invoking_urania | A Lifetime Between Breaths [original, G]

Title: A Lifetime Between Breaths
Fandom: Original -- no specified universe
Rating: G
Genre: Superhero? Drama/Vignette
Words: 419
Notes/Warnings: Written for

31_days Nov. 2 'When the time comes there will be no time', and for the

origfic_bingo 'age'.
Summary: The tale of Alanna Winters and the defense of Australia from the Sirdank Invasion.

Chronomancers are a tight lot. It's almost a running joke -- how many chronomancers does it take to screw in a light bulb? (Answer: five; one to do it and four to guard the timeline from people trying to change history.) Really, I'd bet most of the talented have their own hangouts and in-jokes.

But there are things we don't really talk about with outsiders. Too much explain. Like the story of Alanna Winters and the defense of Australia.

Remember the Sirdank invasion three years ago? You should -- a million methane-breathing reptiles with laser guns suddenly teleporting in caused a giant mess. Not to mention the hit the talented took in PR.

But Australia wasn't hit unless you count large piles of Sirdank corpses appearing where living, breathing invaders had been.

Trauma is a pretty big key to unlock talented peoples' gifts. So is puberty. Both came to play for Alanna Winters, age 17, on a school trip to the state capital. I don't know what was going through her head at that moment, but I could imagine.

Alanna's gift was to freeze time. One of the most powerful ones I had heard about -- she must have been able to hold it in her sleep. She was a twig of a girl, and had no combat training, but it doesn't take much to yank out an air hose or two... thousand.

A couple of precogs and post-cogs had visions of her, walking the roads frozen in time, one by one dispatching the invaders threatening her country with the patience of a saint. It was the only way we might know about it, since Alanna did her work in the space of

The only thing left besides a bunch of asphyxiating aliens was a hunched over woman with braided white hair sitting on a park bench by her classmates. Alanna Winters lived long enough to graduate, a woman out of time by her own act of heroism.

But at least her friends and family, her town and country knew what she had given up. Some of us can't even say that much -- we end up in closed time loops and fractured timelines and messes that aren't even remembered.

This is why we don't talk much to outsiders. Hard to explain how many things no one ever hears about, or the number of us lost to time.