The Dark Half of the Sun (The Young Ancients: Timon) by P.S. Power Page B

family were. Most of the men too. Lately his ma had taken to only looking about nineteen or so, which meant it really wasn't a fair comparison.
    She bustled for a few minutes, getting two other cooks to help prepare the two baskets, one being for him, since he just needed food, the other with a large and soft blanket strapped underneath, a red and white one used just for that purpose, and filled with candles as well as a bottle of wine. His little basket started to get one too, but he shook his head.
    "Sorry, can't. I'm piloting." It was a rule after all, for his new business. You couldn't let yourself be impaired and fly. You could end up on the wrong side of the world that way. It would be embarrassing.
    "Oh? Indeed then, we have some nice apple juice, would that be suitable?" Her voice was questioning, but he nodded. He liked juice alright. It was a child's drink, but that wouldn't stop him. He'd had wine and cider before, several times, but this was about work, not him getting to play at being grown up.
    "Sounds good, thank you. Small bottle, if it's all the same." He was just one person and if they were gone too long he'd finish it all, out of boredom.
    The rest of the food was basically a modified version of what dinner was going to be for everyone else. On the good side, as soon as the baskets were ready, he was able to put his things in one of the upstairs rooms, the red carpet of the large hallway broken up with gold tables every fifty feet or so. Collette took him up herself, walking ahead of him a few steps the whole way.
    "That was a nice thing you did, giving those devices to be sold like that, for those children. Not everyone would have thought of it at all and most that did wouldn't have sacrificed anything to make it happen. Alyssa is a... I think she doesn't really feel like she's married yet. There were some hard things in her past. It really isn't an excuse, but she wasn't trying to force you to do that."
    Timon blinked and tried to think through the whole thing again. It had never seemed to him like she was. Why would Collette even say that now? To plant seeds of doubt? To what end? If Ali had wanted him to do that, if she thought he even had the means, she would have simply asked , wouldn't she? They were family...
    Which was a thing that she probably didn't trust in nearly as much as he did.
    Then he got it. Collette didn't understand why Ali had done it either. Not really. She would have gladly used Tor's funds for the project and not thought twice about it, even if she wasn't his wife. That Alyssa hadn't didn't make any sense to her.
    "My brother isn't here to care for her right now, that means that the rest of us have to. You too. I mean that the rest of the family is here for you as well. Don't forget that. I couldn't name where you'd come in on the list of family members, but I know that you count." It was real enough but the woman looked at him with a look that was both baffled and slightly pleased.
    "Oh? Aren't you a little young to be caring for me? Not that it isn't appreciated, but shouldn't it be the other way around?"
    "Certainly. Which is why you're setting me up with a room."
    It was a deflection, but thankfully it worked, so she just smiled a little at him.
    Timon knew he was strange, and that only a few people got parts of why he was like that, but a big portion of it was simply that he felt older than his years. His intellectual ability was pretty high functioning, which meant he understood things faster than a lot of people did. Not that he also didn't have gaps in knowledge. Everyone probably would, since new things were always coming into being, but he could learn and did, really fast, which meant that his body's age didn't really express what his mind was doing at all. It hadn't for years.
    He didn't really think that anyone understood that about him, not yet. Even the other Ancients had treated him as a smart child, rather than as a person that merely wasn't that old yet. On the good