By this point, Dieter is fully aware of the sorts of pranks that the rec room likes to play. Still, he's crouched down in front of the bookshelf, flipping through records as the jukebox plays a Lilian Harvey song quietly in the background, a soft jab at his prior life. (He doesn't have the patience to look through the actual books - he might have, ( Read more... )

Dated to the beginning of February:
The smile on Delysia's face, short-lived though it becomes, is an instinctive one, broad and surprisingly natural. After a handful of months spent feeling (not that she would ever have admitted to it) so uncomfortably out of place, she'd been beyond pleased to meet someone from her own time, and seeing Dieter ( Read more... )

A gun with an empty clip is practically a useless one.

Dieter's Walther, like the rest of what he arrived with, has been stowed away, which is why he's surprised to wake up one morning to find a cleaning kit and clips on his doorstep. He takes them, yes, but it takes some time for him to put them to use. He picks the pistol up first, the weight of ( Read more... )

If you had been upstairs in the Compound or in the Hub at six in the evening of December 31, you might have thought your eyes were playing tricks on you, or that you'd once again been whisked off to some strange, new place. Within the blink of an eye, the rooms had changed, sparkling instantly with festive decorations, and it was all so ( Read more... )

Karen doesn't like keeping secrets ( Read more... )

Tabula Rasa, a once tropical designation, has now become an ivory island, covered in snow from treetop to seashore, and Effy now lives in a bright pink structure out of a Dr. Seuss story, near a waterfall that's all but iced over. She might think it the strangest development to date, wondering what might possibly come next, but such a thing seems ( Read more... )

Dated November 30th, 2010:
"What's a Nazi?" she asks him, squinting slightly in the sun.

(There are things that he could stand to live without.

He does not want to lose her.

It isn't something that he'll admit.)After reading about German history, Karen asks Dieter some uncomfortable questions ( Read more... )

Every now and then, the bookshelf would offer Dieter something that he'd, for once, deign to actually pick up. One by one, he'd been reading the spines of the books on the shelf, one finger tracking the letters, until he came across one that he recognized. The Nibelungenlied. For an instant, his brow furrowed before smoothing out again as he pulled ( Read more... )

Dated September 5, 2010:
Some called faith blind, claimed that believing in the existence of benevolence of a force that none could truly understand was blind. Perhaps this man was one of their number.

Then again, given that he had come to the church of his own will, perhaps not.

A peri and a Nazi walk into a church.

[ HERE | in progress | PG]

It should have been quite a relief, to have such undisputed confirmation that he wasn't, in fact, out of his mind. It should have given him some comfort that she was well and truly gone. That he was free of her. Free of those shackles, weighting down his every step. After such a very long time without her voice whispering in his ear, nearly ( Read more... )