Alternate timeline Trudi and Alternate timeline Murray had found the portal, been captured for two years by a giantess, and almost eaten. Murray had time travelled back to when he was 14, shrunken in the process, warned her of the portal’s dangers for future benefit, and then been eaten. Now that she had lived through being aged 37 to 38 in one of many subsequent timelines, her 37 year old self had never met Murray in the Irish forest. At this stage, her 24 year old self had still met shrunken time travelled 14 year old Murray and eaten him. If she time travelled back to her teenage years, then would she still meet Murray when she aged back to 24? It seemed unlikely, because all of the timelines containing scenarios where Trudi and Murray had met would have been erased. Murray would never have met Trudi at all, and would never have been eaten by her?

So what would have happened to him instead?

If Trudi had never eaten his 14 year old self, then he would have gone on the way he did in his very first timeline, until he was 27. Then he would have taken the forest walk by himself, and not met Trudi, who had used the foreknowledge from earlier timelines to avoid the forest track that led to the portal.

She realised that Murray would have found the portal by himself.

He would have gone to explore the other side of the portal, discovered the giant land, been caught by the widow, kept as a pet for two years, and then eaten by her.

With his knowledge of time travel, and the fascination with being temporarily eaten that Trudi now knew he had, Murray might have made the journey most of the way down the giant widow’s throat, before saving himself by time travelling out. However, having never met Trudi, having never shared the two years of captivity with her, he would have had no reason to travel back as far as the year he’d been 14. He might well have only gone back the two years needed to avoid being captured by the widow in the first place.

Trudi assumed that if he still went back through the moment in time when he’d passed through the portal, then it might still have the side effect of causing Murray to shrink. This was the only hypothesis in her mental repertoire which would have been incorrect. If Murray had only travelled back two years to avoid going through the portal, he would not have passed through the Ring of Reversal Era, and hence not have shrunken at all.

However, on Trudi’s assumption that he would have shrunken, she began making resolutions. If she were to go ahead and reverse time back as far as her teenage years, she would remember to come and hunt around the safe side of the portal for a shrunken Murray every day, from the moment she turned 37 in any future timeline she might create.