Cohost writing prompt: @make-up-a-wizard — wizard who is currently in a time loop
“Hi,” the wizard says nervously, wiping sweating hands on her grad-student sigiled robes. “This is going to sound crazy—”
“You’ve just driven all the way up from Dalabrask,” Flipper says boredly. “You’re a high-energy esotericist and your experimental apparatus detected a reading this morning. Your name is Erin, and — sorry, I still don’t know what any of the numbers mean, but Number Go Up is bad. I think the first time you showed up it was, like, forty-seven.”
“Shit,” Erin says, in combination terror-relief. “You’re in the time loop?”
“I’m in the time loop,” Flipper says wearily.
“How many times?” Erin says urgently, and Flipper laughs hollowly.
“I can’t exactly notch a count into anything,” she says. “I lost count. I stopped caring about keeping count. It’s been—” she flaps limply, dismissively. “Years.”
“Years?” Erin squeaks. “No, no, that can’t be right — every repetition, it’s, it’s a distortion in time, it’s like twisting a rubber band—”
She breaks off as she notices Flipper, eyes closed in aggressive boredom, mouthing twisting a rubber band along with her, and miming. Erin glances down at her own, involuntary, twisting gesture, flushes, and doesn’t know what to do with her hands.
“Can you fix this?” Flipper says boredly.
“Uh,” Erin says.
“Can you figure out how to fix this within the duration of the loop?”
”…Signs point to no,” Erin concedes. “I’ve evidently been here before, and — not fixed it.”
“Smart girl,” Flipper says.
“But, look, it’s — it’s bad,” Erin says. “Overstress-the-fabric-of-time, rip-a-hole-in-the-world, collapse-the-universe-to-a-point-mass bad.”
“Yeah, look,” Flipper says boredly. “My brain is clearly ageing, because I remember the loop, even while the rest of me isn’t. So if the universe doesn’t go pop, from everyone else’s point of view I’m just gonna wake up someday, this morning, suddenly a senile vegetable. They’ll think I had an inexplicable stroke or something. Over and over. I can’t fix that, either.”
“Oh,” Erin says, eyes filling with tears. “Oh, shit.” She half-reaches out a shaky hand.
“S’cool,” Flipper says dismissively. “No, seriously, don’t — don’t hug me. I don’t feel like being your no-stakes lesbian awakening today.”
“What,” Erin squeaks.
“Ask me tomorrow,” Flipper says, and cackles to herself, digging out a hip flask.
