21 June, 1893 — Diagon Alley

Xavier Davies was looking for a clockwork rabbit. It oughtn't to have been difficult to find, given that clockwork toys generally only had twenty or thirty seconds of activity in them before they exhausted their energy and needed to be rewound, and this particular toy had been designed to do only one activity, which was to hop a few inches in the air and a few inches forward, until it wound down. Given that it was malfunctioning in other ways, though, he couldn't really trust that it would wind down, or that it would confine itself to hopping only up or straight forward.

He wasn't really supposed to take things home from work, especially malfunctioning inventions whose patents had been denied, but — well, he had a soft spot for magical objects that no one else wanted, and the inventor in this case seemed to have abandoned it. He'd been planning to add it to his collection at home... who knew, maybe even fix it... but the first step was getting it home, and he hadn't even managed that much. It had been in his satchel a few minutes ago, but it must have fallen out when he'd been bumped by someone in the Diagon Alley crowd. That, or it had climbed out itself, but that spoke to a much higher deviation from its specifications than had been hitherto witnessed, so Xav was working under the assumption that the clockwork rabbit had fallen out by accident rather than it was intentionally and maliciously fleeing the scene.

"Excuse me," he asked the nearest shopper. "Have you, by any chance, been seized with a fit of despair in the past minute or so?"

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   Aldous Crouch

Thirty.

She was thirty today. The number beat within her like a drum, a heavy weight upon her chest as Nell made her way along the crowded streets of Diagon Alley.

Thirty. Thirty. Thirty.

Five more years, give or take, until her demise.

It was a cursed knowledge, a painful helplessness.

Why was she even trying—this getting a job close to home lark, this continuing her research. It was all so futile when she had such an expiration date. In truth, Nell should simply just give in. Find a vanishing cupboard to send her away, a steady march towards the grave that would open before her like a chasm&madsh;

"Despair?" she asked with some surprise, tears pricking at the corner of her eyes. "I—that is, yes, but—how did you know?"

Xavier Davies

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   Xavier Davies

He hadn't known, obviously. If he had known, he would hardly have wasted time and breath asking. She had probably meant what made you ask, but saying something adjacent to what you actually meant instead of being direct was a common affliction.

"A hunch," he said with a shrug. Getting into the particulars of the clockwork rabbit and its emotional malfunctions would have taken too long, particularly when she was unlikely to be able to help. He hadn't even caught sight of it yet. "Would you describe it as more of an acute anxiety or a creeping dread? Or something in between?"

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   Elenora Brierley

Nell frowned at the man who, having ascertained that she was clearly not happy, was now trying to—to dissect her emotions like some sort of mental surgeon. It seemed to the witch to be, at best, a peculiar approach, though in her emotional state, she was disinclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, and so was leaning instead towards "at worst": rather inhuman.

"Neither," she remarked rather coolly. At least the dread seemed to be transitioning into something else. That had to be positive, hadn't it?

Curiosity still not sated, Nell probed in return, "Might I inquire as to your—your line of inquiry?"

Xavier Davies

  

Xavier's line of inquiry — how best to answer that? He didn't intend to lie about it, but he also didn't want to stand here explaining while the rabbit made it another block or more. The average person had so little expertise with artifacts — and, at least in his experience, panicked so easily — that he had learned to be careful about what information he gave out, lest it spark an onslaught of frantic questions.

"Tracking down a lost item," he offered. "The feeling should pass in a few minutes. Oh," he said, turning to fish around in the satchel at his side (now mostly empty, since the rabbit had escaped). He rifled around a second, then produced a wrapped bonbon and thrust it in her direction. "This should help."

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No better educated now than she had been a moment before, Nell took the proffered sweet, but did not immediately consume it. Instead, it simply rested within her loose fist.

"Hopelessness," she allowed after a beat. "It felt like hopelessness. You suggest this was caused by an object of some sort?" There was incredulity in her tone.

What kind of person would create such a device? Oh, Nell was no young innocent—she knew the world was full of, among other things, hexes, curses, jinxes, poisons, and their ilk, but those were typically targeted, not set down and lost in a public space by a particularly scatterbrained dark wizard.

At this, her gaze sharpened upon the man. Was he the creator? Was this some sort of demonstration, or test of a malicious prototype?

Xavier Davies

  

Xav had not been expecting a response after she took the candy, and so he was moderately surprised when she offered one. It was only the existence of the statement that surprised him; the content was exactly what he would have expected. He nodded grimly. This was exactly the sort of thing the rabbit had been doing back in the Ludicrous Patents office, too, and presumably beforehand when its inventor had been tinkering with it. It occurred to him only just now that this may have had a good deal to do with why the fellow had abandoned the project; one could only sit around feeling hopeless so long before one threw in the towel on endeavors-in-progress. Hm. Perhaps that meant the inventor would change his mind after he'd been separated from it long enough, and would want it back. That did put slightly more importance on his recovering it.

"A clockwork rabbit. Like one of those wind-up mice, but larger. It's a toy... er, was meant to be," he clarified. "Not much of a plaything while it's bouncing around making people feel hopeless. It was supposed to make children happy. I don't suppose you've seen anything like that underfoot?"

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"I was rather distracted," she deadpanned, "by an overpowering awareness that we all will someday die."

Xavier Davies

  

Xav made a hmm sound as though considering this. "That is a difficulty," he allowed. By this he meant that the awareness of death created a difficulty for him in finding witnesses to help locate the rabbit, not that the inevitability of death was any difficulty. That was merely a fact. "It ought to pass soon," he said. There really wasn't any certainty to this, since it was both experimental and malfunctioning, but it had been his experience... and there really wasn't much point in telling her she might be stuck this way for hours or days. He hesitated a moment, feeling that the interaction was completed on his end but that she probably expected something else from him. "The bonbon will help," he eventually added.

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Nell looked again at the bonbon in her hand, slightly more assured it was not poisoned but still leery of the strange man, under the (overwhelmingly depressing) circumstances.

"I'll leave you to your hunt, then," she said after a moment. As she spoke, she took in his features carefully, scrutinizing him, in case she should ever need to testify in a court of law.

(One could not be too careful.)

Xavier Davies

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   Xavier Davies