Angus' holidays had been one of those learning experiences that his brother had warned him about. Good and bad and highly informative. He couldn't say it had been productive but he had at least gotten Harper's drawings done before he left. He was looking forward to seeing the man again. His crush on Harper hadn't gone away at all and he honestly didn't want it to. He liked the feeling, even the vague hints of hope. It was glorious.

He knocked on Harper's door, humming under his breath and feeling surprised that he was actually quite happy to be back at school. A little distance made Brunnhold seem less like a prison. That gnawing unease that made him want to vault the wall and steal a ship off to parts unknown had yet to return.

He decided that he was going to practice on the lawn that day. He felt like flexing his field some.

The sound of a crying baby came from within the office, and a hoarse voice called out, "Come in!"

Professor Moore was kneeling on the floor in the well-lit office, Horation in one arm and a nib pen in his left hand. He was surrounded by a carpet of spectragrams, freshly developed by the smell of them, and he had been making black marks on their surfaces, notes and calculations and equations. Dark rings around his eyes suggested that he had been doing so all night; disheveled and deshabille, he looked more like a final-year student than someone with hard-won academic tenure.

"Ah, Mr. Worthing," said Professor Moore brightly. "Good evening. What are you doing up at this hour?"

Angus blinked and slowly held his hands out, offering to take the baby. His sizable crush aside, Harper looked like chrove shit. It seemed as though the man had fallen from a great height and been left slightly splattered on the ground.

"Har... Sir, it's morning. I just got back from a jog, actually." A few hours prior, he had of course washed and fixed his hair in the meantime.

Angus like his hair.

"I was going to talk to you about the pictures we talked about, for the small moving pictures... thing." Angus found himself suddenly feeling quite inarticulate. "Sir, how long have you been up, if it's not too impolite of me to ask? May I hold Ratio?"

Angus hated it when babies cried. It always made him want to help and stop them crying. Not just because the noise was a bit horrible but because it made Angus feel like he wasn't doing something he should. It always made him want to jump up and do something to fix it, when children cried.

Having temporarily forgotten the definition of jog in favor of his mental calculations, Professor Moore merely smiled, looking a little unhinged.

"Oh, is it?" he replied, scratching his head with the pen. "I got in fairly late, yes. Been working...something related to the moving pictures, in fact..."

Something seemed to occur to him, and he glanced down at the specs with worry in his eyes. The figure of an old, pale woman was visible, though there were some odd distortions around her, and she looked oddly out of place with the surroundings. There were dozens of pictures the same lady, each slightly different.

"Ratio's colicky," he said uselessly, glancing back up and carefully handing the sobbing infant to Angus, keeping a concerned eye on him. "There's nothing wrong, never fear. I suppose it comes from not having been breast-fed. Don't pass that on to your friend Ms. Bruthgrave," he added wryly, "or I suppose I'll never hear the end of it. I have certain biological limitations."

Angus nodded along as Harper spoke, hands still outstreached to take Horation. Angus took a glance at specs Harper was holding and did not quite understand what he was seeing. He wasn't sure he wanted to. They didn't seem to be the happiest of images.



Angus rested Ratio's head in the crook of his elbow, gently rubbing his belly and making concerned murmurs under his breath. He could see the wisdom in Harper's concern.

"I wouldn't want to worry her." Angus said truthfully. "Lots going on and all... Who is a handsome fellow? Yes, you are! We're in the wars today, aren't we, little chap?"

Angus couldn't see himself telling her. He felt a spike of guilt. Horation was Athrym's kin and even with circumstances as they were, she cared about the boy. He just felt as though Ratio was safer with Harper, for the most part. Just perhaps not when the man had been up all night doing something with pictures of old ladies.

"Sir, can I ask what those are?" His curiosity pushed through his misgivings.

He lifted Ratio up so he could rest against his shoulder. He patted his back. He didn't know much about babies but he'd seen what women did. He decided to mimic them, judging that their knowledge was probably sound. He began to walk up and down a little, eyes trained on Harper and humming a little under his breath. The hedgehog song wasn't the most appropriate in the circumstances but he could remember it easily enough. So long as he didn't say the words, he imagined Ratio wouldn't be scarred by it.

He was so little and warm and soft. Angus felt quiet, a rarity. Holding Ratio felt like it was important, where school was usually an unwelcome distraction from living. Angus savoured the emotion. He really hoped that Harper would let him come back and spend more time with him. Maybe he could read him stories, good ones, with pirates, not shitty ones about sitting up straight.

"A woman by the name of Bernice Buford," replied the professor, stroking his scruffy chin and kneeling once more over the images. He shuffled and rearranged them a bit so that Angus could see they were stills from a moving picture, taken with a rapid shutter speed. "She is..." He paused for dramatic effect. "Deceased."

The enormity of having captured the first image of a ghost was not lost on Harper, though he was still processing the feeling, chewing on it like a tough bit of celery. He had left Abeline that evening in breathless exhilaration, drifting on an academic high of the likes he hadn't had in years. Good goddess, how she made him love science again! Like never before!

Then he realized that his statement might have required some clarification, and therefore was lacking in the drama he had intended.

"I mean, she died some time ago," he explained. "These spectragrams were captured yesterday." Was that clear enough? It had never been done before, never thought possible. "They depict her ghost."

Angus pondered, as he stared at Harper's photos, if Harper was implying that taking her picture had somehow killed her. He was relieved when the older man clarified. As much as Harper's enthusiasm always had a brazening effect on his own, Angus was heavily of the opinion that enough was sufficient. No one had ever taken spectros that showed a ghost moving, Angus had never even seen a picture of a ghost. Until now, obviously. Was Harper going to show everyone?

"Sir, that's..." Inspirational but not in a way relating to the Sciences as far as Angus was concerned. Angus was far too busy being enamoured with other things and preferably after Harper had shaved.

He was a romantic but he had standards.

"That's amazing Sir, what are you going to do with it?" Angus asked, smiling and forgetting to keep moving until Ratio began crying again with earnest. "Are you going to hold a viewing?"

Angus thought that would be terribly exciting.

"The matter is entirely at the discretion of Healer Ixbridge," responded Harper, beaming. "It was her idea, and her modifications to the camera spectra that allowed us to capture the images! But I am in a good mood for another reason, Mr. Worthing. I have sufficient information now to push forward with my research. The findings we unearthed at the phasmonia might be the break I am looking for."

He stood, brushing himself off; a few papers flitted to the ground. "Now then, you had something to tell me?"

It wasn't that he minded the interruption; he would have to find a way to ruminate on more than one thing at a time, that was all. Students visiting him at odd hours of the evening (no, he thought, it's morning) was just an unavoidable part of becoming more social. He forced himself to focus on Angus, pushing the torrent of scientific calculations out of his mind, as he had done with Abeline.

Besides, the idea of a moving drawing still intrigued him, like a half-remembered fancy from his childhood, though they had spoken on it only recently.

Ahh, now that was a name Angus had not heard for several years. He'd intended to thank her after his foray into social disobedience but embarrassment had over-ridden politeness.

"Healer Ixbridge, you might not remember me, I'm the young man who cocked up. Literally! Thanks ever so for being understanding, I have to retire now to go hit myself with a rock in the hope that I may forget that I was ever that much of a loser." Angus thought to himself, an unpleasant flush blooming on his face. "I'd say I had learned from my wild ways but it wouldn't be in the way you'd have hoped. Gosh I'm good in the sack now and I don't even have any social diseases. That I am aware of. Could you check?"



You're gorgeous and if I were ten or so years older, you'd never be rid of me.

"Um, I did those drawings, I have them with me. I understand if you don't have enough time." Angus felt himself becoming rather disappointed.

It wasn't as though he could compete with someone older and non-studenty. Not that Angus would have tried, being that he was a student. He'd just liked the fact that it was technically a possibility. Maybe it still was. Maybe Harper just sounded that excited about colleagues.

No, no Angus wasn't quite that deluded. The time had come to man up. Perhaps it was more correct to say man down. He doubted Harper would have time for little moving cartoons when he had sciencey ghosty... things.

"I suppose now probably isn't the best time. Sorry, I seem to wait until you're busy." Angus said, trying to sound more enthusiastic than he felt.

Stupid age-appropriate women. Stupid age-appropriate women that he owed some loyalty to. Stupid older attractive men...

"Not at all," said Harper, motioning to Angus' arms, where Horation had momentarily ceased his fussing and crying and was now yawning, possibly due to the exhaustive effort of conveying his mysterious misery. "I want you here as long as possible." He chuckled. "First silence I've heard in hours. Come, have a seat."

He sat down at his desk opposite the student.

"I think I've narrowed down the ideal frame count for smooth transitions," he said. "Twelve per second seems to do the trick. This machine I had with me on my trip was only taking five, so it's a bit slow. And of course, asking a single person to do that many drawings is...well, you'd need many helpers, I imagine! Here, show me what you have."

Angus eased Ratio over one arm and carefully slipped his bag forward so he could drop it on the desk, slowly, slowly, slowly. It made the softest of sounds as it landed and seemed to be quite thick. Angus had over a hundred drawings in there and he had done them all on his own, in the end. He'd been surprised how much he'd gotten into it. They just showed a small, round-looking guy kicking a ball. It had been fun in the end. Angus wasn't sure how smooth it was but it was at least an effort. All that scribbling in margins had paid off in spades.

"I guess if I had to draw a lot more, help would be nice." Angus said, not really minding since it was better than class. "It wasn't so bad doing those though."

Sure, it had taken a few days and his hand was now cramped to buggery but it was still, still, better than class.

He settled into his seat, wriggling a little to get comfortable. Holding Ratio was nice. He seemed to get heavier with time though. Angus' arms were beginning to feel like he'd been holding up a light weight for quite some time. Sitting was a nice change of pace.

Harper pored over the pictures like they were priceless historical documents, then flipped through the pages in his hands.

"It's a little fellow kicking a ball," he commented happily, always a keen observer. "This is brilliant! And well-timed, as I need something to distract the class next nine while I pass out the examination. It must have taken immense patience to do this, Angus, thank you. I'll be sure to make a note in your record - you've contributed to science, even if the motion picture device really is just an idle curiosity."

What was there to be said? Angus was a giver. Lazy though he was with things that bored him, he did like to contribute. He was less sure about being described as patient. Angus had no patience at all. What he did have was occasional tunnel vision and an attention span that generally liked to be focused on one thing at a time. It was quite a good trait to have when it came to sports. Not so good in other areas.

He'd missed lunch one day while drawing little footy man.

"You're welcome, Sir." Angus said, basking in the older man's praise and approval. "You know what they say, science is golden."

It had been quite some time since an adult had said something so nice about him. Not counting sporting coaches, who had tended to be on the younger side in Angus' experience. He knew not all of them were, it had just been chance and possibly forewarning. You needed to be spry to keep up with Angus when he was in a larky mood. Something nagged at him though.

"I don't know, Sir, it doesn't have to be an idle curiousity. Depends on how you use it." He offered, hoping not to sound too keen on account of his pride. "Might be more useful for explaining things that need a physical motion. Like a hand movement in spells. My Static professor has to take us outside to show us those and not everyone can see her and she keeps complaining everything is a shambles within half an hour."

Good old Mars. Slightly dippy duck but nice enough.

"Hah!"



Professor Moore looked over at Angus very seriously. His brow drew together.

"My goddess, you're right," he exclaimed. "And that's an improvement from the old illustrated instructionals we had. I always ended up signing backwards, nearly backlashed my eyebrows off one time...I wonder if your professors would be interested? Of course, they'd have to set up the projector and the screen and ferry about the film to each class, but that's a small price to pay for accuracy..."

He nodded over to the stacks of specs. "If this goes according to plan, the motion picture device could finally get the reputation for usefulness! As of now, they regard it as a producer of glorified flip-books. But you're correct, it could have all kinds of applications."

Angus wasn't sure if something very good or very bad was about to happen but he quite sincerely enjoyed being the centre of Moore's attention.



It was a good idea. Angus had thought up a good, useful idea! Yes! He was as brilliant as he'd always suspected! He was going to have to write his mum a letter just to tell her...

While Harper's head was tilted down, reading, Angus allowed himself the grin of his life. It was so strong it almost split his face into two, like someone had painted a crescent across the gap between his chin and nose. It was difficult to keep quiet, normally when he had a good idea somebody shouted "GOAL!" afterwards and this really wasn't the same thing.

He let it drop back to a normal smile as soon as Harper's head started to lift up.

"That is fantastic, Sir." Angus said. "If I can do anything to help, I will. Sounds like exactly my sort of thing."

The entertainment industry disguised as something more serious.