A Stroke of Time
Ira set her travel bag on a crooked wooden table, dust drifting in a late-afternoon sunbeam. Her current stop was the village of Calendor—another hidden pocket in the tapestry of timelines. A hush blanketed the cottage’s main room, where she’d been summoned as a healer to treat a child’s fractured sense of self.
Outside, the fields gleamed a hazy gold, but Ira’s attention rested on the battered $TIME watch buckled around her left wrist. Each subtle vibration reminded her of the centuries she’d jumped through, the moments she’d tampered with as a Time Keeper, and the cost of meddling with fate. Yet she was no typical traveler—she specialized in an art she called “Color Healing,” blending time-infused paint with the intangible wounds that battered hearts and minds.
The child’s mother, eyes brimming with worry, led Ira to a small bedroom. A timid boy, perhaps ten, lay listlessly on a straw-stuffed mattress. He stared through the window as though something precious had slipped from his grasp. Ira removed a slim wooden case from her bag, flicking open the clasp. Inside were glass phials of color: sapphire, moonlight gray, dawn gold—each swirling with ghostly luminescence. Her late mentor, Taron, once taught her how to harness the resonance of these pigments with the energies locked in each era. Taron was gone now, lost in a catastrophic jump that left Ira with both heartbreak and guilt. She held onto his final words in her memory as if they could guide her: “I love you.”
She knelt at the boy’s side, setting a small canvas stand near his pillow. Then, gently, she uncorked the swirling gold paint. Its glow reminded her of dawn on an ancient field where Taron had once mended an entire plague-stricken village. Ira’s own tears threatened to blur her vision, but she swallowed the grief.
Hovering her watch above the paint jar, she activated a subtle pulse. The watch beeped softly—an infusion of $TIME tokens bridging the color’s power and the boy’s wounded spirit. Magical realism had always been Ira’s domain: each stroke of her brush connected past moments of hope to a current wound. She dipped her brush into the luminous gold.
“You’ll see shapes,” she murmured to the boy, her voice quiet. “Let them guide you.”
With light, sure strokes, Ira painted a simple swirl on a thin parchment balanced on the canvas stand. Each swirl triggered a faint ripple in the air, as though time itself parted for a moment. The boy gasped. He could see something—perhaps not the swirl alone, but a glint of memory or solace.
In Ira’s mind, the swirl evoked Taron’s bright laughter during a simpler mission, back before the war with the Coalition of Nine demanded riskier leaps. She pushed aside that pang of regret.
Next, she blended a streak of moonlight gray into the gold, forging a gentle gradient. The room flickered with half-formed illusions: a calm sea, a warm campfire, fleeting echoes of serenity. The child’s eyes followed the shapes with pure wonder, a spark of life returning to his face.
Ira closed her eyes, painting carefully, coaxing the illusions to show him hidden strengths. She had once believed Taron’s death meant the end of her own leaps across centuries. But healing others let her honor his legacy.
At last, with a quiet exhale, she set the brush aside. The swirl glowed on the parchment, shimmering with possibility. The boy blinked, tears dampening his lashes. He breathed more steadily now, no longer trapped in silent pain. The mother inched forward, gratitude pressing at her lips in a silent prayer.
Ira began to pack up, each paint phial nestled in velvet. The watch hummed—time recalibrating itself post-intervention. Her longing for Taron flared once more, the memory of his final leap. She whispered the words she should have said then: “I love you.” Not to him, for he wasn’t here to hear it, but to the fleeting hush of the moment, to the timeline that allowed her to help.
The child’s mother embraced her. Outside, the sun lowered into a horizon brushed with color. Ira stepped into that light, the worn strap of her $TIME watch secure on her wrist, fresh purpose guiding her steps. Each footfall carried her deeper into the infinite tapestry of possible futures—one brushstroke of color, one act of healing at a time.
Micro stories are a content feature offered by $TIME's dev Woj. Handwritten and accompanied by art, they serve to deepen the story world we're creating here. Enjoy!
