Kass strolled leisurely through the main square of the capital. She spun a lazy circle, put the hood of her cloak down, and took a deep breath of the clean still air.

Long had she prepared for this day, shut away in caves and cellars and musty decrepit buildings, but now?

She could afford to enjoy this, if only for a few moments.

A few still

Silent

Precious moments.

A glance at the pocket watch she had used as a catalyst for the spell, a spell everyone else had told her would backfire horribly, told her she had just under an hour and a half to get her work done. No matter.

The sewers of the capital extended right up to the alleys that the walls to the palace helped to form half of, and it was a quick jaunt to the main thoroughfare and town square that the gates to the palace property overlooked.

The palace, naturally, had its own separate, secure, sewer system.

But that mattered not, with her as the sole inhabitant of this still and silent world she had made. Snatched really, from the grips of whatever turned the wheel of time, the hairspring on the clock, kept time flowing how it would.

But Kass was good at at snatching things; bread to keep from starving, medicine for her mother as she lay ill and dying in the gutter. A burial plot for her.

And after that, later, the ingredients and reagents for the magic she had begun to teach herself using information copied onto scraps of paper, that she had snatched from the refuse of the print shop down the way, from books she looked at in the library after hours when she was supposed to be cleaning.

Kass was very good at snatching things.

She'd snatch one last thing, and she would await whatever fate would come then.

The king would be dead in a, literal, split second. And then she would be gone, flee, forget about him.

Forget he had ever banished her and her mother from the castle to die in squalor and filth.

She would finally be able to start over.

Having climbed over the gilded scrolls that formed over the top of the gate and approached the palace proper, she began going over the plan she had made once more.

She still had 45 minutes of ~her~ time left. More than enough time to slip in, pour three drops of Drengan Root extract in the king's wine, and slip the vial into the pocket of his general, a man whose numerous attrocoties rivaled those of her father, the king.

This was it, it was almost showtime.

Rounding the corner to the servants entrance, to get to the kitchen which in turn would lead to the banquet hall where a banquet was currently being held for some military victory, and then, it would be done. No going back.

A deep breath, and-

Wham!

Something moving, forceful, solid yet... Warm? Soft?

Whatever it was, it had run into ~her~.

She who was currently supposed to be the only one to be cruising along the ripples and eddys in the river of time.

Run into her and fallen on top of her.

And then it moved, and it had a face.

A very ~pretty~ face, hazel eyes, freckles, and rings upon rings of flax colored hair.

Crooked smile, and then sweet lavender voice coming out.

"Sorry stranger! I didn't see you, sorry," stammered, embarrassed, sweet, "I'm just out of time, in a huge hurry..."

The sound of birdsong greeted Kass's ears as the breathtakingly beautiful woman helped her up and dusted her off.

Birdsong.

From birds, that were moving.

Because some beautiful, yet somehow uneffected by Kass' spell, woman had somehow broken some spell by uttering it's phrase words.

'out of time'

Kass was now, also, quite out of time.