“I’ve not only won. I’ve eaten you again and time travelled back again,” said Trudi, “I’ve gobbled you down, met my fiance, had our wedding, gone to the hotel for my honeymoon, decided that I couldn’t go through with two years of half-invested marriage with a known adulterous husband. I walked out that night and had the wedding annulled. Then I time travelled back and made sure I never took the Miami Beach holiday when I first met him. Having done that, I would never see him again. So I lived through the same years from age 18-20 with neither the marriage nor the resulting divorce from his infidelity. When I was nearly 21, I took a walk into the other village one night, and went to a dance at the community hall. I had another man in my arms for over half an hour, but all I was seeing was the night we met at the poetry slam. So in the middle of the dance, I time travelled back to the last part of our chase today. I knew that the thing I’d been missing was your poetry.”

“But you did it then. You ate me for what you thought would be the final time, regardless of what that would mean for me. You know what it feels like to be betrayed by a man, having gone through a divorce in your first timeline. How do I know what to expect from you in the future?” asked Daniel.

“You don’t, but you have the here and now. So do you want me to kiss you or not?” said Trudi.

“Well how could I say no to lips like those?” said Daniel.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” said Trudi, and put those lips to work.

When she was nineteen and Daniel was nine, she sat out on the outdoor swinging chair on her back verandah with him in a beautiful light blue dress, with her hair worn up, sat him in her lap while she read through the paperwork for renewing her contract on ‘Mountains Family.’ She signed it, put it on the seat beside her, and then lifted him up in front of her face.

“This has been the best timeline for both of us, hasn’t it?” she said.

“It surely has,” said Daniel.

“You’ve escaped becoming a permanent addition to my stomach so many times in the last few years. I think I’ve lost count.”

“Well there were all those times when you were aged 15 to 17, and then after your big trip back in time to undo the last one, we’ve done it several more times since, so you’ve told me,” said Daniel, “The only thing is that I have to go by your narratives, because I don’t remember them after you’ve done them. So in a sense, for me, each time is the first time.”

“That’s right,” said Trudi, “And it had to be that way, since you lost your time travelling power when you shrank. The same thing happened to Murray,” said Trudi.