This was so much better than being eaten by her future self. He accepted, and she secretly adopted him. Since he seemed well educated enough to have invented a time machine, she did not expose him to schooling, but let him live at her house. After a few months, she had been dancing with him in her living room for a while, and suddenly kissed him. It was the first kiss he'd ever had, and it was lovely. He put his arms around her and embraced the moment happily.

"I didn't know if you'd feel the same way," she said at last.

"I never imagined you'd feel the same way. I thought I was just a child to you."

"Just a handsome fifteen year old child, whom I secretly have all to myself," she said, "besides, the real age difference between us is a lot more than 20 years, since I'll be 60 a few months before you're born."

For the next year they dated happily, and then she told him she'd bumped into someone else, someone her own age, from her own time, a man she had dated in high school, before she met her husband. He had remained unmarried, and had now asked if he could be her boyfriend.

"I've accepted. I’m sorry to hurt your feelings, but this affair has been rather supernaturally engineered. My feelings for you have not diminished, but I have older fonder memories of my new boyfriend. We grew up together in high school for four years of dating. Then I left school, met my husband, and was swept off my feet. This time it's meant to be forever between my childhood sweetheart and me. But you can stay here too. He'll never come to this house. Although our romance can't continue, I did adopt you, and you are welcome to stay here. You're not even 17 yet, and I'd never turn you out."

"Thank you," he said, "I guess I can still find someone in this time."

He should have guessed that time would still take its natural course. He had merely spent with her one of the years, which she would otherwise have spent as a grieving widow alone and without a boyfriend.

He saw less of her, as time went on. She eventually turned 40.

One day they went to the upstairs bay windows, and sat on the cushions together to talk.

Then he suddenly shrank to tiny size again. He realised that she would have the same desire to eat him that her 55 year old self had once demonstrated.

She picked him up, and rested him on her open hand in her lap.

"Are you thinking of hiding me here at tiny size from now on?" he asked.

"I have an old dolls house from my childhood. I'll set it up in my bedroom in this house, and you can live in it for a time."

"Thank you! Being here at tiny size will be fine, with you to look after me. I'll enjoy the next few years as much as the ones we've already had together.

Her face took on a distant stern look.