“And you’ll soon understand how much I’d like to tell you about it,” said Murray, “I think that somehow, time travelling from the giant land from this one must be what reduced my size. It probably has something to do with my time travelling mind having interacted with the very moment in that time stream when I first passed through the portal with future you.”

“How do you know that that’s what did it?” asked Trudi.

“Because think of the second time I time travelled. It was only from two thirds of the way down your throat into your bedroom not far away, not through any portals, and only through a fraction of the amount of time being reversed. I came out on your pillow beside your beautiful sleeping face at exactly the same size that I was when I initiated the time travelling process in your throat,” said Murray.

“That makes sense,” said Trudi.

Neither of them knew that he had reduced in size the first time, because he’d passed through the period of time affected by the Ring of Reversal’s interaction with the radiation from Colleen Balfour’s shrinking devices. On the second occasion, he started off on the early side of that period of time, and only went further backwards. Not passing through another irradiated time stream, he wouldn’t have shrunken any more.

“So if somebody already on earth, not in the giant land, time travelled back, perhaps just a day or a few hours on earth, they wouldn’t have to worry about losing any of their size,” said Murray.

“But you’ve already exhausted your time travelling capacity. You can’t do it anymore,” said Trudi.

“I think that’s because my mental time travelling potential was reduced along with my size the first time,” said Murray, “I used up what little potential I had left, when I travelled that short bit the second time.”

“So you can’t do it again. We’ve known that for months,” said Trudi.

“But you can!” said Murray, “At least you could, if I taught you the technique. I studied Kayla’s old lecture notes from Sandra Corlani’s Time Class for weeks, before I met alternate future you and went to giant land. I remembered the technique for the whole two years. I could teach you, and then without shrinking yourself in the processs, you could probably time travel as many times as you wanted, without ever losing that ability.”

“So what are you saying? I mean, how has this given you a new perspective?” asked Trudi.

“Don’t you see? I can teach you the technique, and make sure you’ve understood it fully. It may take a few more than the rest of  these two weeks you’d allotted to me for our romance. Then, once you’ve got time travel mastered, you can go ahead and eat me all up, which for me will be as enjoyable as it will for you on those terms. Then you can time travel back, maybe just a day or two, or an hour before you ate me, and cook something else for your dinner, with me at your side again,” said Murray.