took.  A happy circumstance, for there would always be room for more.  Scattered between and around the artefacts (and in some instances, within), were all the books from the Chambers library.  There was no order to them, they'd just been delivered without labels.  There'd been no time to pack them carefully, they'd simply been magicked away.

At the opposite end of the dome-room to where the planar portal had opened, was a large double door made of heavy timber.  Both doors were closed, though their handles begged to be pulled on.  There was no evidence of a lock.  Kerr would find his path to those doors unobstructed, as was his view.  However, the Guardian was waiting for him, and from his mind took the form of his first love.

"Hello, Kerr," greeted Tara, after he stepped through the portal.

[Existentially Odd]

Kerr was disquieted as soon as he stepped through the portal and, at first, he wasn't entirely sure why.  Was it that the sensation of stretching away from where he belonged had overtaken him?  When he thought of belonging, though, he realised what it was and his insides lurched: his blood ties with Ben and Ichabod didn't reach into this dimension.  He was alone.  Thank God they were sleeping, or they'd have certainly worried, since he hadn't even warned them this was coming.  Shit.  That had been very shortsighted of him.

He heard his name and froze, staring at the woman wordlessly, immediately forgetting his progeny.  He'd barely had a chance to glance around before she spoke to him, snagging his undivided attention.  For a full thirty seconds, he couldn't speak.  All he could do was look at her, the memories assaulting him as his brain battled to justify what his eyes were telling him they were seeing.

She's dead
She's right there
But she died hundreds of years ago
She looks pretty real, exactly as you remember her...
Yes.  Exactly.  Which isn't even possible - and she's here, and I don't even know where that is
So it's not possible?
No
But she's right there...

He turned to face her, stepping up to her and letting his gaze roam over her pretty face, down over her clothes.  She was a projection, surely, something taken from his mind and sent to this place?  Or perhaps he'd manufactured her?  She didn't look a day over twenty-two, the age she'd been when he first began sleeping with her.  When he'd first fallen in love with her.  Her eyes were large, green and beguiling, her dirty blonde hair pulled back into the bun she usually wore it in.  He remembered unpinning it and letting the silken curls unfurl all the way down to the small of her back, the way it felt running his fingers through it, kissing her pale skin between the strands as she lay on her stomach on the bed, giggling.

Looking at her was surreal, because he hadn't thought of her in so long that it seemed he'd forgotten more than he remembered, yet these weird details came to him as he stood there gaping at her.  Her face was familiar yet not, because he hadn't physically seen her in centuries and even then, it'd been through the eyes of a child.  Well, as she looked now, anyway.  He'd lived in a farm neighbouring hers until he'd been turned at thirty-two and he'd watched her change up until the age of forty-two, whereupon he'd moved away with his sire.  He hadn't still been in love with her by then.  She hadn't looked like this by that time, either; no, this was definitely the Tara he'd bedded and impregnated as a fourteen year old, the one he'd fallen in love with for the first time in his eternal life.

"You can't be real," he said stupidly, still clutching the book in against his body as he looked her over repeatedly.  For the time being, she'd made him forget why he was here.

[Trillian]

A smile lifted her lips and she came nearer, in order to reach her hand to his arm and give him a pinch.

"I most assuredly am," she said, using the language she'd used back then, with the accent she'd had back then, in the voice she'd spoken with back then.  She even wore the clothes she'd worn back then.  Tara giggled at him then, but the laugh was not quite hers, and as many similarities Kerr had seen on first impression, he saw differences in her now.  Mostly in her body language - she didn't move the way she had back then.

[Existentially Odd]

Absently, his free hand went to where she'd pinched and pressed there, though she hadn't hurt him through his jumper.  She'd proved she was real, though, and he was boggling over that.

"Well, okay.  You're real, but you're not really Tara.  Who are you?" he enquired, finding himself quite charmed by the fact that this creature had read his mind and plucked out this image to become.  He wondered why it wasn't Ben, someone more important in his recent history; could there be some sort of limit to the creature's mind reading abilities?

[Trillian]

Her smile remained, and it was a gentle one as she bowed her head lightly before she introduced herself.

"I am the Guardian."

She stood where she was, her hands clasped together in front of her, a picture of serenity.

[Existentially Odd]

"Guardian... " he repeated questioningly, his gaze drawn back to the domed room around them.  The lack of organisation bothered him greatly, for everything scattered over the floor seemed heinously offensive.  Why couldn't there be bookshelves for the books and storage shelves for the artefacts?  Ben would be horrified by what he was seeing and it didn't sit right with Kerr, either.  He looked at the heavy doors opposite, contemplating them silently before turning back to Tara.

"Why do you guard this room?" he enquired, feeling it unnecessary to put such a being in here.  Only he could access this room from his plane, so perhaps she was here to stand against whatever would come through those doors from the host dimension.  He wanted to know what was on the other side of them, but Bralik's warning against it was fresh enough in his mind to sway him from even approaching.

[Trillian]

The question of why was easily answered, but likely not in the manner Kerr was wanting.

"Because that is my purpose.  I am the Guardian."  She tipped her head and looked upward, as though thinking or seeing something up there beyond where the panels of the Luminoria walls met and became its roof.  She looked back at Kerr.  "I am also the Timekeeper."  She paused again.  "You have been here two minutes."

As soon as Kerr looked at the doors behind her, her smile had become a little broader - her pleasure at his curiosity undeniable.  She'd meant to ask this question next, but his own had come first, and so she'd been obliged to answer his first.

"You are curious about the doors," she said, gesturing in a fluid sweep with one of her hands in order to return his attention to the doors at the end.

[Existentially Odd]

He frowned when he was told she was also a Timekeeper, wondering why that was necessary.  When she gestured towards the doors, his shoulders stiffened and his lips thinned, because he knew he wasn't to open them, despite any curiosity he held about what was on the other side.  It had been an easy thing to agree to, in his office, chatting with Bralik, but now that he was here in this peculiar pocket, he wondered how it could hurt if he opened one of them, just a crack.  Still, he knew he couldn't.  He looked back at the Tara/Guardian/Timekeeper.

"I'm curious about what's on the other side of the doors, but I've also been told it's not for my eyes.  What do you guard these belongings against?" he specified, wanting two answers but asking one for the time being.

[Trillian]

Her question was immediate, though she spoke slowly.  It was a struggle to answer for her, due to his phrasing of the question.

"That is not the nature of my guarding.  I do not guard against anything.  I guard them for you."  She didn't look satisfied with her own response, rather she looked quite uncomfortable.  "I request you do not make assumptions in your questions.  I am obliged to answer them even if they are phrased poorly."

She didn't sound like she was telling him off, but she was most certainly doing just that.

[Existentially Odd]

He stared at her, arguing silently in his head and unperturbed that she didn't seem to like the way he'd asked his question - by putting assumptions in it.  It seemed foolish (though no doubt the beginning of a circular argument) to not assume that if a thing was guarded, it was being guarded against something, rather than simply for a reason or a person.  Things that weren't going to be taken or attacked didn't need guarding!

Still, he shifted his questioning back a notch and decided he would keep it at a very simplistic level.  "Are you obliged to answer all of my questions?" he asked for confirmation purposes and when he received an affirmative response, asked another (he thought about asking whether she was obliged to answer him truthfully but decided it would be redundant; whichever way she answered that could still avoid the truth and mask it from him - he'd just have to take his chances).

"Can anything get through those doors and into this room to access these items?"

[Trillian]

Her answer was prompt.

"Yes."

She looked over at the doors, then back at Kerr.

[Existentially Odd]

"And you guard the items against those... creatures?"

She repeated her previous answer enigmatically.  "I do not guard against anything."

Kerr frowned.  "So... do you think someone or something will want to come in and steal these items - or damage them in any way?"

"I cannot foretell the future."

His frown deepened and he was getting the impression that he wasn't meant to know about this guardian or what was beyond those doors.  He could accept the door bit but her presence here baffled him.  He tried one last time.  "Explain your purpose to me," he beseeched.

[Trillian]

"I am the Guardian, who watches over your treasures.  I do not sleep.  I cannot leave.  I send back all who come here without a key.  I am the Timekeeper, who tells you how much time you have spent with your treasures.  I do not lie.  I do not question."

She lapsed into silence after her recital, though her smile for Kerr was a great deal more pragmatic.

[Existentially Odd]

The Tara/Guardian seemed satisfied with the answer she'd been able to give, judging by her smile, and he understood how that felt.  It had been much like wrestling a beehive from the paws of a bear to get answers he was happy with and he decided to veer away from that side of the conversation now.  She was an eternal, vigilant being housed within this vault; judging her existence would as likely send him mad so he swayed from that too, not wanting to believe that he'd roped a creature into a form of slavery, all for a few trinkets and books.

He grinned at the notion she was keeping track of the time for him.  "Let me guess, three minutes so far?" he joked, not understanding the purpose of such a task.  When she replied, he turned to look at the piles of belongings around them.  "Why are the treasures not better organised?  Why aren't they on shelves?  Did I need to specify that such things be sent in here as well?"

[Trillian]

She tilted her head and looked upward after he guessed at the time.

"Three minutes and twenty seven seconds," she calculated, then grinned back at him.  The joke was on him, if he hadn't expected her to answer that.  Her smile disappeared when he made complaints about the layout.

"I will not touch your treasures," she promised.  "They arrived as they were sent.  Being specific would not have changed their arrival," she explained helpfully.