In the time only two years before the Ring of Reversal had been used, Colleen met Stanley in the meadow, looking for what, in this timeline, would be her second leprechaun. She was more convinced than ever of their existence now. Stanley invited her on the date again and agreed to come for her that evening. (The events of chapter 1 are now being altered in this new timeline). Colleen went up to her house, and Stanley walked out of the meadow, when he was approached by the leprechaun princess.
“You can’t keep your date with Colleen,” she said, “She has been after us for years, but she only ever caught one of us in the gardens in the village, as far as we know. She’s invented a machine for reducing the size of her boyfriends. She’s going to eat you in a day or two.”
The princess explained what had happened in the previous timeline.
Stanley thanked her for the warning and headed down into the village to buy the candy man and the flowers, and to write his poem. The warning was nothing trivial, but neither was his love for Colleen. He would simply not go into her house on any dates, so that she never had the chance to aim her reducing machine at him. He thought about everything that the princess had told him. He was flabberghasted at the way Colleen, in the previous timeline, had set up a leprechaun hunt using him as bait, only to announce at the end, that she had planned to make him the main meal all along.
He took her to the restaurant, and invited him back to his own home to kiss her instead. He went on several more dates with her, but kept finding excuses not to accept her invitations to her own home, where she kept the reducing machine. One day she invited him on a picnic in the meadow, and turned up with everything she needed, and took out a small device.
The leprechauns were watching invisibly.
“She’s adapted it into a portable version earlier in this timeline,” whispered the prince, “She must have done it because Stanley wouldn’t go into her house. We don’t even have time to warn him.”
Colleen shrank Stanley to tiny size and used him to search the meadow for leprechauns, just as she had done in the previous timeline. For Stanley, the difference was in knowing what she was going to say and do, when the leprechaun hunt proved fruitless. He tried to sneak out of sight, as they combed the meadow, but she was too alert, fast and attentive for him.
Then he saw a leprechaun pop into visibility under a flower that concealed the leprechaun from Colleen.
“Pretend you’re chasing me,” said the leprechaun, “Don’t worry about me. I can turn invisible again before SHE gets me. If I get the chance to lead her away, you make a break for it, without letting her know that you’re trying to get away from her. Get to our tunnel to the underground kingdom.”
Stanley chased the leprechaun towards Colleen, and then saw Colleen crawl into view and sit towering above the leprechaun.
“You’ve done well, Stanley,” she said.
“Has he indeed?” called the leprechaun and ducked under a flower, and then turned invisible.
Colleen reached for the flower, while the leprechaun invisibly ran to the far side of the flower patch, then turned visible and called again.
“I don’t know how you got past my scrutiny that well, but here I come to get you. I’ll have you in my stomach yet. You can be sure of that,” said Colleen.
She pursued the leprechaun, who kept playing the same trick, every time a suitable flower came along to conceal the sight of her turning invisible.
Stanley took his opportunity and ran away through the meadow in the opposite direction, where another invisible leprechaun took his hand and led him to the tunnel. Colleen was unable to capture the first leprechaun and wondered where Stanley had gone to. She called for him and searched for him until the sun went down, and then had to return home in the dark.
It began to dawn on her that she’d been tricked, but how? Had Stanley guessed what she’d been planning to do with him?
Stanley went to live with the leprechauns in their kingdom under the meadow, and never stopped thinking of Colleen.