Chapter Text
People often debate the structure of time. Is it a linear path? A continuous loop? Or a finite organic shape? Something undefinable by mere words?
In our case, we will define time, though it be an undefinable concept, as a strand. Rather than being one line, with infinite details and occurrences, it is a braid of multiple different “timelines.” Parallel realities. The first split in the strand was formed when the first person made the first choice. Or when, as you may know him, He Who Remains wrote the first sentence in the script of our lives.
He molded time into three parallel strands, preventing war and famine from occurring. For a while, humanity followed this set path, and anyone who dared to defy the Conqueror’s words would be pruned like a wilted bud on a mulberry tree.
Then, the God of Stories, Endings, and Beginnings liberated us, taking the burden of the chaos caused by free will from our shoulders. He allowed us to do as we pleased, unburdened by the complexities and intricacies of the multiverse.
And with the weight taken off of its broken wings, an angel took flight.
...
Small, soft, blood-stained fingers grasped a much larger one, squeezing with what little might they had. The figure behind the closed eyelids chuckled, sending vibrations through the little person’s body. The mother cooed at her child, smiling at the weak grasp they had on each other, after her own hours of labor and the child’s months in the womb. She pressed the child to her bare chest, feeling its tiny pulse strong against her beating heart.
A nurse walked into the room, also grinning at the warm sight, and fondled the baby gently from its mother. She smiled, promising to be back in a moment.
She didn’t know just how wrong she was.