Edmund

December 30, 2025

"Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before the fall," I joke, yet receive no reply. The attic room, usually filled with the clatter of Magna's experiments or the low hum of the computer, was unusually quiet, save for the soft patter of rain against the skylight.

Miss Reign is curled up in her blankets, burrowing into her pillow with an expression of pure exasperation on her face. Judging by a rounded lump beside her feet, William is not far away, and as I carefully prod it, it hisses and spits at me, so my doubts are confirmed.

Like mistress, like tomcat.

A spirited thing, for such a young one, for sure. Fiercely loyal to her only, and no one else.

And he was supposed to be a gift for my birthday.

"Fine, Edmund, you win." She mumbles from under the beddings. "I was proud, haughty-spirited, and I have fallen. Can I go back to sleep now?"

"It was a mere jest, Miss Reign, intended for you to react to in an offensive way. A pick-me-up, if you will."

When I do not hear a reply, I sit next to her, carefully avoiding William's tooth and claw, a preferred and well-established weapon of choice. The faint scent of her shampoo, a modern, sweet fragrance, reached me even through the blankets.

"You have not had supper last night. And just when I was beginning to think my culinary skills have magnificently improved." I place a freshly brewed cup of steamy coffee before her in hopes the bait shall suffice.

A lonely, unintelligible grunt is all I hear back.

My hand sneaks towards the mop of her hair in desire to caress it, to comfort her in whatever may ail her, yet the coward in me prevails. I retreat it back onto the bedding, giving it a one-time awkward pat.

"Are you sickening for something, Miss Reign? Whatever is the matter? Can I be of any assistance to you? Any whatsoever?"

Another grunt.

"I have gone through enough trouble as is to learn this modern slang of the twenty-first century. Are you throwing another language at me, now? You see, I must stop you right there, for I am not quite sure whether I could handle it."

When Miss Reign mutters something akin to "go away" and covers her head with a pillow, it affirms my decision to stay put even more.

This woman needs some looking after and pampering, and I am not going anywhere. Her vulnerability, so rarely shown, tugged at something deep within me.

"I am lacking the emojis to express my teeth-gnashing countenance here. I shan't leave your side until we might speak. Would you please tell me what is wrong? I am aware I am not of this time and let alone your time. Yet two heads are wiser than one. I may be able to provide much-needed feedback. Or a friendly ear, at the very least."

"Are you advocating a three-way intercourse, Lord Worthington?" She giggles at me.

I blush but quickly manage to get back on my feet and deflect her jab.

"Hmm... The three-body problem, you say? That is tricky, to say the least. Way too many ways the bodies might interact. And entanglement threatens. Now, out with it! Tell me what has gone awry, I implore you."

"Oh, all right!" She turns around with haste.

William leaps off the bedding and on top of the wardrobe with an annoyed meow.

Miss Reign places her head in my lap, like a little perfect porcelain doll. The confidentiality of her gesture leaves me flushed. I caress her hair strand, removing it from her golden-brown eye.

We both freeze for but a fraction of time, becoming aware of that minuscule touch. Then the clock ticks on, and the moment is gone as fast as it had come.

"Can I still have that coffee if it hasn't gone cold?" She pouts her full lips in demand, and, loath to mock her, I suppress my grin as I oblige.

She sits upright, sipping our favorite beverage and begins her narrative, which I listen with quite an enthusiastic disposition.

"I am having what I call the day of drowning, here again, the cold wash only I can feel. What's the cold wash, you may ask. Fine. It's this: I don't want to get up. I don't want to move at all. I don't want to talk to you and I don't want you here. I just want to hibernate like a kick-ass she-bear. But I know it can't happen. If I we ever want to get out of this place. Err... Timeline. So each time, sooner or later, I do get up. And in that moment it takes all the strength I have to make a good choice, to get out of the bloody bed and shut the attic bedroom door behind me. To warn myself not to go back to it before midnight. Getting up, it gives me the thoughts I need, that I am someone worthy of love and joy. Someone clever who will figure all the shit out. Not a failure. Not a failure. Success. This is how I stay alive. This is how the... let's call it a universe reaches me and tells me good things are coming."

"I do know that good things are coming. You have told me so." I manage to speak up after clearing my throat. I had not realized she has been feeling like this. The raw honesty in her voice was a revelation.

"So, you know that Hollie is 'fixed'." Miss Reign makes a quote mark sign in the air.

"Yes, I am aware of your progress. You have successfully transferred her voice onto the Question and Answer machine of this time so you may communicate with her. You even used this to our advantage and got us modern-era documents of identification." I nod, confirming what we both already know, wondering which direction the conversation is turning to.

I am familiar with this, and she is familiar that I am familiar with it.

"But it's that bloody time device, it's just..." Miss Reign deposits the coffee mug to her left without looking, and it crashes against the parquet.

The wooden floor becomes a chorus of browns; they sing together, a cappella of hazelnut baritone and hickory bass hues that rise up into vibrant beige soprano notes.

William yowls, and Mr. Addison is heard from downstairs: "What the deuce is going on up there?"

I make haste to the door and shout some reassuring sentences, hoping the man won't actually come up here to reprimand us.

"I shall clean it up later." I say. "Now. What about the 'bloody' time device?" I wave my arms around my axis in a comical fashion.

"If I plug it in... I mean, if I connect it to the Question and Answer machine..." She translates the exposition as she speaks in a way that I can comprehend it, and for that I am immensely grateful. "It works and it seems like it is sending and receiving some kind of signals. Akin to a... radio transmitter?" Miss Reign hesitates.

In one of my passionate reads of the Wiki Pedia articles, I have acquainted myself with all means of communication that humanity has invented after the telegraph.

Having read up on the telephone and the radio, which seems to have fallen into misuse, I do know what she is referring to.

"These are fine tidings, Miss Reign! You have managed to make the 'bloody time device' function in a way. Why the long face, if I may enquire, then?"

"The part that was missing was a crystal. It's what got damaged when we... did a little tumble across the river Thames." Miss Reign makes a sour face.

"I take it that you have found another one, then?"

"Yes, and I didn't even have to look. It was right before our eyes all along." She waves her hand at me, and I witness her hand ring, now void of the diamond.

I let out a low whistle. "A four-carat diamond from the ring your father gave you? You used it as a replacement crystal?"

"I know, I know, and before you say anything..." Miss Reign raises a hand as if to defend herself.

"No need for any kind of deflection. I was merely admiring your intellect and your prowess."

She opens her mouth, then closes them again.

"It's not good enough, Edmund. The diamond. It's not good enough, big enough, what have you. In the twenty-third century, technology is much more advanced and... There, we have artificially grown diamonds, the size of bricks." She bangs her fists against the wall and grrs. "Argh!"

"I take it you have already performed a trial session and it did not end well." I bite into my lower lip.

"It just... Nothing! I got nothing. Hollie was so kind as to inform me that I should've been aware of the possibility that any kind of twenty-first-century technology wouldn't be good enough for the twenty-third-century device. So... stupid. Why did I even hope that I'd be able to fix this shite!" Copious tears flow down her cheeks.

Her pain becomes my pain, and I press her little head onto my chest. "There, there, Miss Reign. It's not the end of the world after all."

"You don't understand, Edmund." She fists the lapels of my checkered shirt in her hands and smothers them, only to re-adjust them the following moment, in movements that might be soothing to her. "I wanted... I wanted to be able to fix it. To go home. To prove my father I can. And I wanted to take you home, too. We've been here for ten months, Edmund. Ten months." The last two words come out as a whisper, laden with a profound weariness. "That hope, that I will manage to save us both from this predicament, this situation I had always been feeling so guilty about. It was the only thing I had. That we had. And now it's gone, too. I feel so... So powerless. I have nothing."

It breaks my heart to see this brave, strong, wonderful woman speak like this about herself.

I press her stronger to my chest, closer to me, and hear her heart beating frantically next to mine, like a caged, powerless little bird wanting to take flight.

"Now, Miss Reign. Do not speak like that. Take courage, will you? In the dark times, everything may seem dark. Yet I assure you it is not so. Never say never. There is always hope. It's not true you don't have anything. You have that beautiful mind in your brain..."

She starts shaking her head in a repeated 'no' movement, and I press a trembling finger onto her lips.

"Shhh. Yes. Yes. I said, 'that beautiful mind.' From what I have seen, there is also that amazing sense of humor, youth, and health. Any endeavor you decided upon, you triumphed in. Your Green Peace project, and parks preservation? Just an example."

"Well, not this one." Miss Reign cannot seem to be able to contain her tears.

"A no is not a no forever. It is a mere 'not yet.'" I whisper into her ear with an unparalleled stubbornness, perhaps matching only hers. "But if these ten months, as you say, I have spent with you, taught me something, it is this: time and space, they are nothing but relativities. We are here today, and who knows tomorrow. Who is to say, you shall not triumph in this endeavor as well, as time goes by? I believe in you."

My mouth brushes her forehead ever so lightly, and I am not sure whether it is my imagination or if she is really leaning into it. A subtle shift, barely perceptible, yet profoundly meaningful.

"That... Means a lot to me, Ed." Miss Reign lets out a trembling whisper.

"And I will always believe in you. I will wait for as long as it is needed. You can do this. Bear in mind: you lost a battle. But not the war. So just keep trying until you win. Giving up is for the weak, Miss Reign. For cowards. And you don't strike me as one. You are 'badarse.' And 'cool.'"

Miss Reign sniffles and lets out something between a choking sound and laughter.

"Am I in the wrong, for thinking thusly?"

"You are most certainly not wrong, Milord Worthington." Her saucy voice and a cheeky smile make a re-appearance, and I welcome them like long-expected guests.

"Ah, the witch has returned, I see."

"She has. And oh my god, that was so embarrassing." She rolls eyes at herself.

"Transmitting sunshine and joy, verily." I whisper a good-natured tease, and Miss Reign playfully bumps me as a reaction to it.

"I suppose you gave me a reason to get out of bed this morning and that I should thank you. So, thank you, Mister." She leans towards me and gives me a chaste peck on the cheek, which elicits not so chaste a reaction from my nether regions, yet I tell her nothing of it, the gentleman that I am.

"I'll scoot down for a spot of breakfast, and then, Hollie and I shall conspire about what exactly to do with that new radio transmitter. You said it yourself. Two heads're better than one."

A wild idea leaps before me, and I cannot help but voice it out.

"Miss Reign?" She halts in the door frame and turns around, granting me a wide, dimpled smile, one of her eyebrows risen in a quizzical, inquisitorial manner.

"You said the time device now acts as a radio transmitter. What if it could... And this is just a hypothesis of a sort... Allow you to grasp a signal that your father's timeline is emitting? What if you could actually at least communicate through time, even if the diamond you used is not large enough for time travel?"

Her eyes widen in response. The sudden understanding sparked a new fire in their depths.

"Oh wow. Oh wow. You may be onto something, Edmund! I... How come I didn't think of that?"

"You were perhaps too focused on enabling the device for its prior primary function, which in fact was, time travel. But right now, from what you have told me, its primary function is a transmitter and receiver of signals."

"Of course. Of course!" She slaps her forehead, pacing around our small attic room.

"You should make use of it. If you can connect with your father, and the twenty-third century, you will not need to find the way to go to him. He can come to you. After all, like you said, he would have the more advanced technology."

Miss Reign flings herself around my neck.

"You are a genius, Edmund Worthington! Why, I could kiss you right now!"

Her tiny chin nuzzles my beard, and I hold her in my hug a moment longer than necessary, my cheeks flushed from her previous statement.

"Two heads are better than one." I smirk, and she sticks her tongue at me, prior to descending the stairs like a mini hurricane—her own tempest in the making.