Title: Every crumb a blessing
Fandom: original
Rating: G
Length: 500 words
Notes: Time travel. Influenced by (but unrelated to) Sisyphus: The Myth. Title adapted from a line in All the Light You Cannot See. Follows on from Not this time (the last two parts), but hopefully sort of stands alone too. Much thanks to mergatrude for beta! <3 No archive warnings.
Summary: Elgin’s first hour in the past is dizzying.


Elgin’s first hour in the past is dizzying.

First there is a meal. Freddie says Elgin should only eat plain food to start with, and not too much, but what she gives them consumes their senses — chewy, sweet, tangy, the tastes vivid, chiming and building like instruments in an old symphony. Elgin’s head goes light with wonder, each mouthful sparking some new feeling. The gnawing hunger finally quiets, though the appetite persists. Is this satiation? Greed? How could a world so bright and complex come to be destroyed?

The water is fresh, too, clear and magical.

After the meal, there are introductions: stout, intimidating Sooz with their deep voice and piercing gaze; a dozen others absorbed in the clatter and sizzle of their work, all brisk and busy, blurring together. Freddie is understanding. “I’ll tell you their names again later, when things have calmed down.”

The travellers working in the kitchen are Ormsby and Larkin. Elgin vaguely recognises Larkin, though he’s much older now and seems more interested in the pile of greens he’s washing than greetings. Ormsby is younger, unfamiliar, absorbed in slicing small red fruit, but when Freddie says, “This is Elgin,” and Elgin says an awkward “Hi,” her mouth falls open and her metal knife drops to the counter with a clang.

“Elgin? Really?” She sounds astonished.

Elgin flushes. “Why?”

“I can’t believe you’re here. Wait.” She darts through the noisy maze of workers and shining benches to a locker near the door and comes back with a thin sheaf of worn, folded scraps of paper. “These are yours.”

There’s four or five of them, different thicknesses. One is water-stained and crinkled, a couple fuzzed at the creases. Elgin’s never seen them before in their life. Ormsby sorts through for a thin pink one, then holds the sheaf out with the pink one on top. “Some of the other travellers I’ve met gave them to me to collect and keep safe for your arrival. This one on top is the one I brought with me.”

Elgin’s fingers buzz when they take the papers. The pink one is the label from a tin of pears. They unfold it, read the back, and the buzz spreads to their shoulders, their neck, their scalp. Down their spine.

Elgin, there’s some kind of hard boundary. Every time I try to go back to find you, the machine blows a fuse or overheats or just shuts down. It’s only me, and I don’t know why, but until we fix it — if I’m not there by the time you get this — I can’t reach you. Please be okay. Grey

The words blur. The delicious food in Elgin’s stomach heaves.

Freddie must be watching closely. She grabs Elgin’s arm — “Hold it in. This way.” — and rushes them into a small room crammed with mops and buckets and sharp smells. She thrusts a bowl into Elgin’s arms. “If you’re going to throw up—”

Elgin does, painfully, bitterly, Grey’s notes still crumpled in their hand.