6: Time
Chapter 6 in Book Three of the E.L.A. series
Time moves strangely when fear is close at hand. Hours fold into themselves, stretching long and brittle, while every small sound feels sharper than it should. Waiting becomes its own kind of trial—quiet, creeping, and heavy enough to bruise.
The hours behaved unpredictably in the settlement.
Sometimes they rushed—an anxious flutter, a heartbeat too quick to grasp. Other times they dragged like a stubborn weight caught around the ankles. And then there were days like this one, where the hours stretched thin and trembled, suspended between movement and stillness, between hope and the dread of what might come next.
Rose sat cross-legged in the dusty shadows inside the shed, her back pressed against the earthen wall, thumbs worrying the frayed edge of her sleeve. Across from her, separated by the cold metal bars, Ela and Gavin waited too. None of them said it aloud, but all three knew: waiting was the hardest part.
Ela stirred first, pushing a curl of hair from her face. “You look tired,” she said softly.
Rose snorted. “You’re the ones in a cage.”
“Still doesn’t mean you can’t sleep,” Gavin replied with a half-smile. “You’ve got more moving pieces on your mind than we do.”
Rose didn’t deny it. She just rubbed her palms together, feeling the residue of Cecilia’s house still clinging to her skin like an oily memory.
“I told her more today,” she admitted. “Not everything—never everything—but enough to keep her satisfied. Enough for her to think I’m being… agreeable.”
Ela leaned forward. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Rose said automatically. Then a beat later, quieter: “No. But I will be.”
The sunlight slanted across the dirt floor, golden at the edges, almost softening the iron bars that split their world into two separate halves. Rose squinted at it. “Time feels weird here.”
Gavin barked a small laugh. “Feels weird everywhere, if you ask me.”
“No,” Ela said, voice thoughtful. “He’s right that it does, but she’s also right. This place… it feels held. Like it’s always waiting for something to happen. Like everyone here is waiting.”
Rose nodded slowly. “Yeah. Like they’re all stuck in the pause between breaths.”
She didn’t add: waiting for someone else to make the choice for them. Waiting for Chester and Cecilia to decide the next step, the next consequence.
Waiting obediently. As loyalty or fear.
