Of course, I also managed a (last minute) story for you to enjoy:

I’m not Late. Really, I’m not!

If only, I thought. But then, if only had never helped anyone, as every half-decent time researcher knew. After all, it was the ministry’s motto, carved from stone and displayed above the entrance to our lovely university.

tempus fugit – non auxilium si modo

And if I didn’t use what little tempus I’d left, I’d fugit from the university. I didn’t put in the work last week when I should have and didn’t manage to make the time. The work I’d done for the professor had been so much more enticing than writing an essay about a barely known scribbler from the seventeenth century. Now I was late with only two hours left to the deadline.

I turned on my eBoard, bent my head over the worn wooden table in my dorm room, and started typing. When I’d just about finished compiling my hastily done research, the eBoard rang. Of course!

I was tempted to not answer it. There were still 500 words missing from the end of my essay, and my mind was whirling with facts on the seventeenth century. In the background the math necessary for the professor’s machine also kept computing and it had been hard to keep the two subjects separate. The incessant ringing threatened to destroy the carefully established balance.

But it was the professor’s number, so I didn’t have much choice. Without the money I was earning by working for her, I wouldn’t be able to keep studying, and there was nothing more enticing than the prospect of becoming one of the few selected people in the ministry one day. Who knew, maybe I’d be upon the first to actually travel through time. So I accepted the call with a glance at the clock. Half an hour left.

“Come over, right now.” The professor’s voice sounded angry. “Someone messed with the dials.”

“Five minutes.”

“Immediately.”

I didn’t dare to tell her that I needed to finish my essay. So I wrote a few bullet points as a reminder of what to write upon my return – hopefully before the online portal closed – and ran over the nighttime campus to the badly lit building with the professor’s lab in the basement.

I managed the familiar trip to the vault-like concrete emptiness in less than three minutes, but the professor still paced to and fro like a tiger in a cage. The red and green LEDs on a cupboard sized metal machine with a door-like attachment at the left side glowed in the semi-darkness of the lab, and her voice rang out like a bell even though she spoke quietly. “Did you jot down the dial settings before you left for dinner?” She didn’t even greet me.

“Of course I did.” It would be stupid to attempt fetching a sample from the time stream without exact coordinates. I went to the wobbly metal table beside the filing cabinet, the only other furniture in the big, empty room.

“It’s not there. I looked.” The professor grabbed my shoulder and pushed me toward the machine. “Didn’t you say you had a photographic memory? Go on, reset the dials.”

Well, photographic might have been a little overstatement, but I’d worked here long enough to know the numbers by heart. So I turned dials, pressed knobs, and rotated disks until all the setting were as close to what I remembered as I could get them. “Done.”

“You took your time. Now let’s see if it works.” The professor walked over until she stood to the side of the door-like structure. “What item did you choose?”

“Something unimportant.” I smiled. “I think no one’s going to miss a basket of apples from a cellar in Warwickshire.”

“You confirmed the research?”

“Of course.” And I’d used it as a starting point for my essay.

“Good.” The professor grabbed a lever at the side of the machine and pulled. The door lit up with swirls in bright colors as the machine hummed.

Something tugged at me. First on my sleeve, then my whole body. Like in slow motion, I saw the professor’s mouth fall open. The dials whirled back to their original position. A basket of apples came flying out of the illuminated door. And I was pulled in whether I wanted to or not.

I screamed.

And landed on my hands and knees in the wet grass of an early morning meadow. The air smelled sweeter than anything I’d ever breathed, and the world was radiant with yellow, orange, and white clouds against an increasingly light sky. As I stared at the scenery, a hand came into my field of vision.

“I’m sorry for scaring you.” A young, handsome man stood beside me, holding out his hand. “I didn’t mean to. May I help you up?”

His English sounded different from what I knew but I understood him without trouble. I allowed him to pull me to my feet and stared in surprise at the wide, brown skirt and linen blouse I was wearing. Could this be real? Had the professor’s machine worked as intended? Including the clothes simulator and the translation device?

“Do I know you?” It was hard to find words, but I knew I’d met him before. Or had I read about him? “You feel familiar.”

“I, too, feel like I’ve known you for all my life.” The young man smiled. He was younger than me, maybe by six, seven, or even eight years. “I’m William. May I take you home, Miss Hathaway?” He took my arm and the essay faded from my mind like a bad dream.

Visit the others:
Priceless Treasure by James Clapp
Ridesharing by Gina Fabio
Knot Safe by Barbara Lund
Before Sunrise by Angelica Medlin

My, how time flies. I’ve started revising the third novel in Holly Lisle’s Moon & Sun series and jotted down notes on the fourth one (which should be the last if I don’t go overboard). If you want to follow my progress, sign up for the newsletter.

It’s also time for the quarterly Blog Hop. This time, I’m featuring an up and coming talent: James Clapp. Here’s his story (and remember to read the others tat are linked below):

Priceless Treasure

by James Clapp

Taking cover behind a tree, Nikita surveyed the forest clearing. Two guards ate roasted meat by a campfire. Two more guards defended her target, a caravan with curtains drawn. All four guards wore normal clothes. She’d expected more and better-equipped guards given the note slipped under her inn room door.
“In four days a caravan will travel through Silvervale Forest carrying emeralds amidst plentiful gold.”
Still, only this caravan matched the location and timing.

Nikita threw a rock.
“Huh?” a campfire guard approached.
Nikita sneaked behind him and, in one motion, slit his throat.
‘One down.’
She crept towards the second campfire guard and stabbed him. He screamed before dying.
‘Change of plan.’
Nikita drew another blade.
The remaining guards drew short swords.
Nikita rushed the closest guard, parried his blade with her own and stabbed him in the back, but the final guard slashed her arm.
Gritting her teeth against the pain, Nikita swept the guard’s feet and plunged her blade into his neck. She grabbed bandages from her satchel and tied them around her wounded arm.
‘Master wouldn’t have even been seen,’ she frowned.

Nikita opened the caravan door. Inside she found … four chained women in simple tunics.
‘Slaves? I did all this for slaves?’ She drew the curtains. Sunlight streamed in, revealing … nothing. No emeralds. No gold. No treasure. The note had lied.
“You’re not the bandits,” one of the slaves, a woman with short blond hair, said.
‘Bandits? So, that’s why they didn’t show much resistance.’
“Help us?”, a brunette with messy hair pleaded.
‘Wait. The bandits intended to sell these slaves?’
“Please?”, a brunette with a ponytail said.
‘Whoever sent the note must also be a human trafficker, hoping to make a profit.’
“Mama?”, a teenage girl with long, wavy, blond hair rubbed her green eyes.
‘I’ve found the treasure — these four slaves.’ Nikita’s chest tightened even thinking that. ‘I can’t let them be recaptured.’
Nikita freed the slaves.
“Thank you.”
“Come on, I’ll escort you to Silverbrook.”
They reached Silverbrook without incident, and Nikita bought carriage tickets so the slaves could return home. They would leave tomorrow.

The next morning outside Nikita’s inn room, a blonde woman greeted Nikita. She wore a necklace with an emerald set in gold, which looked valuable.
“Yes, please come in.”
The woman entered.
Nikita grabbed her and pressed her blade against her neck. “I’m not going to give you the slaves. Give me your necklace and leave. Understood?”
The woman followed Nikita’s demands.

Upon awakening, the teenager noticed the necklace.
“That’s mine! Only Mama should have it.”
‘Wait. This girl’s mother sent the note?’
Green eyes. Blond hair. Nikita understood.
She ran out and found the blonde woman. “Sorry, I thought you were a human trafficker, not an innocent.” Nikita gave back the necklace.
Seeing mother and daughter reunited warmed Nikita’s heart, but she still needed money to live.
“Thank you for rescuing me. Here, you’ve earned this.” The teenager gave Nikita the necklace.
“Thanks” Nikita said.

Visit the others:
Ridesharing by Gina Fabio
Knot Safe by Barbara Lund
I’m not Late. Really, I’m not! by Katharina Gerlach
Before Sunrise by Angelica Medlin

Just to update you, my grandson does have ADHD. Now I need to learn yet more skills. Well, that’s something I’m familiar with, so I don’t expect it to take too long.

I’m also working on planning the fourth book in Holly Lisle’s Moon & Sun series. If you want to follow my progress, sign up for the newsletter.

As to the Blog Hop, I finished my story early this time. I’m still not sure whether I like it or not, and suspect it might be the beginning of something longer, but see for yourselves:

Doomed … or Not?

After crash landing on this planet and roaming around a bit, I stumbled and fell into what looked like the shaft of a well to me. Now I was stuck in a damp hole in the middle of nowhere with the sky so high above me, it looked like a small disk of light in a world of darkness.

But it seemed I wasn’t completely alone. There was a grayish plant with several smaller and one big bud growing in the middle of the round bottom end of the shaft. In the evening of my first day there, someone lowered a basket on a string from above. I called, but no one answered. I grabbed the basket, but the string ripped. When the basket landed at my feet, I found out that it was filled with a gray gunk. Disgusted I dumped it onto the plant, wishing for something tasty to eat. How wonderful it’d be to get my hands on a fresh salad with french dressing, cheese, and a double helping of bacon …

One of the smaller buds on the plant popped open and the air filled with the wonderful scent of fried meat. I didn’t dare to trust my eyes, but touch confirmed that the bud definitely contained what I’d wished for. Of course, there was no fork and no plate, but my stomach growled so badly that I ignored that. I ate everything the small plant had offered. It was as delicious as it smelled. So even if I didn’t understand how it had read my needs, I thanked it afterward. Better safe than sorry.

For a month, I counted time by the meals the people above send down for the little plant. It grew slowly but it grew. Especially the biggest of the buds. And without fail, it provided me with three meals a day. I used the remains of the baskets to build myself a dry platform for sleeping, and told stories to the plant of my space travels and of the mix of ingenuity and idiocy so characteristic for the human race.

Sometimes, it felt as if the plant was laughing or at least listening, and that kept me from going insane. Once I tried to wish for components for my ComUnit but realized quickly that the plant had no concept of technology. All I got was a jumble of metal parts that had no rhyme or reason. So I build a wind chime with them and hung it from one of the few roots (not necessarily tree roots but similar) that grew out of the wall. The plant seemed delighted whenever I made them ring.

Then, one morning, a seam on the biggest of the buds cracked a little. Something brown and fuzzy peeked out. It resembled hair. I didn’t dare touch it, it looked so delicate. When the basket with food arrived, the seam had split the full length, showing more of the brown fuzz and something green underneath. And it was moving.

I hurried to dump the gunk at the plant’s base, then withdrew to my bed-platform, watching with interest but also with fear. The green thing sat up and the brown hairs flowed around it. Yes, it was hair. But I had to wait for the green thing to turn to understand what I was seeing. It was a baby, a girl, with skin so green it could have been made of grass and eyelids that were still closed like one saw in dog or cat babies.

Without even thinking, I took off my battered jacket—at least it was dry and warm—, picked up the child, hugged it close to my chest, and cooed to it. I felt like an idiot but the child snuggled closer, warming my heart. Deep breathing told me that she’d fallen asleep, so I hugged her and didn’t dare move, although I was getting cold.

Was the plant still working or had the girl’s birth used up all of its magic? I wished with all my strength that it would make a baby blanket. Pop went a small bud and revealed a multi-colored blanket, a baby-bottle with a yellow liquid, and a bread with lettuce and cheese. As I swapped my jacket for the blanket, the baby woke. It’s tiny arms reached for the bottle, so I fed it and when it made no sign that it wanted the sandwich too, I wolfed it down.

For three days, the baby girl and I bonded. Three days where I did barely anything but feed or clean the baby. I also dumped gunk onto the plant three times a day. Whoever was sending the gunk seemed to know exactly how much more energy the plant needed to feed two people.

On the evening of the third day, the girl opened her eyes and they were as blue as the sky. I’d never seen eyes this blue before. I smiled at her. “Guess it’s time to find you a name, my little beauty.”

The girl blinked. Then it smiled and said. “Guess it’s time to return to Earth. You may call me Gaia.”

The gray plant started growing toward the circle of sky above at an alarming speed.

Visit the others:
The Implant Caregiver by Manon F
The Reaper’s Gift by Becky Sasala
Knot Quite by Barbara Lund
The Collector by T. R. Neff
Adventures in Space with Doot the Pig by Gina Fabio