Felix Leighton | Displaced in Time

First Meeting

“You leave me with no choice. I have turned a blind eye to your antics, Felix, but this is beyond disgraceful! To dally with Lady Normont, a married woman! Your mother would be disappointed with you. Let the sea discipline you, if I cannot.”

Felix could still hear his father’s voice ringing in his ears, blaring louder than the storm raging around him. The HMS Renata pitched violently, helpless in the hands of a furious god. Men’s shouts–of duty, of terror, and prayer—were torn away by the wind, leaving only the ship’s agonized groans and that ceaseless echo in his skull. Rain lashed his face, but he couldn't feel it. His father's voice wouldn't stop, and he hated it because he knew he was right.

That was the worst of it. The shame sat like an anchor in his gut, heavier than the sea pulling at his boots. Lady Normont had been locked in a loveless, miserable marriage, and so that was why he indulged her one time. Yet gossip burned faster than wildfire, far beyond his control. His mistake. And it seems the seas would partake in his punishment as well.

Another mountain of black water rose against the starboard side. Felix didn't brace for impact. Instead, ge moved across the slanting deck, to where his trunk was lashed. Fingers numb with cold fumbled at the latch, opening it. Beneath woolen stockings and a spare uniform, was an oilskin packet, holding the few things he valued: a small portfolio of his sketches, and a small portrait of his mother, her smile still gentle after all these years. He tied the packet securely inside his coat, against his heart.

Another wave hit. But this time, he didn't feel water, but pure darkness. The world dissolved into roaring, freezing chaos. The deck fell away. He heard it then–a deep, vibrating hum that came up through the water. The Renata broke her back with a crack that silenced the storm itself. Timber screamed. Felix was dragged down with a terrible, slow suction through the dark and the cold. Then, silence.

He woke to the smell of wet earth and rotting leaves.

Felix gasped, rolling onto his side, retching seawater and bile onto mossy stone. His body felt like lead, but he was whole. He pushed himself up, hands sinking into soft, but overgrown grass.

There—those familiar diagonal patterns. The hedges were tall and unruly, but unmistakable. This was Ashburn manor’s knot garden. His mother’s design.

He walked past the snarled, almost waist-high thickets, and saw the west tower looming against the grey sky. Its limestone was the same, but many windows were sightless black holes or boarded with crude planks. An iron nest (a fallen satellite dish) clung to the parapet. The silence was wrong. There was no clatter from the stables, no distant laughter from the kitchens. Only the lonely cry of a crow and the rustling of the grass.

But Felix was home. Somehow.

“No,” he whispered, the word choked on his throat. This was a dream, a fevered vision before drowning.

He stumbled towards the house, his boots catching on ivy that had claimed the gravel drive. The great oak front door hung slightly ajar, one hinge broken. Above it, the Leighton lion rampant was still carved into the stone, but someone, or maybe time itself, had chipped away its proud face.

Inside, a chill, damp air carried the scent of mildew and neglect. The grand staircase, where his mother once paused to adjust a ribbon on his coat, now sagged dangerously. Felix placed a trembling hand on the baluster. For a moment, he was eight again, sliding down the banister while his mother laughed, and his father, watching from the study doorway, scowled at him in disapproval.

At the end of the hall stood a blue door, its paint still bright beneath streaks of red and black. Felix bit his lip. His mother’s drawing room had been grotesquely vandalized. He swore he would punish whoever was responsible for this desecration. For now, he pushed the door open, and was met with the same neglect within. The silk wallpaper, once the colour of spring lilacs, hung in mould-spotted strips. The pianoforte was a skeleton: wires snapped, keys scattered on the floor like fallen teeth.

He crossed the room in a daze, feet crunching on debris, and suddenly, he noticed a flicker of reflected light in the tarnished mirror above the mantel. Movement. There was a shadow passing the doorway to the servant’s passage. That was no mere mouse, those were clear footfalls. Someone else was here.

Anger boiled within him. This was his home. This was her room. However ruined, it was still sacred ground. He followed the shadow, his steps silent on the worn stone of the passage. It led down to the old morning room, which had once overlooked the rose garden. Now, it held only broken furniture and a strange, musty smell.

The door stood ajar. He leaned closer, and an unnatural light spilled out, steady and white, unlike any candle or lamp he’d ever known. Felix took a final breath, stepped forward, and flung the door wide.

There they were. The interloper was wrapped in strange, possibly foreign clothing, surrounded by odd bundles and containers. They held a small, glowing rectangle that was the source of the light.

Felix filled the doorway, his frame blocking the exit. He looked like an apparition from another age: platinum hair darkened and plastered to his brow, grey eyes blazing from a dirt-smudged face, fine clothes torn and soaked with seawater. Authority, shock, and righteous fury rang in his voice.

“You there! Show yourself!” he commanded, his voice cutting through the dusty silence. “What is the meaning of this trespass? Explain your presence in the Duchess's drawing room at once, or I shall have you before the magistrate!”

A Shared Sanctuary

”You leave me with no choice. I have turned a blind eye to your antics, Felix, but this is beyond disgraceful! To dally with Lady Normont, a married woman! Your mother would be disappointed in you. Let the sea discipline you, if I cannot.”

Felix awoke with a start, his father’s voice grating against the silence of his chamber. It had been weeks since that particular ghost had haunted him; the last time was aboard the Renata, with the storm’s fury tearing the world apart. He should have been troubled, yet a perverse comfort lingered in the echo. At least he had not been forgotten.

Not like this place.

The manor seemed hell-bent on shedding every trace of its former life. He turned onto his back, gazing up at the cracked plaster of the ceiling. A minor miracle, this room. While the rest of Ashburn Hall succumbed to damp and decay, his private chambers had held. The bedframe stood firm, though the original hangings were dust and the mattress a haven for moths. His wardrobe, however, had not been so lucky. The fine silks and brocades were no more. He was left with the clothes on his back and the odd, practical garments provided by his... unusual benefactor.

He let out a quiet, humorless chuckle. Centuries. The word was pure madness. A stubborn, shameful part of him still hoped it was an elaborate ruse, the ultimate lesson from his father. For what indeed was a gentleman, but the sum of his possessions, his name, his place in the world? Stripped of everything, what remained?

A dull, rhythmic thud-thud-thud began to echo from somewhere deeper in the house. Felix groaned and pulled the pillow; a bafflingly soft, modern comfort gifted by “The Chronicler”, over his head.

The Chronicler. The Occupant. The Modern. The voice of this confounding new age.

To his initial shock (and perhaps, he later admitted, his salvation), he had not been alone in the ruin. They had been here first, offering excuses that ranged from historical preservation to simple homelessness. The truth was simpler: they were a squatter in his ancestral home.

Yet, seeing the care they had taken–patching a window here, clearing a path there—his honor, stubbornly inconvenient, forbade him from casting them out. A Leighton did not turn away those seeking shelter, however strange.

And so, a truce was born. For all their modern oddities, they had shown a decency he never expected. When he first arrived, raving, soaked, and shattered, they didn’t call the authorities or laughed at his tale of dukes and lost centuries. In this age, it seemed, madness was sometimes met with patience.

The thudding was now accompanied by a tinny, repetitive burst of music leaking from the small luminous slate The Chronicler seemed to graft to their palm. Repairing a trellis, they said. But how could such a simple undertaking create so much noise and movement?

Felix buried his face deeper into the yielding abyss of the pillow. "By all the saints," he muttered into the down, "grant me five minutes more."

But he would receive no such mercy. The door to his chamber burst open without so much as a knock. He hissed quietly. How many times must he remind them of this basic courtesy?

With a long sigh, he lowered the pillow just enough to fix the intruder with one weary, steel-grey eye.

"Yes," he drawled, lacing his tone with exaggerated gravity. "Pray enlighten me, what urgent calamity compels the indefatigable steward, tireless chronicler of the future, and keeper of the infernal, chattering luminous rectangle? Has the trellis finally conceded defeat, or has the grass risen in open rebellion against your tireless mowing?"