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False finds that her archaeologist neighbor is an easy man to talk to. Or rather, an easy man to listen to; after the two of them concluded their trade deal, he offered to give her a tour of the Ancient Capital, and he’s had no shortage of commentary to provide along the way.
“And down here is my pride and joy,” he says, ushering her down a tunnel to reveal one of the largest redstone machines she’s ever seen.
She stares agape at the contraption, trying to piece together what the interlocked droppers and pistons and slime blocks could possibly do. “What is it?”
Pixlriffs beams. “It’s a copper aging machine,” he says. “I call it David.”
“David?”
He waves a hand. “It would take too long to explain. But I thought you might appreciate it, seeing as you’ve been building with copper a fair deal.”
False squints again at all the wiring. Now that she’s been given an idea of what to look for, she can see the copper blocks in the machine, spaced evenly apart and steadily aging within. The principles at play are vaguely recognizable, but the how of it all boggles the mind. “This is mad,” she says in awe. “How on earth did you come up with all this?”
“Well, I fine-tuned bits of the design, but I didn’t come up with the whole thing myself,” he chuckles. “My work as an archaeologist involves restoring pieces of history, after all. I’ve gotten quite good at uncovering schematics that I can use to reassemble the ancient structures that once occupied any given space.” He gestures widely at the contraption below. “I was able to build this here because someone in the past built it here before.”
“So you’re just...recreating stuff from the past?”
“Of course!” Pixlriffs says. “This is a land rich in history, after all! Learning about our past is key to understanding the present, and provides a guide to how we navigate towards the future.”
False cannot help but think of her own past, the one she’s only managed to recall in brief snatches of dreams. She looks down at the enormous machine below them, and she thinks of an airship that refuses to fly because the memory of its workings are out of her reach. “I wish I knew how to learn about my past,” she says, and she can’t quite keep the pang of bitter envy from her voice.
Pixlriffs hums thoughtfully. “Yes, I’ve been curious about the same, to be frank. I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but you are a bit of an odd one out amongst the empires.”
Her breath stutters at the unexpected reply. “How do you mean?”
“As I’ve said, this is a land rich in history,” Pix explains. “I’ve spent quite a bit of time piecing together old stories—legends that, when put next to evidence, reveal hints about actual events past. And what I’ve learned is that long ago, the peoples of twelve different empires settled here, fleeing some great calamity.” Pix turns to False. “Twelve empires, much like the twelve that we see today. Our, ah, traveling bard friend notwithstanding.”
False fidgets awkwardly under his gaze. “What’s that got to do with me being an odd one out?”
“All of our nations came from somewhere,” Pixlriffs continues. “And, as far as I’ve been able to tell, all of us can draw our roots from those old kingdoms. I know that Sausage of Sanctuary, for instance, has ties to the ancient king of Mythland. The Great Witch Shelby and the Evermoore echo stories of the Undergrove.” He chuckles, glancing back down towards his copper aging contraption with fondness. “I myself find myself rather resonating with old tales of the Copper King. The list goes on, really. But, all this is to say: all of us have our ties to the past, whether we know it or not.”
He looks back to her, and his gaze feels somehow sharper than it had before. “All of us, except for you.”
Dread sinks into False’s gut, cold and heavy.
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“As far as I’ve been able to tell, Cogsmeade has no links to this land’s history,” Pixlriffs says. “And as for you yourself: well, there doesn’t seem to ever have been anyone quite like you. You’re utterly unique! It’s fascinating.”
He smiles at her. There’s a glint in his eye that feels unnervingly similar to the look he had when talking about the rarity of the emerald ore in his museum. It gives False the vivid mental image of being encased in glass and put on display to be studied, and—
Suddenly, she finds herself physically recoiling, her pulse hammering in her throat as she's filled with an inexplicable terror. She feels the overwhelming urge to run, to put on her wings and fly far away, as far as she possibly can: anywhere where this man can never again look at her with his sharp, assessing eyes. She can see Pix’s expression shift to concern, see his lips forming words that she cannot hear over the frantic pounding of her own heart, and he steps closer, reaching out a hand—
Without a word, she flees.
It is only when she lands on the long cobbled bridge of Cogsmeade, the stone that she placed with her own hands solid beneath her feet, that False begins to feel safe again. She takes a deep breath to steady herself, then turns towards her base to plan her next project.
There’s no point worrying about history, she thinks firmly. Whatever lies in the aching wound of her past is not worth dwelling upon. All that matters is this: what she’s building now.
(That night, she dreams of a glass box, of the thrum of cold machinery and the scratching of pen on paper, and of the constant, ever-present ticking of a clock. When she wakes up, she finds clocks strewn about her walls, and a field of copper laid out to age.)