Here's a story about one of my childhood experiences:
Ffamran Mid Bunansa short-circuits the localised House Bunansa paling at age eight, a record even for the precocious scions of his lineage. The back-up paling takes a minute to cut in, during which the ever-efficient Lady Bunansa has already ascertained that the reason for her ruined souffle was not her eccentric husband but in fact her equally eccentric youngest son. The former follows her into the relatively disused Bunansa hangar, only so recently converted into Ffamran's playground, mumbling something in technical jargon behind her which by habit she efficiently ignores.
In the hangar, blinking up at his parents, little Ffamran proves himself every inch his father's son when his first words are not apology or explanation but a mild "I suppose there was a miscalculation somewhere."
Lady Bunansa takes in a deep breath, but her husband steps politely around her and is already examining the strange... contraption... with scientific curiosity, adjusting his monocle as he runs a practiced eye over the controls, the salvaged, tattered seat, the strange glossy, thick plates strapped by wires, filaments and odd rectangular vents to the hulk of the machine. Across the back of the machine is a miniature glossair engine, and at the front, a metal maw full of jagged teeth, and two tubes that Lady Bunansa can only surmise, with her own practiced, maternal, long-suffering eye, had to be some sort of miniature cannon.
"What is it?" Cidolfus concedes, and at that Lady Bunansa's instinctive ire subsides, to be replaced by the insistent curiosity, common to her house, which had been what had first attracted her to Bunansa's master.
"You do not know?"
"It looks," Cidolfus continues, ignoring his wife's incredulity and his son's pleasure in equal measure, "Like a transporter."
Ffamran deflates a little - 'tis evident that Cidolfus has likely reached the right answer - but grins when his mother comments, dryly, "With those cannon... a weapon, dear."
"No, no," Cidolfus straightens, tapping at the glossair engine with his knuckles. "This, and this," a point at the strange plates, "Not that I wish to know how you salvaged that from Draklor's storage rooms under lock and key - no, boy, do not tell me - makes it look like you are trying to polarize Mist itself. The causal tear and vector would in theory take you to another, linked, causal tear, like the old technology transporters. Maruvegan's Vector. Am I right, boy?" The monocle adjusts, but Ffamran doesn't look away.
"Almost, Father." Then the boy seems to remember himself, and pulls a face. "A miscalculation-"
"But unless you built another vector portal elsewhere, you cannot move."
"I did not intend to," Ffamran is quick to point out, looking all too pleased with himself, "Not through space."
"But time?" A pause, and here, Bunansa blood shows: the question is not 'how', or snide laughter, but a curious, "Why?"
"Ah, I wished to stop myself from a month ago from breaking the vase in the eastern wing, Father."
"Which vase?" his mother asks sharply, just as Cidolfus begins to laugh, deep and hearty, turning to regard his wife with a expression of near-exalted amusement.
"You see my dear, the beauty of a child's mind! It has not yet learned the bad habit of common sense, and as such-"
"And as such, my dear, it appears that you have been quite remiss as a father," Lady Bunansa says, as mild and pleasant as you please. Cidolfus has been married long enough to recognise the warning signs, and his broad smile falters and turns abashed.
"Of... of course, my dear. I will speak with Ffamran at length, I assure you."
"Good," Lady Bunansa says, unconvinced, but now tired. "Ffamran, why did you not simply tell me, and apologize?"
"But as of then, or now," Ffamran says, and quite without guile, "I might not yet have done it."
Lady Bunansa attempts to turn that sentence about in her mind, gives up, and rubs at her temple. With a sigh, she waves Ffamran to Cidolfus, and returns to the stair, leaving the Bunansa males to their own language. Perhaps the souffle can yet be resurrected as something else.
--By AnyaSy
