The man stepped into the tavern and shook his cloak out before hanging it on one of the pegs that lined the wall beside the door. The rain had soaked through his layers and was damp on his skin. Shaking his head and rubbing his hands through his hair, he spritzed water onto a passing waitress. She swatted at him playfully.

"Pahana! You fool!" she yelled while she wiped the water from her face.

He laughed and moved up to the bar where there was already a beer waiting for him. Leaving he required coins behind, he lifted the drink and took a swallow before working his way to the back of the crowded room. He sat alone at a small table in the corner. Pulling out a small leather bound book, he read for a moment and then began to scribble on the yellowing pages.

Amser moved so that he could look over the man's shoulder. Pahana stopped in his work and looked over his shoulder, but he did not see Amser standing in the Ether. This glance made Amser shiver. The man had looked up and right into his eyes as though he had known where the lurking presence had been. But no, he shook his head and chuckled at himself.

"Getting paranoid," Pahana muttered as he went back to the book.

The pages were laid out and Pahana's hands did not cover them, but Amser could not make out what was written there. He wished that he had a book of his own so that he could copy some of this down. There was an importance to this book in Pahana's mind.

Pahana spent the entire night working in his book. He never got up from the table. The people working there knew him well, which suggested to Amser that numerous nights had been spent this way. The waitress would bring beer and food, depositing them on the table and cleaning away the mess. He would pay for each item as it arrived without giving it much consideration. It seemed a reasonable arrangement between the two parties.

But what was it that obsessed this man so completely? It was connected. Amser could feel that it was. He blew on the watch again and sent the hands spinning.

"Show me," he whispered again.

The scene he had just witnessed played backwards, pulling Pahana back out into the rain and walking along the road, huddled beneath his cloak. But there was another shift and Amser found himself in an altogether new place.

The room was small and dim. A window with a curtain filtered out most of the day light. The bed hunched in one corner and a dresser crouch in another. The room was otherwise bare. No decor on the walls. No color in the room. Just that bland grey of unpainted plaster and the dull brown of the unfinished wooden floor. It was a poor place, but it was lacking more then money. There was no heart here.

A small boy played in the middle of the room, drawing on a large piece of paper while laying on the floor. Amser watched him from the Ether, already knowing that this was Pahana. The watch would not have brought him to anyone else. The bed room door slammed open and a large man stormed into the room. Yelling incoherently, he grabbed the boy up from the floor and shoved him against the wall. Blows landed while the boy covered his face and struggled not to cry out.

As quickly as it had begun, it was over. Pahana returned to his art, just as calm and quiet as before. The only difference being the bruises along his ribs and the blood trickling from his lip. But these seemed unimportant to him. Age had not changed him. The paper was exchanged for a book and chunks or charcoal for pens, but the intense focus was the same.

Perhaps the book had nothing to do with this then. Perhaps this was just a place he had learned to go to hide. The watch moved them again. This time, Amser let time decide what it would show him. He doubted that going any further back would be revealing and had no idea how far in the future would be helpful. When the hands stopped spinning, Amser looked up to the new place in time.

Pahana was still young here, a teen. Sitting at a small table with the man who had previously attacked him. Years had not been kind to either of them. The man was gaunt and tired. Pahana was under fed and sickly. Both physically struggled living in this place. The man was yelling, but Amser chose not to listen to the words, they didn't matter. What did was the way that Pahana's face was changing as the yelling continued.

Amser moved so that he was standing in front of the boy so that he could watch this change happen. The soft fearful features drew in and hardened. Fear flowed into rage, fueling violence. The intent of it was clear as the boy stood. At first, the man did not seem aware, but then he understood what he was seeing and also rose to his feet. Pahana stepped forward with his fist raised, a knife was clutched in that hand. Murder was his desire. The man stepped back, afraid.

When Pahana walked through Amser, they both felt it. Contact had been made between them through the Ether barrier. Amser clutched at his chest. Heart fluttering and breath coming hard, he staggered and fell to his knees. Pahana stopped one step past Amser, his hand falling to his side. The man ran, unnoticed. Pahana turned and looked down at Amser. For a moment they saw each other, their eyes meeting.

Amser flipped the watch shut and closed himself from the past.

An old shell of a house cowered about him. Fire had long ago gutted it and left its corpse to decay. Amser pressed his hands down against the floor and attempted to push himself up to his feet, but his arms gave and he crumbled to the floor. Black, damp char painted his face. Whimpering, he could not fathom what had happened to him.

Pulling out another watch, he flipped open the top and blew onto the hands which spun wildly a moment before coming to a stop in the same place they had started.

"Dipak," he whispered as he closed his eyes.