Then she started, and he found himself sliding into her throat. This was the first time that he had a sense of finality, since the last second or so before he’d first thought of time travelling out of her throat back in Ireland on the night of her first attempt to eat him.”

For weeks, Murray had managed to engineer a reversible version of these events, but this time, it was the last time, and she wasn’t in the least bit uncomfortable with being the instigator of this outcome.

She gulped again and again, and he reached her stomach with a whole new outlook on the rapidly approaching ending of their incredible saga together.

It was only after he had been digested for the last time, that she told Pandora the whole story of how Murray had proposed the idea of using time travel to eat him temporarily. Pandora marvelled at the way he had taken inspiration from his conversation with her in order to come up with that option. Trudi completed her full account of everything, including the time she’d lived through the full nine years of her singleness, before time travelling back and telling Murray that she’d left things that way for that long.

“You could always time travel back at any point down the track and bring him back again,” said Pandora, “I suppose you might change your mind.”

Trudi smiled in a friendly manner.

“I don’t think I will,” said Trudi, “I might time travel back a day or two here and there, now that he’s long since been digested. But I don’t want to keep reliving portions of my life. He was here. I enjoyed it. He loved me. I loved him too, but I also wanted to eat him, and now I’ve done it properly for once, and he’s gone. I’ve got plenty more to do and see in this world. He understood that, and in the end, he simply resigned himself to his inevitable fate with a realistic outlook.”

“You sure had some fun with it,” said Pandora, “I don’t suppose you’d be able to teach me that time travel technique too. It could be useful the next time Bob forgets to turn the hose off in the garden. Water rates are always going up.”

Trudi laughed.

“I’ve always looked up to you, but I think it’s best if that secret stays with me. If anyone else knew about it, I’d always be worried that some part of my life might be reversed by somebody else, without even consulting me. I guess I also don’t know for an absolute certainty that you wouldn’t ever think of using the techique to save Murray,” said Trudi.

“I wouldn’t do that to you, but it might give me a way to trap a leprechaun or someone else myself,” said Pandora.

Trudi and Pandora occasionally caught up with eachother over the years, as time moved on without any more of it being reset. They took two Irish holidays together, but never caught any leprechauns. They never even got into a situation where time travel would have given Trudi the foreknowledge to take a leprechaun by surprise. Nonetheless, she enjoyed walking in the Irish sunshine, frequently recalling the night she’d finally eaten Murray.