Leaves danced in turns, the tiny sapling's stem slowly but surely widened and grew with each passing second. A new leaf unfurled from a fresh branch. A stray root bulged out from the dirt of the ground. The stem slowly turned from green into a light white, on the way to brown.

“This is weird,” Tier noted as he shifted his hand in control of the growing plant, the stem bending towards the direction of his palm as if within it held the sun.

“Plant manipulation,” his brother replied, a scanner beeping in his hand as he ran the camera over Tier. “The ability to control flora. Quite specific, this ability. I wonder how it works.”

“Doesn't matter,” Tier laughed as he stopped playing with the growing sapling. “As long as it works. What does it say about yours?”

He turned the scanner onto himself. After a second of running, the device let out a beep and he turned it back over and read, “Latency: Focal point temporal manipulation.”

Tier asked, “What does that mean?”

The brother sat there for a moment, carefully considering the words. “I'm not really sure,” he lied.

“You're useless.”

“It's not like you're any better.”

The siblings continued their insults and banter, chatters continuing under the autumn trees, amber leaves slowly sailing down as a breeze blew through the bustling park.

***

It was midnight by the time The Watcher woke. He had fallen asleep with the Black Tome in his lap, flipped opened to a page on the culture of the dark elves and marked on the paragraph he was at by a leaf. He had passed literal decades of his life by reading. Countless hours spent staring at ink on a pulped wood. He preferred the turn of the page with the touch of faint nature. It reminded him of family.

Miguel sat by the fireside, the flames sheltered by a makeshift roof strung together with the snow-soaked winter vines of the northern trees, preventing the light from being visible from afar. Upon noticing the man waking, the hume tossed an apple-sized purple fruit over. The Watcher caught it instinctively. After a moment examining the gel-like skin, he bit into the food.

“Juicy. Crunchy,” The Watcher reviewed. “Taste like pear.”

Stars in the sky shone brightly with faint pockets of galaxies that flickered less. Adelaide's form could barely be seen in a tree on the border of the forest keeping watch with Nadier at the base. A wolf howled in the distance. A late flock of birds faintly flew overhead. He took another bite of the fruit.

Miguel asked, “Had a good dream?”

“Yeah,” The Watcher replied. “Is it always like this here? Dreaming about the past?”

“It is. We're not really sure why though. I theorise it has something to do with the universe's connection to time, but I must admit, I prefer this than the kind of dreams Earth has. Random nonsensical stuff. It's too much a workout on the mind if I'm resting.”

“I don't think it's random,” The Watcher replied. “From what I understand, the dreams are connected to the dimensional structure. Where I come from, we dream about different worlds and different stories, glimpsing the multiverse without ever knowing it exists.”

“What about you?” Miguel asked. “Do you have stories?”

The Watcher took another large bite out of the fruit. With his mouth half full, he replied, “Sure. Loads of them. What would you like to hear? Harry Potter? The Old Kingdom? I even have the complete works of Plato memorized.”

“How about the story of The Watcher?”

The time traveller swallowed grinned with purple teeth. “Nah. That's boring. Besides, you're living it right now, aren't you?”

“What about before 'Watcher'? Before Tearha?”

“What is this? Some kind of job interview?”

“Maybe.”

Adelaide's laughter could be heard from the treeline, with Nadier's stern but hushed reprimand that she keep her voice down carried over the tone of a whisper on the wind. A light from The Tower in the north flickered off. Lightning flashed in the far west over the ocean.

The Watcher began, “There was a war. Just like any story, there was a war. But this one lasted a little longer than the normal stuff you're used to.”

“A hundred years?” Miguel asked.

“Try seven thousand,” he replied with a straight face. He watched as the Enhancer's eyes widened at the number. With a sigh, The Watcher kept his black book back under his coat and finished the last of the fruit in one bite, tossing the seed unceremoniously to the ground. “At first I thought the war lasted just two years. Turned out what I thought was the beginning was just the end. I went back in time chasing the strings to the very first butterfly that started all the fighting, hoping to cut off the tale at the root.”

Miguel added, “And you turned out to be the butterfly.”

“How did you know that?”

“I watched Back to the Future. Ierba introduced it to me. Storyline could use work. Fun movie.”

“Heh...” The Watcher let out a laugh, amazed at how pop culture managed to travel across time and space. He continued, “Yeah, well. I became the first butterfly. Bit the bullet. Ate the dust. I started a seven thousand years war, all because I failed to stop the first one. But I wasn't allowed to mess with the things that happened. Rules of time travel meant if I even took a step too far right, I could erase the entire universe from existence. How fun is that? So I had no choice but to watch as everyone died. Some from old age, many from fighting. My brother, my best friend, my mentor, my wife, everyone died. All because I couldn't stop the first butterfly when I had the chance to act. I'm the last of my kind.”

Miguel let out a sigh and a disappointed shake of the head. “It's not your fault, you know?” He said it with such clarity that The Watcher looked up with a level of confusion. Miguel explained, “I've heard that story dozens of times. Princess Scarlet, Lady Rubi, King Adam, even my own son. Honestly, I don't know what it is about you people that make you act like this.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The lot of you go around saving worlds and protecting everyone you can see. But every time one of the thousands of lives you've saved don't make it, you take it as if you've failed the entire universe.” He tossed a handful of twigs into a dying fire and the ensuing sparks jumped and cracked into smoke. “But I guess that's what makes all of you who you are. People willing to shoulder the whole weight. But you need to remember this, Watcher...” Miguel turned to watch as Adelaide and Nadier approached their camp-site. “You're not alone in this.”

With a silent nod of half-hearted understanding and contemplation, The Watcher got to his feet to take his turn at guarding. He passed the two elves as they came into the light. Nadier gave a nod while Adelaide replied to his smile of a greeting with a stuck out tongue. He took one last look back as the pair sat down beside the fire to warm up. Pulling his coat closer together to brace the cold, he headed to the lookout tree.

Adelaide chose the tree. The vines were the thickest amongst all of their surroundings, criss-crossing in hatches and curves. It was also the tallest tree of the nearby bunch, giving them a clean view up to the gates of Everwind and across the plains to the east and back down south. The long views were only possible using Light's control over the view of the continent to their advantage. Though if they had made that much leeway with the bent light, The Watcher could only shudder to think how much asset Light had pulled with it over the decades. With a sigh, he began his slow climb up the snow littered trunk.

He took each step with a grunt. Though his body was young, he could feel age seeping into his mentality. He wanted to sit down by a warm fireplace with a cup of hot chocolate and a book while shouting at all the kids that trespassed onto his lawn.

Are there hot chocolates on Tearha? He was surprised at how the question came about.

He had not actually thought about it. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he always imagined that after the whole affair with the portals had been dealt with, he would return back to his universe and do what he always did. Travel back and forth in time, overseeing the universe as it progressed from one calamity to the next. But the thought occurred to him that as long as he did not travel backwards in time again, he would be free from his chronic bonds on Tearha. There would be no need to worry about stepping on any other butterflies. His timeline would once again be straight. He could live normally.

Honestly, I don't know what it is about you people that make you act like this.

Miguel's words rang in his mind, even as he found a comfortable nook within the thick branches of the tree to lie into. The statement echoed deep into his thoughts.

...you people...

He contemplated the idea of a farm in a countryside. He'd spend the rest of his days toiling away in the field. And one day, maybe, when he was finally ready to go, he would pass away on his porch in a rocking chair, a nice book in his lap and a hot cup of chocolate by his side. One day, he would gain enough control over his powers to shut off the instinctual survival mechanism that saved him every time he was close to death and healed him of his every fatal injury. The instincts that made him immortal.

Kathleen's voice rang out in his head. “Look.”

He turned to the plains of Eltar. The two giant golems marched across the land as they had been doing for the earlier part of the day. However, behind them, breaking out from the edge of south Valendra Forest was a trail of dust unmistakable as the kickbacks from horses galloping. The Titan Rangers were on the move. By his estimate, just an hour after dawn their mission would begin.