Their daughter lay in a hospital birthing bed, grunting with effort. Her husband, a man neither of them had even met, clung to her side, clutching her hand and breathing in time with her.

                They did nothing at first, simply watched and waited – it played in real time – it seemed extraordinarily fast and slow to him at the same time. He asked her if she noticed any difference, but she said nothing, so enraptured as she was watching her granddaughter come into the world.

                The birth happened exactly how he remembered it, indeed, there was no way for it to happen any differently – the same landscape is always there – it was simply a matter of how one transverses it –and now he was walking over the seconds and minutes with her at his side, but she paid almost no attention to him.

                When the baby finally emerged from their daughter, she came wailing into the cold world, covered with blood and birthwater. Her cubby face was pressed flat from the crushing tightness of the birth canal, the way that all babies are and he’d seen this moment a billion times while waiting for her so there were no surprises for him. But for her – this was the first time.

                When their daughter stopped moving and the machines began to wail in time with the wailing of his granddaughter, he was ready for it. But he saw from the fear plastered over her face that told him she didn’t understand, and now his error in bringing her to this moment, from protecting her from herself the way he did – that mistake was fully revealed to him.

                Slowly, the moment dawned on her and he allowed her to open up slightly, to see the timeline of this moment, backwards and forwards, all the buildup to it and the aftermath. He guided her senses inside their daughter, showed her the blood clot and how it traveled inside her veins to her heart, let her feel the organ gasping for oxygen and failing, let her see it slow and finally stop, exhausted with nothing left to keep it beating.

                And then she surprised him – she tried to change it – he felt her send herself out to cup tender organ, kneading it with her thoughts, encouraging it much the way she encouraged the flowers to grow quickly and bloom into beautiful yellow and red blossoms.

                Of course, he knew this would do nothing – he’d tried himself, once upon a time – and it wasn’t that they couldn’t change things – it was that by time he learned that he could, he’d also learned why he shouldn’t. Slowly he felt her mind, seeking for those realizations, and he knew two things: she didn’t know how to change things like this, but also, she didn’t know why she shouldn’t change things, and so, instead of explaining all this to her, taking millions of years and allowing her to come to the same realizations he had, he made his second mistake – he let her try even though he knew she would fail.

                He released his hold on her and she tried, fruitlessly to bring the failed organ back to life. But she wasn’t able to do it. Their daughter was dead in that moment, though she would always be alive a few moments before.

She fell to the floor. He saw the look on her face and instantly they were on the edge of the precipice, looking down into the black fog of the despair. She’d moved them there – he’d done nothing.

                They stood on the edge for what felt like hours – he held back, the despair scared him even more because he knew someday they would be forced into it and he didn’t want to go there but understood that if he held her back anymore she would force him to follow her in at that very moment. Instead he slowly stopped shielding her mind and let her see everything for what it was.

                As soon as he moved back from her, her body exploded into trillions of atoms – without him she was unable to support corporality any longer. Her mind flew out as well, expanding in all directions just as his had done billions of years before, when he’d first transitioned. He watched it happen but did nothing, indeed, he didn’t know what to do – he knew every moment that was, but didn’t know this one – time streams extended in all directions – the ribbon he walked was separate from everything else. He knew now he shouldn’t have protected her – he should have just waited and let her find, as he had himself found.

                Instead, he returned to the cabin and waited.