Timeline

5

"Lynne!"

Tom's excited voice broke through Lynne's thoughts. 

"What?" she asked, turning to him.

"Guess," he told her, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

"Hmm." It could really be anything. Tom got excited about a lot. "A new pet?"

"Nope!"

"Uh... a game?"

"Still nope," he said, grinning. 

"I don't know," Lynne said. "What is it?"

"I unlocked a new ability!" he exclaimed. 

"That's awesome!" she said. "What is it?"

Tom thought for a moment. "They don't have a name for it yet," he eventually said. "I've been trying to think of one, but no luck so far."

"Why don't you show me what it is and I'll see if I can think of anything," Lynne suggested.

"Sure, if I can," Tom said. "It's not really that easy for me to do yet."

"Just try," she said.

Tom nodded, picking a flower from a nearby bush. He took a deep breath and stared at it for a few seconds. Lynne waited, wondering what would happen. After a few more moments, red swept across one of the orange petals like a paintbrush.

"Darn, I was trying to do the whole flower," he muttered. Lynne squinted at the discolored petal. "What exactly did you do?" she asked. Tom looked up at her, then back at the flower. "I changed how the petal was perceived, I think," he said. "Effectively changing how it is." He rubbed the petal, but the red didn't come off. "I'm not sure how to reverse it, though."

"Yeah, I don't know how to move things forward in time, just back," Lynne agreed. "I could probably figure it out, though. Time is a lot more structured than most people think."

"You should show me a thing you learned," Tom said. "I wanna see what you do in your fancy Timeshifter classes."

"I don't have paint, so I can't really show you what we did, but I can probably find an example here somewhere," Lynne said, looking around the courtyard.

"How about that?" Tom suggested, pointing to a leaf that was slowly fluttering down from a tree. "Can you put that back in the tree?"

"I can try," Lynne said. She reached out with her senses, feeling for the same kind of structured path she'd felt before. Nothing. She concentrated on the leaf itself, feeling a sense of triumph as her senses touched the path it had taken from the tree. She imagined picking up the leaf and guiding it back up the path. It twitched, then rose up into the tree, attaching itself to the branch.

"That's pretty cool," Tom told her. 

"They both are," Julia said, coming up behind them. "I saw you practicing through the window." She pointed to a blue-tinted window. "We work in there."

"Oh, I didn't know that," Tom said.

"No reason you would," the older girl shrugged. "So, you have a new ability? Pretty neat."

"If I can figure out how to make it work right," Tom muttered.

"Meh, I'm not that worried about it," Julia said. "You'll get it."

"How would you know?" Tom grumbled. "Sorry, that was uncalled for."

"It's fine," Julia shrugged. "A third of us don't get an ability, that doesn't mean we're better or worse than the rest of you."

"That's true," Lynne agreed. "And I'm sure you'll figure your power out soon, Tom. It's just going to take some time. In the meantime, be excited! You have an ability no one's ever seen before!"

"Yeah!" Tom said, brightening. "Yeah, I do!"

"You're going to have a lot of attention soon," Julia pointed out. "Once people realize there's another new ability, they're going to make a big deal out of it."

"It's just an ability," Tom said. "It's not like an ability is going to change the world."

"It might," Lynne told him. "The first Musemage basically started our culture's love of music."

"That's true," Julia said. "And the first Guider helped us make the teleporting crystals."

"I guess," Tom said. "I just feel like changing a flower's color isn't going to be that important."

"You never know," Lynne pointed out.

***

"Okay, I'm kinda tired of this," Tom said after a week. "People are actually paying a lot of attention to me and it's been cool, but I also want to go back to how we were."

"I get that," Julia said with a shrug. "I don't like that much attention either."

"Yeah, but now a bunch of people know about me and who knows what they want?" Tom mumbled. "The first Telekinetic got bombarded with jobs and requests as soon as people found out about him, and I don't even want to think about the first Guider. New abilities are almost always overused."

"So don't let them," Lynne said. "It's your ability, you choose when to use it."

Tom nodded, then smiled at her. "Thanks," he said.

***

That night, Lynne thought over the things a new ability could mean. She did this a lot, thinking about how things could impact the future. Smoke was curled up on her left foot, asleep, but he woke when she moved her leg. He meowed in protest, but rubbed against her palm anyway.

"Hey there, little guy," she murmured, stroking between his fluffy ears. "Does anything feel... I don't know, different to you? It kinda does to me, but I don't know why." Smoke gazed up at her with an understanding look. 

"Maybe it's not just me," she said, looking back to her starry ceiling.