Chapter Text
Mana saturated the air—it smelled like burnt cream and soured fruit—as a rift tore through the veil of reality within the Central Solarium of the Time Balance Department. Timekeeper Cookie’s eyecings widened—slightly—in shock, but she gave no other reaction.
A few pocket‑watch‑shaped stars drifted lazily overhead, ticking out of sync.
Ugh.
She was really starting to think the multiverse needed an HR department.
She was so done with today, this week, this entire cosmic century.
Her desk in the corner was buried under half‑finished reports and glowing hourglasses.
Annoying. Just plain annoying.
A nearby chrono‑meter sparked pitifully, flashing ERROR in five different centuries.
She imagined a cosmic HR rep materializing with a clipboard and a migraine.
The Solarium’s bulletin board still had last millennium’s safety poster pinned crookedly.
This was the seventh time this month—at this point she needed a punch card; one more and she should get a free coffee—she’d had to deal with a Shadow Milk Cookie variant. Variant #43 had tried to duel her with a spoon. She still didn’t know why. The spoon in question still lay on the floor, humming faintly with misplaced bravado. What made it worse was that the Shadow Milk Cookie in front of her was the original.
And she was not allowed to erase him from existence.
Rules, rules, rules! The universe had too many of them, and none were fun.
Honestly, what was even the point of having cosmic power if she couldn’t use it responsibly irresponsibly?
So annoying…
Timekeeper Cookie did not want to fight him—she had fought far too many of his variants already—nor did she feel like having a tea party like some of them insisted on.
She sighed before remembering a little gift she’d been given a while back—she just couldn’t recall who gave it to her—and smiled mischievously. She had the perfect plan. With a flick of her wrist, the object appeared in her hand. It looked like one of those classic smoke bombs with a wick, except this one was pure white and had no wick at all. She gave it a cautious shake, just to make sure it wouldn’t explode prematurely. It fizzled ominously.
Timekeeper Cookie hummed to herself as she watched Shadow Milk Cookie ascend into her domain. A lantern orb drifted past, flickering nervously as if sensing incoming chaos. Now that she thought about it, he had made the rudest, most aggressive entrance of all his variants. At least variant number 62 had used a door—even if she had no idea how he opened a door that shouldn’t have existed. She still wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or concerned that he’d found a door that wasn’t real.
Once Shadow Milk Cookie reached eye level, he opened his mouth to speak, but Timekeeper Cookie simply did not want to deal with him today. She channeled mana into the smoke‑bomb‑like object and chucked it at his face. The silly Beast tried to dodge, but the object—whose function she couldn’t even be bothered to remember—exploded in his face. Bright pink iridescent smoke filled the air.
She hovered there like a cosmic emoji of denial.
A heap of confiscated relics sat in the corner—cursed teacups, paradox stones, and one very angry rubber duck.
Yep. Totally fine. Nothing concerning about mystery pink smoke at all.
She floated away from the spreading smoke—she did not want to find out what it did, especially since she didn’t remember its function. Once the smoke cleared, she drifted closer.
Huh?
Did she accidentally disintegrate him? All that remained was a pile of his clothes.
Great. Laundry. Exactly what she wanted today. The Solarium’s trash bin burped out a puff of stardust, rejecting something she’d tossed in earlier.
She turned away, already bracing for another lecture, but the consequences shouldn’t be too bad.
Right?
But just as she started floating away, a piercing wail echoed through her solarium. She spun so fast she thought she might give herself whiplash. Beneath the pile of clothes, something wriggled. Timekeeper’s heart pounded as she approached. God, she hoped she had turned him into an animal and not what she suspected.
She hesitated. Maybe if she didn’t look, the problem wouldn’t exist.
Pulling back the clothes confirmed her fear.
Please be a cat. Or a lizard. Or literally anything that didn’t require diapers.
Yep. That was definitely a baby.
Nope.
Nope.
Nope!
She was filing a complaint with… someone. Anyone. The universe? Herself?
She was not—definitely not—dealing with a baby. This was not in her pay grade.
She could bend time, but babies? Absolutely not. Hard pass.
“I am so getting written up for this,” she muttered, even though she didn’t technically have anyone who could write her up.
She needed to do something with him, and the first thing she did was put him to sleep with a snap of her fingers. Then she paced across her solarium, trying to think of a solution.
She snapped her fingers as an idea struck her.
With a wave of her hand, a portal opened and she started rummaging through it. Once she found what she was looking for, she pulled out a basket with a few items inside. Sure, everything in the basket was stolen from a different timeline—in her defense, those timelines weren’t using the stuff correctly anyway—but it wasn’t like anyone would know it was her doing—or where the items went.
She sat down on the floor in front of the baby Shadow Milk Cookie and set the basket to her left. Without wasting a single second, she pulled out a light blue waffle blanket that she knew—through observation—was typically used to swaddle newborn cookies. With the clumsiness of someone who had never handled a baby nor wrapped one in a blanket, she began to swaddle him. The blanket slipped twice, and the sleeping baby made a noise that sounded suspiciously like judgment. After she was satisfied with how secure the baby was—it was a little wonky, but she tried her best—
Look, she manipulated time, not blankets.
She pulled a white notepad and pen from the basket before setting him inside it.
With quick, half‑fast movements, she wrote a note on the pad, tore it out, and placed it on the baby.
Timekeeper Cookie stood up and cast a floating spell on the basket so it would follow behind her—it bobbed after her like a very confused duckling. It bumped into her heel as if offended by its new babysitting assignment. She crossed to the farthest corner of the Central Solarium—basket in tow—approaching a gold door whose panels were bordered by intricate filmstrip designs. The door knob was silver, with tiny gold scissors and crop marks trailing behind them. A small plaque above the knob read: Authorized Personnel Only. Violators Will Be Temporally Rearranged. Timekeeper Cookie reached out and twisted the knob.
The door opened without any resistance. The room had no floor and no ceiling; it was an endless expanse of soft golden light that shimmered like a thousand suns caught in a slow‑motion sunrise. However, that wasn’t all that filled the space. Hundreds of thousands of sprockets whizzed and sped around—some twisting, others moving in zigzag patterns. Some had filmstrips unraveling behind them as they moved, while others were tightly coiled. Each of them was a different color, with some having smaller sprockets trailing behind in lighter or darker shades of the same hue.
Each sprocket was a universe, and each of the smaller sprockets trailing behind it was a timeline branching off from that universe. The darker the color, the more dangerous the timeline or universe. The lighter the color, the safer it was.
Timekeeper Cookie placed two fingers in her mouth and blew hard, creating a loud whistle that brought every sprocket in the endless room to a complete halt.
Good. At least something listened to her today.
She pulled out her bigger scissors and hopped onto them. She rode them into the room—with the infant Shadow Milk Cookie right behind—like one would ride a magic broom, examining each of the universes. The nearest sprockets dimmed politely as she passed, like they were bowing in greeting.
“No,” she said, flicking a dark red universe into a corner.
“Definitely not,” she muttered as she flicked a black universe deeper into the endless room.
“Almost, but not quite.” Timekeeper Cookie simply waved the light green universe away.
It took about an hour—miraculously, baby Shadow Milk Cookie was still asleep—before a chlorine‑blue universe caught her attention. This universe didn’t have any timelines trailing behind it. In fact, it was practically a newborn universe. She hummed as she reached out to feel the energy and vibe of it. For the most part, it was pretty calm. Of course, like most universes, it had its ups and downs—its darker history and its lighter history.
“You there—come closer,” Timekeeper Cookie said as she motioned with her finger for the universe to approach.
It drew closer without hesitation. When it was close enough, she tapped its golden sprocket with a long sunburst‑alloy nail—vivid sunrise orange with reflective gold flecks. With that single tap, and the intricate intent that it would be placed somewhere with a person capable of caring for a baby, she opened the universe.
She turned around and adjusted the floating spell on the basket before gently pushing it through the portal. Once the basket was safely through and floating its merry way toward its destination, she closed the portal and left the endless room with the full intention of completely forgetting any of this had ever happened.
However, because of this, she did not realize she had made a slight miscalculation. She had not secured the note with a spell, nor had she tucked it under Shadow Milk Cookie or even into his swaddle. So as he gently floated down onto a doorstep, the wind caught the note and carried it away, never to be seen again—Future‑Her was absolutely going to hate Present‑Her for this. Somewhere, in some timeline, she was already screaming into a pillow. This very action would cause a great many misunderstandings in the future. Whether or not this would affect her later was yet to be seen.