There hadn't been a way to escape from the house. Like every other time... well, almost every other time, as soon as I left, I died. This time, however, I didn't wake up hopeless. The pain didn't disappear. No matter how many times it happened, the trauma of the death would compound. But... my answer changed. I was still shaking and afraid. I still struggled to maintain my stomach. My entire being still rejected to thought of my death, and the brutality of it. But I didn't force myself out of the bed right away. I didn't try to push it back and start moving.

I didn't know what to do, truth be told. I had been using my sister as a goal to strive for. That's what I thought, in any case. But it wasn't quite right. I had been wearing her like a cloak. Or as shackles chained to sinking steel. I had been doing with her the same thing I had grown up doing with our Grandmother. The problem was, I was terrible at it. I could only ever emulate either of them on the surface. I wore my perception of them like an elegant gown that didn't fit. And it never did.

Camilla wouldn't have rushed away from a shocked and grieving woman because she didn't have time. Or, I don't know, maybe she would have if other lives were at stake. The truth is I don't really know. I'm not her and trying to deny that didn't give me her mind. The question was, was Mars the type of person who would do that? But what Harrison said stuck with me. It wasn't just that I wasn't Camilla. Everything I had done was because I was Mars. The master time mage. I had been eating rotten fruit. Because the question wasn't what Camilla would do in my situation. Camilla couldn't find herself there. Her focus wasn't time.

So I had to reframe the question. I had to look at it from my own perspective. I had felt so proud that I was fighting to save everyone in the city. But when I did it, I felt so hollow. Like it didn't matter at all. There was a disconnect there. I wanted to treat each loop like it mattered what I did. And it did matter, but at the same time, it was all going to reset. The empty eyes of the shocked woman at the fountain were seared into my memory. A dozen similar looks were. I knew why it felt pointless. I had known the entire time. Because it was.

Not because I was in a loop. Not because it would all end and reset eventually. I didn't believe that made it pointless, not really. But because I was of no help to anyone. I was a bandage on a festering wound. I stopped people's deaths but left them without life. I had moved on so quickly that I never got the chance to actually improve anything for anyone. So the question was would Camilla help everyone or would she hang back and make sure everyone she helped was alright. No, the question was, did Mars have to choose?

I didn't. I was a time mage. I want everything I do to matter, in every loop. But patching up a physical wound and running barely mattered at all. If I wanted to actually lean on the loop that was letting me help people, if I wanted to find redemption in this town, I needed everything I did to really matter. The answer wasn't to help everyone, every loop. The answer was to help who I could. To really help them, from start to finish, each loop. Part of me wanted to rebel against this thought. It protested that if every life didn't matter in every loop, then none of them did.

That warm feeling welled up inside me. It sounded like warm music and washed over me like strawberry rain. It felt like a promise from a loved one. A promise that there was no contradiction. I needed to matter in a way only Mars could matter. I needed to do what only I could do. Something beyond Camilla. And that was this. Every loop, I would help who I could. But I wouldn't second guess the choice to help them. I would focus on them until they were safe, and warm, and calm. Until they had the feeling this room had lost for me. The feeling this city had lost for its residents. I would leave no more broken women at fountains.

Still, there were a few people I had grown to love. People who didn't know who I was. I still wanted to start my day by finding them. 'Maybe,' I thought, 'This time when I tell them about my sister, they'll believe me.' I wasn't shaking anymore. I was ready, on my own time, to stand. I tied my hair up in its bun for the first time in actual weeks. I greeted Livia, the kind woman I had essentially ignored for the same amount of time. I stopped to buy food for the girls again, grabbing a pastry for Harrison. It hurt, a little, knowing they had forgotten me. But it was good, knowing that no matter how many times I introduced myself, I would find friends. A kind man who wanted to help the city. A sweet girl who loved her sister more than anything in the world. A table to drink tea and rest my head.

And I needed rest. I hadn't actually slept in so, so long. I woke up, forced my trembling body out of bed, and went to the girls. I had an hour of respite and then I fought. I fought the world and a horde of furious corpses. Then I died and forced myself from the bed again. The body may reset but the mind needs rest. and mine was already a weary mind. This was all true, but it was also something I was latching onto. Because since I had left home, since my sister had left home really, I had been alone. I felt wounded, and beaten, and... hopeful. Because of a few kind words. It felt silly, but it was true. They had been the only truly kind words I'd heard in a long time, and they'd been the ones I was desperate to hear.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

I didn't even know how desperate. So the truth was, I needed and wanted to rest. But more than that, I wanted to spend time around people I loved. I had, strictly speaking, just met Harrison and the children. They didn't even know who I was at that point. But Camilla was gone. I had driven her away. But I had another chance. With new siblings of a sort. And I wanted to see them. It only hurt more when I found the girls in the expected filth. But it felt even kinder when Harrison agreed to house them.

I regaled them with stories of my sister. They still didn't believe some of the stories, but that was alright. For that day, it was enough that they listened. I didn't rush out the door that time. People needed my help, it was true, but I would help them. I wouldn't let the loop end until each of them had found a future with hope in it. So, for a moment, I didn't feel rushed. I stayed one hour, then two. On the third, Harrison drew and heated a bath for the girls and me. On the other side of a shallow tub, Junia washed Millie's hair with the gentle care of a longtime mother.

It felt surreal. Something was still processing as I sat in the warm water. I hadn't bathed in so long. Bathing required too much time, and too much vulnerability. This loop didn't feel real. Like a hole had opened in a fence around me when I let Harrison make me cry, and reality crashed down around it. I had a million worries and anxieties. I still needed to find a way to avoid the death that saving these homes promised. I had to figure out who was doing this and why. I also needed to find the earth mage, that had hurt me so many times. These all seemed to lead back to one place.

As I looked at Junia, carefully working through the tangles in Millie's hair, I thought of her desperation to hold her sister before she died. And I thought of her sudden desperate attacks after she did. It had consumed all of my attention when it happened. But I had watched a body walk into that garden and descend into the earth. Not so violently as I had, but she was taken by the earth regardless. Just more confirmation that an earth mage was tied to the Quieted. But that made me wonder.

Because I had been in that garden on the first loop. The loop when the Quieted had remained just that, quiet and still. They filled the garden. Hidden and guarded and forgotten. They didn't come back, violent or otherwise, and they were certainly not taken by the earth beneath them. Which made me wonder, what had this earth mage been doing that loop. What had changed before my starting point? It was a tenuous connection, but it was there. Everything went back to the earth mage.

"Hey Junia," I said, drawing her attention from her sister to me.

"Yes, Miss Mars?" she asked.

"I don't suppose you know if anyone around here knows how to use magic? Maybe a friend's parent, or older sibling?" It was unlikely she would have any answers at her age, but I'd learned to ask children for rumors at least as often as adults. They are less likely to dismiss the type of information that could actually help me find my sister. Rumors of rapidly growing plants or unseasonal fruit, for instance. Or, in this case, the ground moving on its own.

"Um, you said you did, Miss Mars," she answered innocently and with a touch of confusion.

"Yes, I do, you are right. Thanks for listening to me about all that," I smile. "Do you know of anyone else?" She put a finger to her mouth in thought.

"Um, sorry, I can't think of anyone. Mom always says..." She paused for a moment with the reminder of her mother's death. Her face fell a little, but she kept a smile on for Millie. There was less energy in her voice when she finally continued. "I always heard most magic people live in big cities. You are the first one I've met..." She looked sullen and hyperfocused on her little sister's hair after this, and I quickly realized I needed to get her mind off the person who told her that.

"That's true, most of them do," I replied. "So... does that mean you've never seen a magic spell before?" She responded by shaking her head without looking up. "Would you like to?" This offer sent a jolt through her and she looked up rapidly.

"R-really?" she asked eagerly, and I immediately splashed her and her sister with water, making a huge puddle outside the tub. "H-hey! That's not magic!" She protested, splashing me back. This actually left a small, genuine smile in its wake. The entire environment reminded me of my childhood with Camilla.

"Nope!" I agreed, "But this is!" I then began whispering under my breath, and blue sparks erupted from my fingers before beginning their ballet over the water. I used more aura than I needed, just to make it more of a show for the girls. Both of their eyes fixed on the magic as it spilled out of the bath and collected the puddle we had made. Then Junia gasped as the water began to float, following its previous path in reverse. She opened her mouth to ask, but as I returned the water to the tub, it briefly splashed her a second time interrupting the question. A moment later, the spill was gone and Junia was gaping at me.

"That was amazing!" she gasped and I laughed. It was a foreign sound in my mouth, but it was welcome. "Again!" she gleefully requested, trying to splash me a second time. This time I cast 'slow' and the water moved through the air at a snail's paste, the aura surrounding it looking more fluid than the water itself. The bath lasted a lot longer than it needed to as I amused and distracted the girls with my time magic.

Part of me still screamed that I was wasting time. But that hour was perhaps one of the most important I had lived since the loop started. I actually spent time with the children in a meaningful way. Not surviving, but living. It was a simple pleasure, but one I had denied myself for a long, long time. I would have time to ask Harrison about the earth mage. And time to get them out of that house before it became unsafe. But that hour was for three wounded girls who needed time to heal. Just a little.