A week passed after his epiphany in Finch's laboratory. A week of watching, from a distance, as Elara's life unfolded without him. She was often in her father's workshop now, her hands, no longer those of a child, deftly handling tiny tools. He saw her through the window, her brow furrowed in the same concentration he remembered from their adulthood, but now focused on the intricate guts of a carriage clock. The sight was a painful echo of the future, a future that felt more distant than ever.
He could not approach her with the stink of Finch and failure on him. He needed a bridge. A offering. Not a rock or a feather, but something that spoke to the world they had once built together, the world of shared intellect and creation.
He spent days in his room, sketching, planning. He used his access to Finch's resources not for alchemy, but for mechanics. He requested specific brass sheets, fine wires, tiny springs. Finch, assuming it was for some alchemical apparatus, provided them without question, his mind too occupied with grander mysteries to care about the boy's mundane projects.
Lysander's project was anything but mundane. He was building an orrery. Not the grand, complex models of the solar system found in the homes of nobles, but a small, exquisite, hand-held device. A simple model of the Earth and the Moon, orbiting a fixed, brass Sun. But he added a complication, a piece of engineering that was years ahead of its time, a subtle genius that only one person would truly appreciate.
He worked in secret, late into the nights, his small hands filing and polishing the brass until it gleamed. He calculated gear ratios, ensuring the Moon would complete its orbit around the Earth in a mechanically perfect simulation of its lunar cycle. It was a painstaking labor of love, and of penance.
Finally, it was finished. He held it in his palm. The brass spheres caught the candlelight. He turned a small key, and with a soft, precise whirring, the Earth began its slow turn, and the Moon commenced its dance around it. It was a perfect, tiny cosmos in his hand. A system. A thing of beauty and truth.
He waited for his chance. He found it one afternoon when her father's shop was closed, and she was alone in the yard, sketching the progress of a snail across a flagstone. His heart hammered against his ribs. He felt like a boy approaching a deity.
He walked to the fence, the orrery hidden in his hand. She looked up, and for a moment, he saw a flicker of the old, easy recognition, quickly masked by a polite, distant curiosity. The distance between them was a tangible thing.
"Elara," he said, his voice softer than he intended.
"Lysander," she replied. A simple acknowledgment. No smile.
"I… made something." He uncurled his fingers, revealing the orrery. He placed it on the top of the fence post between them. "For you."
Her eyes, those intelligent sherry-colored eyes, widened. She leaned forward, her artist's soul immediately captivated by the craftsmanship. "What is it?"
"It's the Earth and the Moon," he said. "Watch." He reached over and turned the key. The soft whirring filled the space between them. The spheres began their dance.
She was mesmerized. She watched the perfect, mechanical motion, her lips slightly parted. "It's… beautiful," she breathed. "The gears… they must be so precise."
"They are," he said. "But… there is a flaw."
She looked at him, puzzled. "A flaw? It looks perfect."
"A deliberate one," he said. He pointed to the Moon's orbit. "See? It's a perfect circle. But in the true heavens, the Moon's path is an ellipse. It is not a perfect circle around the Earth. I built it wrong."
He had her full attention now. Her puzzlement had turned into intense curiosity. "Why would you build it wrong?"
"Because," he said, holding her gaze, "I wanted to see if you would notice. I wanted to give you something… to correct."
He was offering her not just a gift, but a partnership. An invitation back into their old dynamic, him, the theorist with the grand, sometimes flawed, vision; her, the mechanic who grounded it in tangible, perfect reality.
A slow smile spread across her face, the first genuine, unguarded smile she had given him in months. It was like the sun breaking through storm clouds. "An ellipse," she murmured, picking up the orrery with reverent hands. "Of course. The pull of the Sun… it distorts the circle." She looked at him, her eyes alight with the challenge. "I can fix this. I would need to recalibrate the central pivot, adjust the gear train to introduce a variable radius…"
And just like that, the bridge was rebuilt. The distance vanished. They were no longer a grieving, strange boy and a watchmaker's daughter growing up without him. They were Lysander and Elara, collaborators.
She invited him into the workshop. It was his first time crossing that sacred threshold. The air smelled of oil and metal and old wood. Tools were laid out with meticulous care. Half-finished clocks and watches sat under glass domes. It was her sanctuary, and she was sharing it with him.
For hours, they worked together. She asked him questions about celestial mechanics, and he answered, his explanations clearer and more passionate than any he gave to Finch. She sketched modifications, her pencil flying across paper, her mind solving the mechanical puzzle with a breathtaking elegance. He watched her hands, those capable, clever hands, and felt a sense of homecoming so profound it threatened to undo him.
As the light began to fade, the orrery was dismantled on the workbench between them, a collection of beautiful, intricate parts. "It will take me a few days," she said, her voice confident. "But I can make it true."
"I have no doubt," he said, and he meant it.
He was about to leave when she spoke again, her voice softer. "I was sorry to hear about your sister, Lysander."
The mention of Cecily was a cold splash of reality. He nodded, the grief a dull ache in his chest. "Thank you."
"I saw you… after. You looked… lost. Like a key that couldn't find its lock."
The accuracy of her metaphor stunned him. She saw him. She always had.
"I was," he admitted, the truth a relief. "I am… finding my way again."
She looked at him, and in her gaze, he saw not pity, but understanding. A shared recognition of the complexities of the world. "The orrery," she said. "It's a good first step."
He left her workshop walking on air. The smell of metal and oil had replaced the stench of alchemy. The memory of her smile was a shield against the despair that Finch's world represented. He had not just given her a project; he had given himself a lifeline. He had proven that their connection was not a phenomenon, not an illusion. It was a constant. A gear in the great mechanism of his existence that, no matter how many times the cycle reset, would always, inevitably, turn and find its match in hers. The war was not over, but he was no longer fighting it alone.