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Description
This guy and his pony have been invented for aaaages, I just had to introduce the whole time travel thing before they rocked up (one day, I swear, I'll put all of this act into chronological order, good lord). xD Then I still had to finish mr pon's ref (because they needed to go up as a pair), which took another year. |: The whole idea basically came about after watching The Hunchback of Notre Dame with my bro one night. The bit where they come out at the end after the siege and everything's suuunny and cleeeeean and wonderful? WASN'T THERE A SEA OF MOLTEN METAL AND DEAD BODIES THERE LIKE LITERALLY LAST NIGHT. HMM.

So to cut a (very) long story short: this Roma boy essentially heads the cleaning crew after sieges, particularly ones involving liberal application of molten metal to the terrain. The Kalderash Roma were traditionally smiths and metalworkers, so it's rather his family's area. He rounds up a local crew and gets rid of the metal/tar/gross, exhumes the bodies and restores architecture a little closer to its former non-beaten-the-hell-up glory. He then gets paid a decent sum, and retreats to relax for a bit before finding the next afflicted zone. The problem is that there are only so many sieges a world can have in a year, particularly with them being so out of fashion these days, so generations of his family have cultivated the ability to travel to ones in the past, entirely through the medium of good descriptions and fantastic imaginations.

The art was actually finished a year ago (and so ignore some of the proportions), but I'm still very happy with how the skin painting turned out. c:

Nicolae Caldaras
Gender: Male
Age: 27
Height: 5'8"
Ethnicity: Roma
Appearance: Black hair, dark brown eyes, gold skin, slight build. Gold stud in left ear with a bright blue ribbon hanging from it (matches Tűz's)
Mount: Tűz
Info: Nicolae has met a lot of people - from myriad countries and walks of life - and finds them hugely interesting. Possibly the only thing more interesting is places he hasn't seen; Horsepoint's origin is veritable catnip to him. He's curious and social, and finds being outside his natural time relatively easy as a result. Conflict isn't something he has time or skill for or interest in, and will generally placate or back down if it comes to it. His family are generally based on the outskirts of Schassburg, and consist of his mother, younger sister, younger brother, and some horses.
By necessity, he has a knowledge of history bordering on the encyclopaedic.

Intro: (Right, I'm sorry, this is over 2.5k xD)
Mere seconds after he raised the alarm, Rainer Littman found himself surrounded on all sides by the clatter of hooves on concrete and a wall of horseflesh. That was to say, Rainer Littman and the intruder. The man - a glance would have said boy, but a longer look had registered subtle lines that belied that - was actually in a better position than himself not to be acutely and hugely alarmed, being sat on a pony that looked like someone hadn't been able to decide what colour to make it, rather than left standing on the ground. No, not a pony - Rainer was trying to learn the difference, but all he had to go on was the technicality of Brynja and Fannar, and he wasn't really interested anyway - it was laden with saddlebags and just happened to be shorter than the horses that had just arrived, but it was, he thought, a horse. Bones and Dunlin were both a good foot taller: the red-and-white draught tossed his head angrily as the major kept his rein tight, one hand hovering for his thigh holster; his golden companion snorted and stamped one hind hoof, the captain keeping him collected and ready.

The scruffy horse took a few uncertain steps backwards, nostrils dilating, and the man put a steadying hand on its neck. Around them had gathered several extra soldiers, but, apart from a couple of quick glances around, the man's eyes didn't leave the imposing figures of the officers.

"Hands visible," Daels growled. The man dropped the loose hold he'd had on his own reins, and put his hands up, palms out, at chest height.

"Look, I-"

"Name and purpose," Daels snapped.

The man looked almost relieved. "Nicolae - Nicolae Caldaras - and, ah, absolutely none," he said. At the resulting frown he hastily continued, apologetic grin sidling onto his face. "I swear, honestly, we didn't even mean to come here. Or at least not here here. We meant to come here. But not here." He punctuated the last two "here"s with outwards and inwards tilts of his upheld hands to presumably distinguish the general area from Horsepoint.

Daels didn't look impressed, but he'd let his hand drop from finger-twitch territory in mid-air to resting more casually on his holster straps. "And how did you end up slap-bang in the middle of here if you didn't mean to be here?" he asked flatly.

The man grimaced. "I admit, that doesn't sound good. Honestly, I did not notice until I was...here. Little distracted. Tűz-" he tilted his hands down minutely to indicate his horse "-just went where I had tolll-" He trailed off then, eyes narrowing as he glanced around each of the assembled personnel. "Wait a moment," he said. "None of you are-"

"Nicolae!"

Rainer's attempt to peer past Bones's huge shoulder was in vain, but the voice was unmistakeably Dragomir's. The policeman pushed blithely through to the man on the horse, questioning him cheerfully in Romanian - to which the man answered something distinctly uneasily, and clearly had his own questions. Dragomir answered those with a wave in the direction of the officers, but the man shook his head to comment.

"Oh," said Dragomir, and glanced round at the officers, looking a little bewildered - then remembered himself. "Oh! I am sorry," he said. "This is Nicolae-"

"We know," Daels interrupted from above, and Rainer carefully didn't look amused at how peeved the major sounded at being out of the loop. It was rapidly becoming obvious that the situation was benign - and more than that, possibly a little ridiculous - but there was no point in aggravating anything. "Who is he, and what is he doing here?"

"Ah, well, the first is easy," Dragomir replied, unruffled as ever. "He is the one, I do not know if you recall me saying, who taught me about moving between the times here. He and his family have mastered it for generations - far more than I could ever hope to do, I am an amateur, and Nicolae here has been across continents and centuries." The odd-coloured horse moved its head out of the way of Dragomir's enthusiastic gesticulating, and a fond, slightly long-suffering smile was easing onto its rider's face as Rainer watched. "I do not know what he is doing here," Dragomir continued, "but I think this calls for some palinka! I have a bottle here and we have not spoken for so very long. Do come along, you can all get to know each other."

Dragomir made to start off towards the stables, but the man - Nicolae - had the perception to glance questioningly at Daels instead of moving. Daels, in turn, eyed him for a moment before turning to Hester.

"It's fine," Hester murmured, leaning over. Rainer recalled that she spoke infinitely better Romanian than Daels, and would have understood the exchange that had taken place in front of them. "But he's guessed, somehow, I don't know." And by that she meant that somehow - and considering the state of space travel on this world, such a thing was highly unusual - Nicolae knew that the staff of Horsepoint weren't from here, here or even, on a planetary scale, here.

Ah.

***

"So you were travelling between times, and ended up here," Daels supplied, sitting down with his glass. "Why?"

Dragomir looked over at him, pouring for Hester. "Must this be an interrogation?" he protested, but Nicolae held up a hand.

"It is okay, Dragosh," he said, staying in English for the benefit of the company. "I would also be concerned if someone appeared unannounced in my home." He turned back to Daels. "What you say is true," he said. "I simply didn't have a solid enough time in mind as I returned - you see, for most of time prior to this, this valley has had very little in the way of occupation. I did not expect that to have changed, and my priority was safety." He glanced, seemingly unconsciously, out to where his odd horse was groomed, fed, watered and unburdened in a stall.

"You were running from something, then," Daels observed flatly. When Nicolae looked like he might deny it, the major spoke again, impatiently. "Oh come on, we all saw the cut on your horse's flank."

Nicolae made a face, and muttered what Rainer was fairly sure was not a pleasant word in Romanian. When he saw Daels's face, he sighed. "Would it help if I explained exactly what I do for a living?"

Daels was still visibly unamused. "Greatly."

"You may have to allow me to finish my sentences," Nicolae warned with a slight smile, and Rainer took a sip of his drink to cover his own. When Daels didn't rise to the bait, he began. "Dragomir has covered some of what you need to know already," he said. "My family, hundreds of years ago, were masters of metalwork - had been for generations upon generations. Of course, things change, adapt. There was a great siege, and my family's skills were called on to restore the city. Metal and tar that had been spilled molten in the streets was cleared and reused to roof the destroyed buildings; the bodies of the besieging army that it had...contained...were removed. They and the artisans of the city worked tirelessly to restore buildings, homes and livelihoods." Nicolae took a sip of his drink. "And they continued. But - thankfully for the people of the world - such catastrophes are not common occurrences. I will spare you the full tale, which is rather more suited to fireside evenings in...remarkably tolerant company. But in essence, some members of my family are able to travel through time to somewhere and when they have never been before - just on an imagining of a description. And that has continued; I am of course my father's son, and blessed with that gift."

He let that sink in for a moment.

"So...you can go to any siege or job or...whatever in history, so long as you can imagine it?" Hester hazarded.

"Exactly." Nicolae grinned, then shrugged. "Sieges and the like are not frequent work, but it is surprisingly well-paid given the state the cities tend to have been left in."

Dragomir scoffed. "My friend is doing himself a disservice," he cut in cheerfully, gesturing at Nicolae and shaking his head admonishingly. "His family are some of the finest craftsmen-" He continued enthusiastically on this line for a moment, oblivious to the knowing looks passing between Daels, Hester and Nicolae. Rainer found himself relaxing a little, happy to accept anything that calmed the remaining tensions - even if it was the ramblings of an excitable policeman.

"-You know, they use the local tools and materials as much as possible to avoid giving themselves away," Dragomir was saying when Rainer tuned back in.

"Thank you, Dragosh," Nicolae said with a smile. "But now I can answer your question, Major. You see, most cities are grateful to have assistance in rebuilding. However, there are sometimes those who...are less appreciative. Who feel that payment for services is not something that they need to do." He gestured awkwardly, but Daels leant back in his chair with a knowing grimace.

"Ahh," he said. "Yes, we know their kind." He and Hester shared a look. Rainer thought he might have heard that one over a drink of an evening.

Nicolae laughed, echoing their relaxation. "Well, these ones chased us off with swords and spears," he said. "You can imagine my haste to get away. In my inattention, I must have sent us here rather than a time when the valley is unoccupied - I am sorry."

Daels shook his head with a smile. "Your intrusion is forgiven," he said.

Dragomir beamed. "Excellent, excellent. Now, Nicolae, what I want to know is what you meant when you said that they weren't from here and now either," he said, gesturing to everyone else in the room.

Silence snapped closed around them. Rainer and Hester both glanced at Nicolae, who had pressed his eyes closed and seemed to be holding his breath, then at Daels, whose gaze didn't waver from Nicolae. It wasn't a pleasant look, but Rainer knew from experience what Daels looked like when he was angry, and this wasn't it; this was curiosity and calculation, the green stare of a cat watching a bird on a fence. A moment passed, then two. Dragomir looked to be frozen in horror, until Nicolae muttered something at him in Romanian that made him flush magenta.

Hester broke the spell by unsuccessfully trying to stifle a snort. When Rainer and Daels looked over at her, she gestured vaguely at the two stricken men, lips quirking with mirth. "It's an idiom," she explained. "He said something like for a policeman, sometimes you have all the tact of a brick."

Daels was now clearly trying not to smile. "It's true, Dragosh," he said. The pink-faced policeman started to apologise, but Daels waved it away. "Nicolae clearly knew there was a cat in the bag anyway," he said, turning back to the young man with a considering look. "Another familial skill?"

Nicolae pulled a face, nodding. "When you spend a lot of time in...other times, you sort of get a sense of what times feel like. It's in the land, the buildings, the people, the animals. And usually it's the same, because everything belongs. Of course it isn't for Dragosh right now, because this isn't his time - I can tell that this is the 21st century and that he belongs in the 19th. But something's not right with you - the three of you - either." He swallowed, and dropped eye contact. "If it makes a difference, I...can't tell when you are from, for once. You feel...like travellers, I think. It's like looking at a language I don't understand." He shook his head, then looked Daels warily in the eye. "I'm not here to expose secrets," he said, and Rainer could tell he knew he had stumbled on something potentially dangerous. "I promise."

But Daels just nodded. "No, we're not from here," he confirmed. Nicolae relaxed again, minutely, to see him unconcerned. "We're not even from anywhere around here. It might have thrown you off, because we're certainly from this time. Just not this time...here, I suppose."

Nicolae stared at him, ravening curiosity obviously warring with caution on his face. Daels smiled at that, seemingly in understanding.

"You want to know what it is," he said, and it wasn't a question - but Nicolae shook his head anyway, even as "yes" escaped his lips. Daels laughed. "It won't satisfy your curiosity," he warned, then turned to Dragomir. "Sorry, we never told you this - thought a temporal surprise was quite enough to be going on with." He turned back to Nicolae, and hesitated before speaking. "We are...from other planets, very far away." He glanced around Hester and Rainer. "Different planets for each of us, actually. Part of an empire that...no longer exists." If Nicolae's eyes went any wider, Rainer thought, he might turn into a foal. "You might have guessed we're part of an army," Daels continued, gesturing shortly down at his uniform. "We're a splinter group, here for a time to breed warhorses."

"Yes," breathed Nicolae absently, clearly thinking through what Daels had just said. "I'd gathered the warhorse bit. They were...suitably imposing."

"Thank you," said Daels, amused, then waited in silence for a bit. "That's it, I'm afraid. The short of it, anyway. It's not an official secret so much as something nobody else would ever believe if you told them."

Nicolae nodded to himself, then looked up at Dragomir, who was watching him in concern. "It's true, my friend," Nicolae assured him with a grin. "I wouldn't have believed it either, but what he says...it makes sense of what I feel. They're from this time; it just has a different identity where they come from." Dragomir held his gaze for a moment, searchingly, then nodded, and took a long draught from his glass.

"So," said Daels, "this gift of yours. Is it teachable? I daresay we'd all appreciate a little more ease to our comings and goings." He glanced at Hester and Dragomir.

Nicolae nodded thoughtfully. "In part, I think," he said. "The potential for the full scope may be something you have to be born with, but I think I can teach you a little more than you have already." He looked up with a smile. "I would be happy to."

Daels returned the smile. "Thank you. Please feel free to stick around," he added. "Tűz will need to recuperate, and if you should run into trouble in the future, consider this a safe base."

Rainer raised his glass in a universal toast. To friends from the blue, he thought. Or safe havens and new horizons. Who knew. Daels noticed the gesture with surprise, but soon smiled and raised his own glass; it was echoed around the room.

Maybe to finding the way.

Image and Nicolae Caldaras © me (KanaScott )

Description
This guy and his pony have been invented for aaaages, I just had to introduce the whole time travel thing before they rocked up (one day, I swear, I'll put all of this act into chronological order, good lord). xD Then I still had to finish mr pon's ref (because they needed to go up as a pair), which took another year. |: The whole idea basically came about after watching The Hunchback of Notre Dame with my bro one night. The bit where they come out at the end after the siege and everything's suuunny and cleeeeean and wonderful? WASN'T THERE A SEA OF MOLTEN METAL AND DEAD BODIES THERE LIKE LITERALLY LAST NIGHT. HMM.

So to cut a (very) long story short: this Roma boy essentially heads the cleaning crew after sieges, particularly ones involving liberal application of molten metal to the terrain. The Kalderash Roma were traditionally smiths and metalworkers, so it's rather his family's area. He rounds up a local crew and gets rid of the metal/tar/gross, exhumes the bodies and restores architecture a little closer to its former non-beaten-the-hell-up glory. He then gets paid a decent sum, and retreats to relax for a bit before finding the next afflicted zone. The problem is that there are only so many sieges a world can have in a year, particularly with them being so out of fashion these days, so generations of his family have cultivated the ability to travel to ones in the past, entirely through the medium of good descriptions and fantastic imaginations.

The art was actually finished a year ago (and so ignore some of the proportions), but I'm still very happy with how the skin painting turned out. c:

Nicolae Caldaras
Gender: Male
Age: 27
Height: 5'8"
Ethnicity: Roma
Appearance: Black hair, dark brown eyes, gold skin, slight build. Gold stud in left ear with a bright blue ribbon hanging from it (matches Tűz's)
Mount: Tűz
Info: Nicolae has met a lot of people - from myriad countries and walks of life - and finds them hugely interesting. Possibly the only thing more interesting is places he hasn't seen; Horsepoint's origin is veritable catnip to him. He's curious and social, and finds being outside his natural time relatively easy as a result. Conflict isn't something he has time or skill for or interest in, and will generally placate or back down if it comes to it. His family are generally based on the outskirts of Schassburg, and consist of his mother, younger sister, younger brother, and some horses.
By necessity, he has a knowledge of history bordering on the encyclopaedic.

Intro: (Right, I'm sorry, this is over 2.5k xD)
Mere seconds after he raised the alarm, Rainer Littman found himself surrounded on all sides by the clatter of hooves on concrete and a wall of horseflesh. That was to say, Rainer Littman and the intruder. The man - a glance would have said boy, but a longer look had registered subtle lines that belied that - was actually in a better position than himself not to be acutely and hugely alarmed, being sat on a pony that looked like someone hadn't been able to decide what colour to make it, rather than left standing on the ground. No, not a pony - Rainer was trying to learn the difference, but all he had to go on was the technicality of Brynja and Fannar, and he wasn't really interested anyway - it was laden with saddlebags and just happened to be shorter than the horses that had just arrived, but it was, he thought, a horse. Bones and Dunlin were both a good foot taller: the red-and-white draught tossed his head angrily as the major kept his rein tight, one hand hovering for his thigh holster; his golden companion snorted and stamped one hind hoof, the captain keeping him collected and ready.

The scruffy horse took a few uncertain steps backwards, nostrils dilating, and the man put a steadying hand on its neck. Around them had gathered several extra soldiers, but, apart from a couple of quick glances around, the man's eyes didn't leave the imposing figures of the officers.

"Hands visible," Daels growled. The man dropped the loose hold he'd had on his own reins, and put his hands up, palms out, at chest height.

"Look, I-"

"Name and purpose," Daels snapped.

The man looked almost relieved. "Nicolae - Nicolae Caldaras - and, ah, absolutely none," he said. At the resulting frown he hastily continued, apologetic grin sidling onto his face. "I swear, honestly, we didn't even mean to come here. Or at least not here here. We meant to come here. But not here." He punctuated the last two "here"s with outwards and inwards tilts of his upheld hands to presumably distinguish the general area from Horsepoint.

Daels didn't look impressed, but he'd let his hand drop from finger-twitch territory in mid-air to resting more casually on his holster straps. "And how did you end up slap-bang in the middle of here if you didn't mean to be here?" he asked flatly.

The man grimaced. "I admit, that doesn't sound good. Honestly, I did not notice until I was...here. Little distracted. Tűz-" he tilted his hands down minutely to indicate his horse "-just went where I had tolll-" He trailed off then, eyes narrowing as he glanced around each of the assembled personnel. "Wait a moment," he said. "None of you are-"

"Nicolae!"

Rainer's attempt to peer past Bones's huge shoulder was in vain, but the voice was unmistakeably Dragomir's. The policeman pushed blithely through to the man on the horse, questioning him cheerfully in Romanian - to which the man answered something distinctly uneasily, and clearly had his own questions. Dragomir answered those with a wave in the direction of the officers, but the man shook his head to comment.

"Oh," said Dragomir, and glanced round at the officers, looking a little bewildered - then remembered himself. "Oh! I am sorry," he said. "This is Nicolae-"

"We know," Daels interrupted from above, and Rainer carefully didn't look amused at how peeved the major sounded at being out of the loop. It was rapidly becoming obvious that the situation was benign - and more than that, possibly a little ridiculous - but there was no point in aggravating anything. "Who is he, and what is he doing here?"

"Ah, well, the first is easy," Dragomir replied, unruffled as ever. "He is the one, I do not know if you recall me saying, who taught me about moving between the times here. He and his family have mastered it for generations - far more than I could ever hope to do, I am an amateur, and Nicolae here has been across continents and centuries." The odd-coloured horse moved its head out of the way of Dragomir's enthusiastic gesticulating, and a fond, slightly long-suffering smile was easing onto its rider's face as Rainer watched. "I do not know what he is doing here," Dragomir continued, "but I think this calls for some palinka! I have a bottle here and we have not spoken for so very long. Do come along, you can all get to know each other."

Dragomir made to start off towards the stables, but the man - Nicolae - had the perception to glance questioningly at Daels instead of moving. Daels, in turn, eyed him for a moment before turning to Hester.

"It's fine," Hester murmured, leaning over. Rainer recalled that she spoke infinitely better Romanian than Daels, and would have understood the exchange that had taken place in front of them. "But he's guessed, somehow, I don't know." And by that she meant that somehow - and considering the state of space travel on this world, such a thing was highly unusual - Nicolae knew that the staff of Horsepoint weren't from here, here or even, on a planetary scale, here.

Ah.

***

"So you were travelling between times, and ended up here," Daels supplied, sitting down with his glass. "Why?"

Dragomir looked over at him, pouring for Hester. "Must this be an interrogation?" he protested, but Nicolae held up a hand.

"It is okay, Dragosh," he said, staying in English for the benefit of the company. "I would also be concerned if someone appeared unannounced in my home." He turned back to Daels. "What you say is true," he said. "I simply didn't have a solid enough time in mind as I returned - you see, for most of time prior to this, this valley has had very little in the way of occupation. I did not expect that to have changed, and my priority was safety." He glanced, seemingly unconsciously, out to where his odd horse was groomed, fed, watered and unburdened in a stall.

"You were running from something, then," Daels observed flatly. When Nicolae looked like he might deny it, the major spoke again, impatiently. "Oh come on, we all saw the cut on your horse's flank."

Nicolae made a face, and muttered what Rainer was fairly sure was not a pleasant word in Romanian. When he saw Daels's face, he sighed. "Would it help if I explained exactly what I do for a living?"

Daels was still visibly unamused. "Greatly."

"You may have to allow me to finish my sentences," Nicolae warned with a slight smile, and Rainer took a sip of his drink to cover his own. When Daels didn't rise to the bait, he began. "Dragomir has covered some of what you need to know already," he said. "My family, hundreds of years ago, were masters of metalwork - had been for generations upon generations. Of course, things change, adapt. There was a great siege, and my family's skills were called on to restore the city. Metal and tar that had been spilled molten in the streets was cleared and reused to roof the destroyed buildings; the bodies of the besieging army that it had...contained...were removed. They and the artisans of the city worked tirelessly to restore buildings, homes and livelihoods." Nicolae took a sip of his drink. "And they continued. But - thankfully for the people of the world - such catastrophes are not common occurrences. I will spare you the full tale, which is rather more suited to fireside evenings in...remarkably tolerant company. But in essence, some members of my family are able to travel through time to somewhere and when they have never been before - just on an imagining of a description. And that has continued; I am of course my father's son, and blessed with that gift."

He let that sink in for a moment.

"So...you can go to any siege or job or...whatever in history, so long as you can imagine it?" Hester hazarded.

"Exactly." Nicolae grinned, then shrugged. "Sieges and the like are not frequent work, but it is surprisingly well-paid given the state the cities tend to have been left in."

Dragomir scoffed. "My friend is doing himself a disservice," he cut in cheerfully, gesturing at Nicolae and shaking his head admonishingly. "His family are some of the finest craftsmen-" He continued enthusiastically on this line for a moment, oblivious to the knowing looks passing between Daels, Hester and Nicolae. Rainer found himself relaxing a little, happy to accept anything that calmed the remaining tensions - even if it was the ramblings of an excitable policeman.

"-You know, they use the local tools and materials as much as possible to avoid giving themselves away," Dragomir was saying when Rainer tuned back in.

"Thank you, Dragosh," Nicolae said with a smile. "But now I can answer your question, Major. You see, most cities are grateful to have assistance in rebuilding. However, there are sometimes those who...are less appreciative. Who feel that payment for services is not something that they need to do." He gestured awkwardly, but Daels leant back in his chair with a knowing grimace.

"Ahh," he said. "Yes, we know their kind." He and Hester shared a look. Rainer thought he might have heard that one over a drink of an evening.

Nicolae laughed, echoing their relaxation. "Well, these ones chased us off with swords and spears," he said. "You can imagine my haste to get away. In my inattention, I must have sent us here rather than a time when the valley is unoccupied - I am sorry."

Daels shook his head with a smile. "Your intrusion is forgiven," he said.

Dragomir beamed. "Excellent, excellent. Now, Nicolae, what I want to know is what you meant when you said that they weren't from here and now either," he said, gesturing to everyone else in the room.

Silence snapped closed around them. Rainer and Hester both glanced at Nicolae, who had pressed his eyes closed and seemed to be holding his breath, then at Daels, whose gaze didn't waver from Nicolae. It wasn't a pleasant look, but Rainer knew from experience what Daels looked like when he was angry, and this wasn't it; this was curiosity and calculation, the green stare of a cat watching a bird on a fence. A moment passed, then two. Dragomir looked to be frozen in horror, until Nicolae muttered something at him in Romanian that made him flush magenta.

Hester broke the spell by unsuccessfully trying to stifle a snort. When Rainer and Daels looked over at her, she gestured vaguely at the two stricken men, lips quirking with mirth. "It's an idiom," she explained. "He said something like for a policeman, sometimes you have all the tact of a brick."

Daels was now clearly trying not to smile. "It's true, Dragosh," he said. The pink-faced policeman started to apologise, but Daels waved it away. "Nicolae clearly knew there was a cat in the bag anyway," he said, turning back to the young man with a considering look. "Another familial skill?"

Nicolae pulled a face, nodding. "When you spend a lot of time in...other times, you sort of get a sense of what times feel like. It's in the land, the buildings, the people, the animals. And usually it's the same, because everything belongs. Of course it isn't for Dragosh right now, because this isn't his time - I can tell that this is the 21st century and that he belongs in the 19th. But something's not right with you - the three of you - either." He swallowed, and dropped eye contact. "If it makes a difference, I...can't tell when you are from, for once. You feel...like travellers, I think. It's like looking at a language I don't understand." He shook his head, then looked Daels warily in the eye. "I'm not here to expose secrets," he said, and Rainer could tell he knew he had stumbled on something potentially dangerous. "I promise."

But Daels just nodded. "No, we're not from here," he confirmed. Nicolae relaxed again, minutely, to see him unconcerned. "We're not even from anywhere around here. It might have thrown you off, because we're certainly from this time. Just not this time...here, I suppose."

Nicolae stared at him, ravening curiosity obviously warring with caution on his face. Daels smiled at that, seemingly in understanding.

"You want to know what it is," he said, and it wasn't a question - but Nicolae shook his head anyway, even as "yes" escaped his lips. Daels laughed. "It won't satisfy your curiosity," he warned, then turned to Dragomir. "Sorry, we never told you this - thought a temporal surprise was quite enough to be going on with." He turned back to Nicolae, and hesitated before speaking. "We are...from other planets, very far away." He glanced around Hester and Rainer. "Different planets for each of us, actually. Part of an empire that...no longer exists." If Nicolae's eyes went any wider, Rainer thought, he might turn into a foal. "You might have guessed we're part of an army," Daels continued, gesturing shortly down at his uniform. "We're a splinter group, here for a time to breed warhorses."

"Yes," breathed Nicolae absently, clearly thinking through what Daels had just said. "I'd gathered the warhorse bit. They were...suitably imposing."

"Thank you," said Daels, amused, then waited in silence for a bit. "That's it, I'm afraid. The short of it, anyway. It's not an official secret so much as something nobody else would ever believe if you told them."

Nicolae nodded to himself, then looked up at Dragomir, who was watching him in concern. "It's true, my friend," Nicolae assured him with a grin. "I wouldn't have believed it either, but what he says...it makes sense of what I feel. They're from this time; it just has a different identity where they come from." Dragomir held his gaze for a moment, searchingly, then nodded, and took a long draught from his glass.

"So," said Daels, "this gift of yours. Is it teachable? I daresay we'd all appreciate a little more ease to our comings and goings." He glanced at Hester and Dragomir.

Nicolae nodded thoughtfully. "In part, I think," he said. "The potential for the full scope may be something you have to be born with, but I think I can teach you a little more than you have already." He looked up with a smile. "I would be happy to."

Daels returned the smile. "Thank you. Please feel free to stick around," he added. "Tűz will need to recuperate, and if you should run into trouble in the future, consider this a safe base."

Rainer raised his glass in a universal toast. To friends from the blue, he thought. Or safe havens and new horizons. Who knew. Daels noticed the gesture with surprise, but soon smiled and raised his own glass; it was echoed around the room.

Maybe to finding the way.

Image and Nicolae Caldaras © me (KanaScott )