The Mysterious Letter

“I have a letter here for you, sir,” Blaise looked up to see a robotic looking Jellybean Dragon with a letter in its hand, which was outstretched towards him.

“Uh, thank you?”

“You’re welcome! Please remember that when you need your mail sent through the time stream, to use Time Slip Postal Service!”

Blaise almost replied, but quickly stopped himself as he realized that this was clearly just a required ad-like portion of his dialogue.

Instead, he decided to open up the letter and read it. His brows furrowed slightly in confusion as he noted that the letter was addressed to one “Barry Caldecott-DeWitt,” but he brushed it off as possibly being from someone who didn’t know him very well or perhaps had forgotten his first name.

However, as Blaise got progressively farther into reading the letter he realized that whoever this was, they happened to have intimate knowledge of him being a time traveler and the language within the letter was one of a bean in love. These facts perplexed him for, at the moment, he was extremely single and hadn’t been on a date in...well, several years.

Continuing to read the letter, Blaise realized by the end of it that it was a proposal letter! That was surely absurd though, it could not possibly be for him! It must be for someone else...right? If it were indeed meant for him, surely the bean he loved and who loved him would be sure to address the letter properly.

Blaise was going to try to inform the robot that it had made a mistake, but he realized that the robot had already left. He was about ready to write it off as a mistake and decide to instead set aside the letter for now and just return to working on fixing an issue with a coupling on the time machine and see about getting the letter to its rightful recipient; but as he folded up the letter, he noticed that on the upper right hand corner of the back of the letter there was a small note which appeared to be written in none other than his own handwriting.

Picking the letter back up, he read the short note:

“If you’re reading this, this means that something has happened to our timeline and I sent this letter back in time to let you know that you need to fix it. Jump exactly one year and eleven days from the date on this letter and try to find her.”

The note was signed by Barry, which could only mean that for some reason Blaise was going to have to change his name for one reason or another, hopefully that too would become clear in time.

When Blaise had finished fixing up the time machine, he went inside to locate his big brother Papyllon and ask him to tag along with him on this mission since he wasn’t so sure about going it alone.

Fortunately for him, Papyllon wasn’t going to be too busy tonight and was willing to help Blaise out, it was quite evident though that his big brother happened to be just as intrigued by the letter as he was.

They gathered up their usual things and loaded them into the time machine before, Papyllon situated those items in their usual locations while Blaise punched in the time and space coordinates that his presumably future self had left for him in order for him to be able to right whatever wrong had caused a something to happen in their timeline to merit sending such an important letter as this to his past self.

When the time machine had at last arrived at their destination (not that it took very long, it took less than a second or two), Blaise checked the weather outside and quickly ran to the wardrobe room to put on some rain gear and grab and umbrella before heading out the doors of the time machine and stepping foot into the future.

As fate would have it (or perhaps even designed), his step into the future resulted in him stepping right into the path of a Jellybean Dragon who was booking it down the sidewalk. Blaise didn’t even get a chance to get his bearings when she collided into him and their respective possessions ended up getting spread across the wet pavement, leading them to both scramble to try to salvage their papers to prevent them from becoming too badly damaged by the puddles of rainwater.

Having rescued all the paper from the puddles, they then got to work on sorting out whose was whose. During this process was when Blaise saw a name jump out at him from the various papers:

Felicity Siskin-Hart.

It was the same name that he had seen on the letter.

Oh sweet Gallifrey, he had to make sure that she didn’t see the letter yet...or at least read it and glimpse her name on it.

Thankfully, the letter happened to be one of the pieces of paper that was in with all the papers that he had rescued from the rain water, but that didn’t help resolve all of the jitters he had about meeting this bean who would apparently change his life in a big way - though he had no idea exactly how.

Word Count: 887 Words

Losing The Past For The Sake Of Love

Blaise looked around the room at his family whom he’d gathered together in the living room at his mother’s house - for what may be the last time in this version of his life. He held aloft a glass vial in his hand which held a glistening golden liquid inside of it, the looks of confusion on the faces of his family members told him that they had no idea what it was or that if they did, that they had no idea why he was showing it to them.

“I know that you’re all wondering why I’ve gathered all of you here today and perhaps even what this is in my hand, I promise that both questions will be answered by the end of the day,” he began as he looked from his mother to his adoptive twin siblings Papyllon and Kallima.

Papyllon gave him a reassuring nod, he was the only one among his family who knew what was going on and was really just here for emotional support.

“As many of you know, Papyllon and I made a time machine not too long ago. Well, semi-recently, I decided to make a hop into the future and I ended up staying a little bit longer than anticipated because I...well, I fell in love. Something which I really shouldn’t have done, but we just clicked. It was as if we had been best friends forever."

“What’s her name?”

“What does this have to do with that vial?”

“Do we get to meet her?”

The questions continued to bombard him until he raised his hand to stop them, “I promised to answer everything and I will,” he responded before using that same hand to beckon the individual from the future he had fallen in love with to come forward.

“Uh, hello! My name is Felicity Siskin-Hart,” the very fluffy roasted marshmallow reindeer-like female bean who Blaise had fallen madly in love with began as she entered the room.

“You’re Doumak and Amor’s little girl, aren’t you? I’ve seen you around the bakery,” Blaise’s mother remarked.

She nodded, “I am, yes. I’ve given Blaise permission to do this, alter my personal timeline.”

“Wait, what? How is he altering your timeline and why?”

“I’m altering it by using this potion,” Blaise replied, shaking the vial in his other hand, “It’s called a phoenix potion and it’ll turn me into a child again. I can be the same age as she is right now in our time and we can grow up together.”

The looks that were being exchanged between several of his family members ranged from being worried about him to thinking that he was nuts to consider such an idea, but he knew what he was doing was right when he felt Felicity slip her hand into his empty one and squeeze it reassuringly.

“This isn’t up for debate, I’ve made up my mind. We have made up our minds. I plan to take this potion and I’ll change my name, I’m thinking Bartholomew or Barry for short. I’ll be completely honest, I don’t know all of the effects of the potion, so I don’t know if I’ll lose all my teen and adult memories or all of them even or none at all, but if I do happen to lose them, then I’ll depend on all of you to help me create new ones as good as the old ones and to help me if you can.”

“Sweetheart,” it was the first time his mother Zyanya had spoken up during this entire gathering, “I understand, I really do, but aren’t you worried about what you might lose by doing all of this? You’ll have to go through school again and if you do lose your memories, many of them would not be able to be recreated since your father and I are divorced.”

“I know, I did think about it mom. I thought about it a great deal actually, those memories are important to me and I honestly would hate to lose them if this potion does indeed erase my memories. At the same time, I’ll get to have more, new memories and that’s not necessarily a bad thing either,” at the same time, Blaise couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sorrow at the thought of all the wonderful memories that he would lose.

Memories that would be irreplaceable as well as impossible to recreate.

Sweet Gallifrey, I really hope that I don’t end up losing my memories, he thought to himself, would I even still be me if I lost them?

He had to mentally shake himself of this, it was far too late to be second guessing things, he was very committed to doing this.

“What if people go looking for you though Blaise,” his little sister Melody inquired.

“I’ll probably have to fake my death I guess, it’s the only solution that I can think of that would cause Blaise to cease to exist so that Barry can,” he replied, “saying that aloud sounds extremely weird, but I don’t really have too many friends right now anyway so I don’t think I’d be that missed.”

Another regret to add to the list that seemed to be growing in relation to this life that he’d led. Perhaps he’d been living such a half-life in preparation for just this sort of occasion? So he’d be able to easily cut ties with anyone who wasn’t family.

“It does, but I think we’re all following along,” Papyllon’s twin sister Kallima said, “I’m just not sure that this is the right course. Couldn’t you just stay in the future?”

“That was another possibility that we thought of, but there are some events over the course of time that would occur if I were to do that and I couldn’t bear to be parted from all of you just to be able to do that.”

“Like what Blaise,” inquired his little brother Azaxyr.

“Like the fact that something major happens and the family hates me for not being there."

“If I may,” Felicity began, speaking up for the first time in awhile since introducing herself, “we really have thought this through quite thoroughly and done our research on what repercussions may occur depending on what course of action we take. I can promise you that this is not as impulsive as it appears to be.”

“Have you talked to your family yet? Are they okay with it,” Zyanya asked, obviously quite concerned.

“Yes, we have, we had the conversation in my time, in the future that is,” Felicity replied, giving her a warm smile.

At this point, there were no more questions and it seemed as if his family had exhausted every avenue they could to figure out why he was doing this and if he should really do it.

“Alright, Papyllon and I are going to return Felicity to her own time and then we’ll come back and I’ll take the potion with all of you here,” Blaise informed them, leaving with Felicity and the Phoenix Potion.

Blaise walked over with future Felicity to the time machine where his brother was, leaning up against it.

“You two love birds are in quite the pickle still, aren’t you,” Papyllon asked, a smile playing across his face.

Blaise sighed, “Yeah, we definitely are.”

“I wish I had good advice to give you, but I don’t even think all the wisdom from Doctor Who will be able to help you out with everything that is to possibly come of this,” Papyllon said apologetically, “but what I can tell you is that if this Phoenix Potion thing does erase your memories, I’ll be a tad bit sad to see your memories of me and you building this machine and playing together as children go.”

Blaise gave his brother a wry smile that held within it a sad tint, “I hope it doesn’t. I’d really miss those memories. Perhaps you could come home and help recreate them with me if I do lose my memory?”

Blaise could see Papyllon’s pained expression, though he tried his hardest to hide it, “Yeah, maybe! I’ll do my best to find the time to do that with you.”

Blaise smiled fondly at Papyllon, if the memories disappeared, he’d miss the ones with Papyllon and the rest of his more immediate family the most. When he looked into Felicity’s beautiful warm eyes though, he knew that he had to make this leap of faith, even if it meant that he’d lose his memories. He was sure that this had to be what had to be done to rectify the timeline.

He took Felicity’s hand and led her into the time machine and followed her in. As always, it didn’t take long to get to her time and when the time machine had parked, he kissed her one last time.

“See you on the flipside Barry,” she said, giving him a wink.

He couldn’t help but smile, “Catch you on the flipside too Felicity.”

Blaise, or Barry as he would soon be known as no matter which way things turned out, stood before his family once more in the living room, downed the Phoenix Potion - and waited.

As he waited, he felt a wave of fear and dread come over him. He worried that perhaps he’d made the wrong decision, that even though he wouldn’t remember the memories he might lose, he’d still know that they were missing and it would frustrate him.

It was amazing how quickly the stages of grief washed over him in this brief moment in time that seemed to last eternity as he waited for the effects of the Phoenix Potion to kick in.

He found himself locked in quite an emotional struggle, which he barely managed to win, but he found an odd sort of peace at the end and in that moment he knew that no matter what happened to his memories - he’d be okay.

After that revelation, or perhaps because of it, he found that the potion was starting to work. He seemed to be suffused with a golden light the same color as the liquid that had been in the vial. He wanted to chuckle and make a joke about how he was regenerating, but found his vision fade to black.

Barry had passed out.

Word Count: 1,722