If You Are Reading This, Don’t Stop

PART 3

Ava stumbled as time slammed into her. Gentle hands caught her. “I warned you.” The young satyr from the bakery gave her a contemplative smile. Her stomach growled at the memory of his golden pastries.

“Put me back into real-time,” Ava demanded, hiding her fear.

“All time is real.”

“And yet it is not,” a rumbling voice came from an old satyr under a stone arch. “I send the peskiest sneak thief in Cornwall to fetch something, and here she is.”

Ava rankled. “I don’t thieve on demand.”

With a menacing glare, the old satyr stepped forward, reaching for the pocket watch. “That is mine,”

The younger closed his hand around Ava’s. “Aye, but you never used it well, did you?”

Again, time fell away then slammed into her. Ava hit a stone floor in a vast library, smelling of musty leather and parchment. Alarms rang out. The younger satyr stood her up, head spinning and stomach swirling with bile.

“Go! I’ll lead him away. If Jovas finds it, he’ll unravel time and us with it.”

Taking a tome from the shelf, he stepped inside, leaving her alone. Footsteps pounded toward her. Dumbfounded, Ava stared at the odd watch and began to see a pattern.

The timepiece whispered to her. “If you are reading this, don’t stop.”

Near pacic, she asked, “But where and when to?”

Her empty stomach grumbled the answer.

“All right then. To the best sticky buns in all of time, if you please.”

And it did.

Photo by Chris Hardy