“I understand the theory, I suppose,” said Trudi.

“We can continue our romance from the moment that reversing that small period of time has brought me back out of your stomach,” said Murray.

“I don’t know...” said Trudi.

“Well you and Pandora talked about going back to Ireland to look for more leprechauns and eating them. You wouldn’t need to. If we do things this way, it means you’ll be able to eat me over and over again, for the next nine years. Just think of eating me and eating me again and eating me again, as many times as you like,” said Murray, “If I hadn’t thought of this, you’d have only been able to do it once.”

“I ... think it has potential to be a lot of nice dinners,” said Trudi, “And you’re confident that you can teach me this mental time travel technique.”

“I’ll be betting my own future on it,” said Murray, “If I don’t teach you well enough .... If you don’t manage to get it right, I won’t be returning from your stomach at all. So you can count on me to make a proper job of it.”

“Alright, my tasty teacher. I’m sold,” said Trudi.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t think of this before. It would have saved us both all those months of heartache and frustration,” said Murray.

It took her three weeks to master the technique. To test it without risking the teacher (who might be needed to provide further instruction if the test failed), Trudi spent the day playing board games with him in the house, using her own hands to move his pieces at his direction. Then she ate a large slice of ham for dinner.

After that, she time travelled back, and found herself standing over the kitchen bench, looking down at the slice of ham, right where she’d placed it in the third timeline. This was now their fourth.

“It worked,” she said to him, “We had another hour or so together at dinner time, and then I brought things back to here. I can still remember eating that ham, can still recall the taste of it on my tongue, only this time I haven’t eaten it yet, and it’s still here.”

“It’s quite a feeling the first time you do it, isn’t it?” said Murray, “And it’ll be the same when you’ve eaten me and then time travelled back. You’ll still remember the taste of me. You can even wait until some point after you’ve digested me, if you want to, and then reverse time. You’ll find me outside your mouth and tummy, undigested, with no memory of having been swallowed.”

“If I keep doing that, and keep on reversing time, then you’ll never have the memories of being eaten.”

“But I’ve got the memory of that one time I went most of the way down your throat and then time travelled out of it again. That will be burned in my mind in a very thrilling way forever,” said Murray.