What’s that smell? A faint scent wafted into the bedroom, rousing him from his sleep. He breathed in a light herbal scent. Rubbing his eyes and stretching out the kinks in his shoulders, he followed the scent into the kitchen.

Zara looked up at him with a smile, a freshly brewed cup of tea in one hand, and a plate of little finger sandwiches in the other. “I was just about to come to you. Here.” She set the plate down on the counter and handed him the cup of tea. “Careful, it’s hot.”

“Thanks.” Carefully taking the tea, a warm feeling pulsed from his heart. He smiled at her. “You really didn’t have to do this.”

“I know, but I thought you would need it.” Grabbing her own cup of tea, the two stood there in the kitchen for a moment.

There’s a lot I need to tell her. Blowing gently on his tea, he stretched out his other hand to grab the plate of sandwiches. “We should probably go sit down.”

Nodding, she followed him into the living room, where they nestled on the couch together. “Are you feeling better now?”

“Yeah, it’s all cleared up.” Ed said, already feeling better after his short nap.

“So can you tell me what happened now? I don’t want to see you like that again.” Zara said.

“Like you, I've awakened my bloodline. As you’ve already seen.” Ed said, shooting out some threads for emphasis. “One of the things I can do is see the strings of fate and follow them. Essentially, I can go back in time to see what happened to a person or a location within a certain amount of time.”

“Woah, that’s so cool!” Zara said.

“I can’t change anything that’s already happened, but it’s good for information gathering. I can also see the future, but that’s a lot more complicated.” He said.

“How so?” She asked between sips of her tea.

“The future isn’t set in stone. There are countless possibilities. I’d have to check them one by one, and even then, everything’s faint and messy.” He said, also taking a sip of his tea. Wow this stuff is good.

“Is that how you hurt yourself?” She asked worriedly.

“Kind of, but not really.” He said.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Wait, I’m confused. Did you, or did you not try to see the future?” She asked.

“Kind of, I tried to see the future from where I was.”

“That’s not explaining anything.” Zara said.

“Okay, so umm. Hmm... You know what, this might help. Imagine fate as a timeline.” He shot a thread out in front of them and held it in a straight horizontal line. “It records everything we have ever done, and it is constantly growing as time moves forward. We are always here, at the very end of it.” He forms a ball on one end, while the other side continues to extend out further.

“Okay, I get that. Go on.” Zara nodded.

Using his hands, he guided her through his explanation. “I can split off a part of myself to go wandering back along the line. Eventually, I will hit a wall that I can’t pass, but that’s more based on my strength than any hard-set limits.”

“What about the future? You said you could see that.” She asked.

“The future is like this.” Countless mini threads shot out of the right side of the ball, spreading in every direction. “It’s very messy, and very difficult to figure out.”

“Okay, I get it now. But you still haven’t told me how you got hurt.”

Damn, couldn’t distract her, oh well. He pulled the threads back into the ball, leaving the one that represented the past. “Like I said earlier, I was searching for something, so I had hopped back along the timeline until we were back in the throne room. Then I just sort of walked off it. This didn’t hurt me, I just did this so that I could stay in the room. Think of it like bungee jumping.”

He walked his fingers along the thread, stopped, tied a piece of thread around his fingers, then jumped off. “The entire time I was walking along here, I was attached to this string of fate. I used this connection to jump off. By doing this, time would continue to go backwards, but I could stay in the same spot. Let’s call the point in time when I did this, point A.”

Seeing her nod, he decided to get to the point she was most worried about. “While I was here, I came across a second timeline I could attach myself to, so I tried to read it.” He created a second timeline parallel to the first.

“Is that how you got hurt?” She asked.

“Yes. There was also a spot on this timeline that lined up perfectly with point A, let’s just call is point B. It was there for me to attach to, and also to separate the past and the future from where I jumped. I tried to see what had happened to Ulric after point B.” He pointed at the part he had walked off of. “I tried to read it, but it threw everything at me from point B forward.” He pointed at the part from where he had jumped down to on the new timeline, to the point where it ended on the right.

“Like when your head exploded.” She said in understanding.

“Exactly.” He nodded. “I suspect it would be even worse if I was to try and see what had happened before point B, but I can’t say for sure.”

“Don’t.” She said seriously, staring him down.

“What? I wasn’t going to do anything.” He said innocently.

“You wanted to see what would happen. I know it.”

“Fine. I won’t do it.” For now.

“Good, I don’t want to spend half my holiday trying to heal you after you blow yourself up.” She said.

“That’s right. You’re only here for a week. What do you want to do?”