Chapter 38: Negotiations and Naps
Ella clapped her hands together, a sharp, triumphant sound in the quiet kitchen. “Yes! And it will bring me back to the cabin in our time. Then, Rowan, you will winnow us back home as I have quite honestly had enough of doing that today, thank you very much.” She took a breath, her bravado slipping just enough to reveal the weary teenager beneath. “Also, I’m going to need a second to recharge before I do another time jump and bring a whole Rowan with me. So, uh, could we like… wait here for, say, an hour?”
Rowan looked at her, his green eyes knowing. “I see you saved that for the end.”
She smirked, the mischief flashing back into her face. “It’s all about delivery. Consider it an art form.”
Just then, from upstairs, Baby Ella cried. A thin, reedy wail that pitched into a full-throated demand for attention.
The future Ella froze, her smirk vanishing. She blinked, looking toward the ceiling as if she could see through it. “Okay,” she breathed out, picking up her lukewarm tea and taking a deliberate sip. “This is now kind of insane.”
Rowan chuckled, a low, soft sound. “You just took attention away from you. The true final boss.”
She laughed, shaking her head. “That could have been you.”
He shook his head, a hint of a real smile touching his mouth. “I was content as a baby and hardly cried. You let everyone know if you were pissed.”
She shrugged, her shoulders lifting in a gesture so like her mother it made Lilly’s heart ache. “My defense is, I was a baby.”
Suddenly, as if on a coordinated infant strike, Baby Rowan started to cry. It was a different sound—lower, more frustrated.
Future Ella’s smirk returned full force. She tilted her head at her brother. “Oooh. Spoke too soon, Ro.”
She then turned her full attention to Eris and Lilly, clasping her hands in front of her chest in a gesture of pleading that was utterly theatrical. “So. Is it okay if we please, please, just chill here for like an hour?”
The word ‘chill’ hung in the air, bizarre and mundane against the backdrop of shattered time. Lilly stared at the two of them—these tall, nearly-grown strangers who were somehow also her six-month-old infants upstairs—and felt the world tilt. It was too much. The carved initials, the casual mention of a future, the sheer normality of their bickering clashing with the absolute impossibility of their presence.
She looked at Eris. He was watching Rowan, his expression unreadable. Assessing. The weight of the last few minutes—the confession carved in wood, the revelation of a ritual he’d kept for over a decade—still lingered in the lines of his body.
A beat of silence stretched, filled only by the distant, dueling cries from the nursery.
“An hour,” Eris repeated, his voice flat.
“Just to rest my… time-threading muscles,” Ella said, flexing her fingers. “They’re legit cramped.”
Rowan snorted. “You don’t have time-threading muscles.”
“You don’t know what I have.”
Lilly pushed her chair back, the legs scraping against the floor. The sound was decisive. “I need to… they’re crying.” She said it almost to herself, a reminder of the most immediate, tangible reality. Her babies needed her. These other ones, these future versions, could wait.
She moved toward the stairs, her body on autopilot. As she passed Ella’s chair, she paused. Without thinking, she reached out and brushed a strand of copper hair behind the girl’s ear, her fingers just grazing her cheek. It was an instinctual, motherly gesture. Future Ella went perfectly still, her blue eyes wide and suddenly vulnerable.
“Don’t drink all the tea,” Lilly said softly, her voice a little rough. Then she headed upstairs, her steps quickening as the cries grew more insistent.
In the kitchen, the three of them were left in a new kind of quiet.
Eris watched the space where Lilly had vanished. Then his gaze slid to Rowan. “You don’t winnow often?”
It was a question designed to gather data, to understand the scope of their abilities, to map the terrain of this unknown future.
Rowan shrugged, leaning back against the counter again. He picked up the apple he’d abandoned earlier, polished it on his shirt. “Often enough. I’m better at the fire.” He said it without arrogance, a simple statement of fact. “Ella’s the traveler. I’m the… anchor.”
Ella rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “He means he’s the grumpy one who makes sure I don’t accidentally land in a lake.”
“It happened once,” Rowan said, taking a bite of the apple.
“And whose fault was that?”
“Yours. You said ‘think of water.’ I thought of the pond behind the cabin. You thought of the Middle-of-Nowhere Great Lake.”
Ella opened her mouth to retort, but Eris spoke first, cutting through the banter.
“You said ‘our time,’” Eris said, his eyes fixed on Ella. “When you spoke of the cabin. You come here.”
It wasn’t really a question. It was a verification of the world he’d seen carved under the table. A world where he brought his family here. Regularly.
Ella’s flippancy faded. She met his gaze, her expression turning earnest. “Every summer. Since we were born. Well, since we were like… one, I guess. Mom said it was the only place you could both truly…” She searched for the word, waving a hand. “Unclench.”
Rowan choked slightly on his apple.
Ella ignored him. “It’s our favorite place. We fish in the stream. Mom paints the weird mushrooms. Rowan tries to burn them. You teach us… stuff.” She looked down at her hands. “The marks under the table. It’s my favorite thing. Even before I knew I could do… this.” She gestured vaguely at the air between them, at the impossible gap of years. “It was proof, you know? That we were here. That we kept coming back.”
The cries from upstairs had softened, muffled now by the floorboards and Lilly’s murmuring. A sense of fragile, temporary peace settled over the sunlit kitchen.
Eris didn’t respond for a long moment. He walked to the window, looking out at the dense, green wall of the forest. His back was to them, tall and straight. “An hour,” he said, finally, his voice low. “You can stay.”
Ella let out a breath she seemed to have been holding. “Thank you.”
“Conditions,” Eris said, turning from the window. His green eyes were sharp. “You do not leave this room. You do not touch anything that is not offered to you. You answer questions, directly and without theatrical embellishment.” His gaze flickered to Ella. “Is that clear?”
She nodded, for once completely serious. “Crystal.”
“And you,” Eris said, looking at Rowan. “You will show me this fire thing.”
Rowan stopped mid-chew. He swallowed, setting the apple core down on the counter. A spark of something—challenge, curiosity, pride—lit in his eyes. He gave a single, short nod. “Okay.”
Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Lilly descended, a bundled, quieted Baby Ella in the crook of each arm. She’d changed into a soft, worn sweater, her hair hastily pulled back. The infants were sleepy, their heads nestled against her, pacifiers bobbing gently.
She came to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, taking in the scene: Eris by the window, Rowan standing alert by the counter, Future Ella sitting very still at the table, her eyes huge as they locked on the tiny, copper-haired baby in Lilly’s left arm.
“They just wanted to be held,” Lilly said softly, her voice a warm hum. She walked further into the room, her movements slow and rocking.
Future Ella stood up so quickly her chair scraped. She approached slowly, as if drawn by a magnet. She stopped a foot away, staring at the tiny, sleeping version of herself. Her throat worked.
“She’s so small,” Future Ella whispered. The cocky, time-traveling teenager was gone. In her place was a girl seeing a ghost of her own beginnings.
“She’s got your lungs,” Rowan said quietly from behind her, but his tone was gentle.
Future Ella reached out a single finger, hovering it just above the baby’s plump cheek. She didn’t touch. She just stared. “Hi,” she breathed out, almost soundlessly.
Baby Ella stirred, her little face scrunching, and her blue eyes blinked open. They were hazy with sleep, but they seemed to focus on the face of the older girl leaning over her. She didn’t cry. She just stared, her pacifier stilling.
A tear traced a clean path down Future Ella’s cheek. She swiped at it angrily, looking embarrassed.
Lilly’s own eyes shimmered. She adjusted her grip and turned slightly, presenting Baby Rowan. “Do you want to say hi to your brother too?”
Rowan, the future one, didn’t move from his spot by the counter. He looked at the baby—the tiny, blonde-haired boy with his eyes closed, one fist curled against Lilly’s sweater. A complicated emotion flickered across his face, too fast to name. He shook his head once, a tight, almost pained motion. “I’m good,” he said, his voice rougher than before.
Eris watched it all from his post by the window. He saw the tear on his daughter’s cheek. He saw the refusal in his son’s stiff posture. He saw Lilly, holding the center of the room together with the weight of two infants and the profound weirdness of it all.
The morning sun climbed higher, pouring liquid gold over the scarred butcher’s block, over the half-empty tea mugs, over the five of them—six, if you counted the babies—caught in a moment that was already beginning to feel less like a crisis and more like a strange, stolen miracle.
“An hour,” Eris said again, his voice cutting through the emotional thicket. He pushed off the window frame. “Sit. Both of you.”
Future Ella finally pulled her gaze from her infant self and slumped back into her chair, looking emotionally winded. Rowan remained standing, his arms crossed, a sentinel once more.
Eris walked to the cupboard and took down two more mugs. He poured tea from the pot Lilly had made, the steam rising in gentle curls. He set one mug in front of Ella. He carried the other to Rowan and placed it on the counter beside him.
He didn’t say anything. He just returned to his spot, leaning against the edge of the sink, watching his family—past, present, and future—exist together in the same sunlight.
The hour had begun.
The hour had begun.
Lilly settled into the worn armchair she’d dragged from the living area, the twins a warm, breathing weight against her chest. She watched the steam from her tea spiral toward the beamed ceiling. A strange, domestic silence settled, broken only by the soft click of a mug being set on wood.
Rowan pushed off from the counter and finally took a seat at the table. He spun his full mug slowly between his palms, not drinking. His gaze was fixed on some middle distance, likely calculating the metaphysical logistics of their return trip.
Ella, however, seemed to be vibrating with suppressed energy now that the initial shock had worn off. She traced the rim of her cup, her eyes darting from the babies to Eris’s still form by the sink, to the unfamiliar sketches littering the counter. She fidgeted.
Rowan observed this for a full minute. He uncrossed his arms and then recrossed them, leaning back in his chair with an air of deliberate calm.
“Well, Ella,” he began, his voice a study in casual malice. “Since we’ve got time, and you wouldn’t disobey Dad and leave this room or this here table…” He tapped the wood meaningfully with two fingers and leaned forward. “Why don’t you tell me exactly where you sneaked off to last night? Back in our time.”
Ella turned a spectacular shade of red. Her eyes shot to Eris, then back to her brother. “Rowan. Now is not the time.”
He didn’t blink. “Don’t tell me.”
“Rowan, shut up,” she hissed, her voice low.
He tilted his head, a predator circling a truth. A slow, knowing smile touched his lips. “Oh. I see.” He leaned back again, the picture of mock disappointment. “Well, that’s unfortunate.”
Ella’s blush deepened. She nodded rapidly, grasping for any shield. “Also, you can’t say anything more because it is future stuff that past people shouldn’t know about.”
“Absolutely, Ella,” Rowan agreed, his tone saccharine. He paused for effect, letting the quiet of the kitchen press in. “By the way, the only reason I know you snuck out is because Dad caught you.”
She froze. Her fingers stilled on the mug. “How would he…”
Rowan cut her off with a single word. “Wards.”
Ella closed her eyes, a long, slow blink of utter defeat. Her shoulders slumped. “Forgot he has that habit,” she muttered to the tabletop.
From his post by the sink, Eris made no movement. But his eyes, which had been observing the forest outside, slid to rest on the back of his future daughter’s head. His expression was impenetrable, but a certain intensity sharpened his focus.
Lilly smothered a laugh into Baby Rowan’s soft hair. The sound came out as a muffled snort.
Ella’s eyes flew open, seeking out Lilly’s with a look of pure, betrayed appeal. “It’s not funny. He’s a menace.”
“He’s your brother,” Lilly corrected gently, her smile evident in her voice.
“Exactly,” Rowan and Eris said at the same time.
Eris pushed away from the sink. The movement was fluid, deliberate. He walked to the stove, ignoring the tension he’d just been threaded into. He picked up the kettle, found it still warm, and poured the last of the water into a small, copper pot. He spooned ground coffee from a tin into a filter.
The ritual was slow, methodical. The rich, bitter scent of fresh grounds soon cut through the cinnamon-and-pine air.
“The habit,” Eris said, not turning from his task, his voice a low rumble, “is one of prudence.” He placed the pot on the stove and lit the burner with a click of his fingers. “Not surveillance.”
Ella winced. “Semantics.”
“Strategy,” he corrected, turning to face the room. He leaned against the counter, mirroring his son’s earlier pose. His green eyes pinned Ella. “The result is the same. You were caught.”
Baby Ella chose that moment to squawk, a sudden, disgruntled sound. She popped her pacifier out and began nuzzling fussily against Lilly’s sweater.
“See?” Future Ella gestured vaguely at the baby. “Even she thinks this line of questioning is rude.”
“She’s hungry,” Lilly said, shifting the infant. She looked from Eris to his future children, this bizarre tribunal in her kitchen. A reckless curiosity sparked in her, cutting through the awe. “So. Wards. That’s a… thing he does?”
Rowan snorted, a genuine sound of amusement. “You have no idea.” He glanced at his father, a silent request for permission to elaborate.
Eris gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod. An allowance.
“Perimeter alerts on the windows and doors,” Rowan listed, ticking points off on his fingers. “Motion sensors in the halls after midnight. A silent alarm on the gravel path. A subtle vibration charm on the gate.” He looked at Ella, whose face was buried in her hands. “He knows if a fox scratches at the porch. He knew you left for twenty-three minutes last night.”
Ella groaned into her palms.
Lilly stared at Eris. The man who had carved their initials under the table year after year. The strategist. The heir who saw threats in shadows. “You ward our home,” she said, not a question.
“Our home,” Eris affirmed, his gaze holding hers. There was no apology in it. Only stark, unwavering fact. “It is defended.”
The coffee pot began a low, bubbling percolation. The sound was domestic, normal. It clashed violently with the conversation.
“It’s suffocating,” Ella mumbled, lifting her head. Her cheeks were still flushed.
“It’s alive,” Rowan countered, his tone losing its teasing edge. It was simple, firm. “You are. I am. Because of it. More than once.”
The words landed heavily in the sunlit room. They carried the weight of stories untold, of dangers unseen in this quiet, unpainted cabin. Eris’s face remained a mask, but his knuckles were white where they gripped the counter’s edge behind him.
Lilly felt the truth of it like a chill. This was the other side of the carved initials. Not just sentiment, but a fierce, relentless protection that shaped a future where his children could bicker about sneaking out.
Baby Ella’ fussing grew more persistent. Lilly stood, adjusting both infants. “I need to feed her,” she said, the statement anchoring them all back to the immediate, simple need.
As she passed the table, she paused beside Future Ella. She leaned down, her voice for the girl’s ear alone. “Twenty-three minutes isn’t very long,” she whispered, a conspirator’s smile playing on her lips. “For a first attempt.”
Ella’s head snapped up, her blue eyes wide with surprise, then a flicker of gratified understanding.
Lilly continued toward the stairs, leaving the three of them in a kitchen fragrant with coffee and unresolved history. The hour was ticking away, but the revelations had just begun to unspool.
The hour was ticking away, but the revelations had just begun to unspool.
Eris poured the finished coffee into a plain clay mug, the dark liquid steaming. He did not drink it. He held the mug, letting the heat seep into his palms, his eyes on Ella where she sat fidgeting at the table. Rowan watched her too, a smirk playing on his lips.
“So,” Rowan said, drawing the word out. “Twenty-three minutes. What’s the exchange rate on that? One minute of freedom for an hour of interrogation?”
Ella crossed her arms, defensive. “I didn’t do anything bad or wrong or inappropriate. I snuck out for a late night snack and happened to run into a friend on my way and said a polite hello and quick catch up as people do. Then got my apple and water and went back to my room.”
Rowan nodded slowly, his green eyes glinting. “Yes. Your friend.” He emphasized the word, leaning back in his chair.
Ella blushed red, the color flooding from her neck to her hairline. “I am not lying. That is what happened.”
Rowan’s smirk widened. “Oh, I know, Goody Shoes.”
Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Lilly descended, the infants now quiet and settled in their cribs upstairs. She paused at the bottom step, taking in the scene. Her eyes moved from Ella’s flushed face to Rowan’s amused expression. A slow smile touched her lips.
“So this friend,” Lilly said, her voice light as she moved to lean against the doorframe, folding her arms.
Rowan shrugged, the picture of innocence. “I’d share, but can’t because of not destroying the future.” He shot a glance at Eris, who hadn’t moved from his spot by the counter. “But it’s not as bad as it sounds.”
Ella huffed, throwing her hands up. “Is that what you told Dad when he asked you?”
Rowan nodded once, crisp and sure.
She looked at him, her blue eyes sharp. “And?”
He shrugged again, a casual lift of his shoulders. “You’re going to be fine. He’ll ask you, you’ll tell the truth, and he’ll probably huff and tell you to be more brief at that hour.”
Ella clicked her tongue, a soft sound of resignation. “Okay.”
Rowan then leaned forward across the table, his voice dropping to a mock-conspiratorial whisper. “I would work on the not turning into a tomato, though.”
She nodded, a quick, jerky motion. “Noted.”
Eris finally lifted the mug to his lips and took a slow sip. He did not look at Ella. He watched the steam rise from the coffee, his expression unreadable. The scent of it, rich and bitter, mixed with the lingering cinnamon and the clean, dry smell of the pine walls.
Lilly pushed off the doorframe and walked to the stove, picking up the empty kettle. She pumped water into it, the handle squeaking. The mundane sound was a stark contrast to the conversation.
“Brief at that hour,” Lilly repeated, setting the kettle on the cold burner. She didn’t light it. She turned, leaning her hips against the counter, mirroring Eris’s posture. “Sounds like a rule with history.”
Rowan chuckled, a low, genuine sound. “You have no idea.”
Ella buried her face in her hands, her copper hair falling forward. “I’m never living this down,” she mumbled, her voice muffled.
“You will,” Rowan said, his tone shifting, losing its edge. “In about ten years, maybe.”
She peeked through her fingers at him. “Helpful.”
Eris set his mug down on the counter with a soft click. The sound was deliberate, a period to the sentence of their banter. He straightened, his gaze sweeping over his children—these visitors from a timeline he was only beginning to map.
“The hour is half gone,” he said, his voice cutting through the room. “You should rest. As you said.”
Ella lowered her hands, her blush fading to a soft pink. She took a deep breath, visibly pulling herself together. “Right. Recharging. Time-threading muscles.” She flexed her fingers again, then let her hands fall to the table, palms flat. “It’s quieter up there now,” she said, glancing toward the ceiling where the nursery was. “That helps.”