For all of his faults, Jasper at least has a decent sense of self-awareness. It is because of this that he already knows he is not particularly clever. However, even if he hadn't, the fact would have been solidified by the following:

1. His decision to ring the bell immediately upon returning home in the evening, only stopping to fling his satchel and coat onto the chair

2. When the bell brings him to a rose garden, he trips over the first step he takes

3. He panics right away at the sight of the red-haired woman's familiar face, ringing the bell to return home. All in all, his latest adventure into that new world lasts an invigorating seven seconds.

Jasper had been so excited for it, too.  His first day of work had been toeing the line between "very uncomfortable" and "excruciating". He had arrived on time despite earlier events, then spent the better part of the morning being awkwardly introduced to all of his new colleagues in the municipal clerking office. Answering uninspired questions about himself, offering the usual niceties.

After an equally awkward lunch, in which Jasper longed to at least eat in sweet solitude but instead was asked to dine with his intimidating overseer, the afternoon was spent learning about the office's filing system.

Meanwhile, every time he blinked, Jasper had been dazzled by the remembrance of those golden fields, their images waiting on the inside of his eyelids. Sky bluer than that of his overseer's eyes (Jasper didn't actually what remember what color his overseer's eyes had been, but maybe they were blue), mountains in the distance higher than the world's tallest filing desk.

If this was the best that the day could bring-- discomfort, missteps, and a lack of seclusion-- then surely whatever came after the day had to be better. And so Jasper had been eager to return home, almost skipping into his room to to see where the bell wanted to take him next.

Now he is chastened, flushed in embarrassment at his recent quick escape. There is something about encountering other living beings in that other world that makes Jasper want to leave immediately, as if it should be a world of escape for him and him alone, and anything else is unnerving.

It doesn't matter now. He's back and has hours to himself until nightfall.

Well, what else can the evening bring?

He looks at the room, considers what it has to offer.

Then he looks back at the bell, considers it in turn. He looks to it for a very long time before making yet another link in his long chain of bad decisions, telling himself:

He may as well try again.

He is resolute this time that he will not run away from anything, no matter if there's a hundred people all staring at him in surprise when he arrives there. He'll settle his nerves beforehand.

Jaw clenched, shoulders back, Jasper shakes the bell as decisively as he can manage, ready to face anything. But he need not have braced himself for what he sees, because it immediately loosens his tension anyway.

He's on a dirt path leading down to the sea, purple lavenders and orange daylilies standing as perennial sentinels along the way. The sea air is expectedly salty, but enlivening as a cool cup of water. Jasper breathes it in.

This is what he had been searching for, after his first time ringing the bell. The other two occasions, in the library and the garden, must have been strokes of bad fortune, but persistence has paid off.

He follows the path down to the coast.

————————————————————

"Why would the chimera give a man a bell that helps him follow our family around?"

"Maybe it wants the man to help you with something."

"Did that man look like he knew how to help anyone with anything?"

...

"Maybe you're supposed to use your knife to kill him."

"Tai, I am begging you to make a reasonable suggestion."

"Fine. Maybe Fallon's meant to throw his book at him."

"Maybe he's meant to throw his book at you."

And around and around the conversation whirls, ultimately getting nowhere.

The only conclusion drawn is that nothing can be definitively done until they know more about the man. They make a pact to try and stop him from leaving so quickly, should he come again. Holding him still and having a proper conversation could be enough to glean information on his origins and purpose. If only he wasn't so skittish.

When the guests finally return home and the siblings retire to their respective rooms, the carpet of evening stars settles snugly onto the sky, there to wait until morning. And when morning does come, the Taymons eat breakfast and spend the early morning outside, in the yard behind the cottage.

Giada and Rian spar playfully with the wooden swords of their childhood, running through the strikes and blocks that had been taught to them so long ago. The bout is earnest, both brother and sister trying genuinely to win but pretending as if they're barely invested.

Edeline practices her archery, but she exerts less effort than her sparring sister and brother. The stationary straw target is old, already pierced by her arrows hundreds of times over the years. It poses no new challenge. The only notable aspect of her shooting this morning is that she is holding the arrow for longer, making strange expressions that none of her siblings can decipher.

Meanwhile, Fallon sits cross-legged in the grass, a safe distance away from his siblings' weaponry. He sketches with his head bent low over the paper.

With a burst of energy, Giada lunges forward and smacks Rian's sword hand with her own wooden weapon. Startled, Rian withdraws.

"I can't believe you handle rare texts with that heavy hand," he complains, noting the beginnings of a bruise on the back of his hand.

"Sorry, Rian. It was an accident." She tosses her own sword to the ground to examine his injury. "But I don't think I was hitting that hard."

Rian looks at her incredulously. "Your blows have been like that all morning. I'm lucky I only have a bruise to show for it."

Giada frowns. She really hadn't known.

Edeline stops shooting once her quiver is spent. Before retrieving her arrows from the target, she steps toward Fallon, crouching down to see the fruits of his labor.

Her eyes widen and she slides the paper out of his grip, holding it up to inspect. "All this time you were drawing a dandelion?"

Fallon looks at her in confusion.

By way of explanation, Edeline says, "I had thought you were drawing me. Why do you think I was making such ridiculous poses every time I shot an arrow? I was trying to look regal and heroic."

Fallon just looks at her and laughs.

Giada smiles too. But under her skirts, where her brothers and sister can't see, she feels the pressure of the dragon knife against her leg, hanging from her belt. 

————————————————————

Jasper had stayed by the coast of the sea until the sky's sunset hue was a deeper orange than that of the daylilies. Reluctantly, he had returned to his rooms, sought out dinner, then whiled away the hours until it was fully night.

Waking the next morning, he is thrilled to discover that he has ample time for another trip before leaving to be Jasper the Clerk once more. Already smiling, he grabs the hand-bell.

He is not disappointed by what he finds: Standing on the downward slope of a hill, he looks across the expanse of land to another hill and the valley that lays between. The vibrant greenery of the scene before him is emphasized by the red cedar trees scattered down the slope and between the hills. In the distant sky, a golden eagle ascends, capturing Jasper's gaze. 

As always, the air catches him between the feeling of wanting to run and wanting to tip his head back and breath in slowly.

Unfortunately, he has time for neither.

Jasper senses movement before he hears it, a strange sensation climbing up his neck and into his ears. Fingers clenched in a white-knuckle grip along the bell handle, Jasper turns around.

The first thing he sees is a hand, and whatever whiteness is in his knuckles holds no candle to the color of the hand he sees, so pale it is like air itself. The fingers are long, gracelessly so. Like a madman, Jasper thinks that those fingers would have a very difficult time making their way through his office's filing system.

Like most hands, this one is attached to an arm, and the arm to a shoulder, and the shoulder to a body, and all of this body is the same drained color as the hand and all of it is composed of angles so sharp they give the impression of the edge of a knife.

And this knife of a creature is heading toward Jasper, clawing hand stretched out to him from where it is only a few feet away. Its mouth is open, its eyes are sharp, the point of each tooth glints like a cold star, and Jasper has no more time for descriptions because his bloodless hands have remembered their purpose and shake the hand-bell for all they're worth.

He is back in his room.

The air may be dull here, but if dull air is the price to pay for not seeing whatever that creature was again, he will happily inhale air dry as dust for the rest of his days.

Jasper tries to recall the image of whatever that creature was to his mind again, but his terror leaves him only with impressions: pale, hairless, long-limbed, bony. It moved while on its hands and knees, with sharp teeth and nails. As a self-preservation method, his mind keeps the image blurry in his head instead of allowing it to come to sharp relief.

And yet he knows he will see it again and again, at night when he sleeps. He will feel it in the kind of behind-the-neck chills that make a person quickly turn around and check their surroundings. He will run from it when he climbs a flight of stairs, the idea of its possible pursuit making him go just that little bit faster.

Speaking of going faster, he's almost late for work.

Slamming the bell down on the table, Jasper pulls his coat on and rushes to the door, breath still coming short from lingering fright.

Before leaving the room, he looks back just once more on the seemingly innocuous object on the table. Jasmine etchings be damned, that bell must be monstrous to take him in front of such a thing.

Who could be cruel enough to have given him this?