Next story: LCAT Fragments of Time: A Day in the Life p1“Hmm” Cassie mumbled as she paused in thought in front of Akita’s lab. The latter wasn’t in since she and Bridget had gone out for some fun together and Lavini was of course preparing for the morning mass. Regardless, the nun breathed out as she stepped inside for a specific purpose: Edwin Thamos. The machine had been working non-stop for several days, regressing him, altering his gender and preparing him, or more appropriately her, for her new life, which was going to start today.“Right… Akita explained this to me at least seven times…” Cassie mused to herself as she tabbed on the screen attached to the machine. There were several options and sliders here and there but Akita had already taken care of most of the settings. All Cassie had to do at this point was to end the process and then open the machine.She and Lavini had agreed to start taking care of Edwin, or Estella as she was now called. It was… strange to think for the nun that she was going to be a mother starting today. And together with the woman she loved no less! But they had talked about it at great length and in the end, they both accepted that they would be doing this, even if it did take her some convincing.As Cassie opened up the pod, she saw that her new baby was still sleeping soundly. Sure enough, Edwin had become a healthy baby girl now. Interestingly enough, since Edwin was still wearing his clothes when he entered the machine, they too appeared to have regressed as there were a bunch of spools of thread surrounding the baby.“Well, Estella,” Cassie whispered as she carefully picked up the baby, who began stirring in its sleep, “welcome to your new life.”Day 1“Oh dear, she’s got quite a strong grip,” Lavini chuckled. She was holding baby Estella in her arms, who was eagerly grabbing at Lavini’s long hair.“I had hoped that him turning female would have mellowed him out a little,” Cassie chuckled as she opened Estella’s hand again, freeing Lavini’s hair.“Ah, something tells me that something as trivial as gender is not going to stop our little Estella from turning into quite the rabble rouser,” Lavini said.Cassie’s eye twitched just slightly. “I see,” she murmured.“Come now, Cassie. We have both agreed to this. We are Estella’s mothers now. Whoever she turns out to be, it is our duty to shower her with our love,” Lavini said.Cassie looked to the ground in thought. “You… are correct, as always,” she said.Lavini looked her lover deep in the eyes. “Do you know why I went against mister Thamos’ wishes and asked Akita to turn him into a baby regardless?” she asked.Cassie shook her head. “I thought Akita had her reasons for that. I didn’t know you had made the request…”“Oh, Akita’s reasons certainly played a decent part in all of this but she could have made it work without having to turn him into a baby. No, there was an even bigger and more important reason that I felt would not quite fly by mister Thamos,” Lavini explained.“And that is…” Cassie asked.“Love, Cassie dear. How can we hope to accept Estella as our daughter if she just appeared as a fully fledged person before us one day. This way, we get to see her grow up under our wings, and truly feel as if she is our daughter,” Lavini answered.“Wow… you really thought of everything, huh,” Cassie said, a smile forming on her face again.“I do try,” Lavini chuckled just as little Estella had managed to grab some of Lavini’s hair again, gripping it tightly and pulling hard. “Ouch!”Cassie burst out laughing. “Maybe you’re right about this little rabble rouser after all,” she said.Day 2“You know, I’ve been curious, Lavini,” Akita pondered out loud. “After everything that happened with your own uh… ‘mother’... why did you accept becoming Estella’s mother?”“A good question. One that I honestly do not really have the answer to. Perhaps there is a part of me that simply does not want any child to have to go through what I went through…” Lavini mused.“Hmm… I mean, I guess I understand that. Just… don’t overdo it, Gigabyte,” Akita said.Lavini smiled. “I appreciate your concerns, Akita dear,” she said.“Estella, wait!” Cassie gasped, quickly chasing the little toddler that was now crawling around on the ground and quite fast too! She sped into the hallway and looked ready to explore the place until she spotted Lavini and Akita.“Mama?” Estella said, pointing to Lavini.This caused both Lavini and Akita to gasp in surprise. Little Estella had spoken her first word again since the de-aging process!When Cassie finally joined them in the hallway to pick up the little speed demon, she eyed both women with confusion. “What?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.“Mama!” Estella repeated, this time grabbing a hold of Cassie’s clothes.Cassie’s eyes went wide. “Did… did you hear that?” she asked.Akita nodded and turned to Lavini, who had to wipe some tears of sand out of her eyes.“I did,” she said.Day 3“Oh wow, she’s already on her feet!” Bridget cheered as she entered the room Lavini and Cassie shared. Little Estella was clumsily walking between her two mothers while imitating the various ticking noises coming from all around her.“Oh yes, she’s been making quite some progress,” Cassie smiled.“And she’s got pink hair, just like you, Lavini,” Bridget commented.“Indeed. I imagine Akita had some fun with that,” Lavini chuckled before leaning down to Estella’s height. “Estella dear, can you try and move over to your aunt Bridget?”“Aunt Bwidget! Aunt Bwidget!” Estella cheered excitedly, running over to the clockwork woman standing in the door opening and hugging the latter’s leg.“Whoah! You’re a feisty one,” Bridget laughed.“And a fast learner too!” Cassie cheered proudly. As hesitant as she had been about all of this before, she was actually looking like a proud mother now.“‘Aunt’ Bridget though?” Bridget asked.“Well, we are sisters of time, are we not? That means you and Akita are Estella’s aunts,” Lavini grinned as the little toddler finally let go of Bridget’s leg again.“Clock?” Estella asked.“Ah… yes, I guess you can say I am a sort of clock,” Bridget answered with a gentle smile.“Tick tock!” Estella cheered.“We’ve started teaching her about time. The basics at least,” Cassie said proudly.“So far, she has just enjoyed shouting ‘tick tock’ at everything,” Lavini chuckled.“Heh, well, you have to start somewhere, right?” Bridget laughed. “In any case, I came to tell you that it’ll be ready first thing tomorrow.”“Ah! Exquisite! I am certain little Estella will be overjoyed,” Lavini said.All the little girl could do was look around herself, very much confused.Day 4“Ta da!” Akita and Bridget cheered as they opened the door to the room that had been off-limits to Estella up until this point.“Go on, my little grain of sand. Head on in,” Lavini said softly behind her.“My… room?” Estella gasped. Carefully, she walked inside and her eyes went wide at what she saw. Her very own bed, currently occupied by her plushies. Her very own closet filled with her clothes and some toys. Of course there was her very own clock, hanging from the wall. This was her room now.“Do you like it?” Cassie asked as she joined her daughter.“I love it!” Estella cheered excitedly, now storming around the room to explore every single nook and cranny. She was able to discover at least two more clocks here and there and some kind of device placed here by Akita.“What is this, aunty Akita?” Estella asked curiously.Akita, who was momentarily taken by surprise at being called ‘aunty’, got a huge grin on her face. “Well, Gigabyte, you can play some games on this thing!” she cheered excitedly.“Games?! I like games!” Estella cheered.“Well, turn it on and see for yourself then,” Akita smiled.Eagerly, Estella clicked the ‘on’ switch, causing the screen to come to life and instantly starting a relatively simple game where the player had to catch falling apples from a tree by running around back and forth. It was a simple game, but Estella instantly loved it.“Where do you even find the time to make all of these devices, Akita dear?” Lavini asked.“Well… since my transformation, I’ve gotten very good at multitasking alright,” Akita laughed.“But she’s been working a little bit too hard, so I’m forcing her to take some time off,” Bridget grinned.“Right, right, I know,” Akita said apologetically.Day 5“Mom! Mom! Mooooom! Mother! Mother! Wake up!” Estella shouted.“It’s much too early, Estella,” Cassie groaned while Lavini began rubbing the sleep from her eyes.“But you promised!” Estella shouted.“She is right, you know,” Lavini chuckled softly as she sat up.“But it’s only 5 in the morning…” Cassie sighed.“But moooooom,” Estella whined, puffing up her cheeks at the nun.“Oh… oh alright, I’m getting up already,” Cassie yammered. She really couldn’t say no to her little daughter anymore. Perhaps Lavini was right in turning Estella into an infant first after all, for she truly had come to love Estella as her own daughter.“Yay!” Estella cheered and she began hopping around the room.“Hmm, are you sure our daughter here is a human, or a kangaroo?” Lavini joked.“Hey!” Estella gasped, sounding quite offended.---------------------------“I thank you all for coming to the church once again this morning,” Lavini called out to stifle the last of the noises coming from the many church goers. When it was fully silent, Lavini began morning mass as she usually did.“This is what your mother does, Estella,” Cassie whispered to the young girl, who looked absolutely enthralled. At least as far as she could remember, she had never seen this many people together, and they were all listening to her very own mother!“And you help her, Mommy?” the girl asked softly.“Yes, I do. I help your aunts Akita and Bridget as well when they hold mass like this,” Cassie replied.“They do this too?” Estella asked.“Of course. We are a church, after all,” Cassie smiled.“Wow…” Estella mused.Cassie couldn’t be happier. Their little girl was showing interest in the church’s business.Day 6“You took a big risk there, Gigabyte, taking Estella up into the main church…” Akita said rather sternly.“I know, Akita dear, but we cannot possibly keep Estella hidden from view until she is fully done growing. She will want to see the outside, especially when she gets to be a rebellious teenager,” Lavini said.“People are going to be asking questions, and will want to know who Estella is and where she came from. They’ll see a small pink haired girl now and a fully grown pink haired woman in 12 days. They’re going to talk,” Akita argued.“But they cannot possibly put a link between Estella and… him,” Lavini responded softly.“Maybe not now but he is not going to be around forever,” Akita said.“Why yes, I am well aware of this. I just do not wish to keep Estella cooped up inside for so long,” Lavini said.“And I don’t want all of our precautions to have been for nothing,” Akita sighed.Lavini fell silent for a moment, contemplating her next words. “I understand your points, I really do. We just cannot imprison my daughter like that…” she said.“And I understand your points, Gigabyte, but this is for her own good too. The moment people put the link between her and Thamos, it’s over, and she’ll know the truth,” Akita said.“Yes, I know… perhaps there is some kind of middle ground that we can reach,” Lavini pondered.“At the very least, I feel like you should think about telling her the truth sooner rather than later, so that she also knows why we have to be careful,” Akita argued.“Tell her the truth? But that is exactly what we cannot do!” Lavini gasped.“Not the whole truth. Just parts of it. That she is growing at an accelerated rate, that she used to be someone else but has now been adopted by you. The only thing you can’t tell her is WHO she was,” Akita said.“I… but…” Lavini stammered.“Sorry to bring it up again… but think back to how you felt when you suddenly learnt the truth about your ‘mother’ after years of lies…” Akita said, a bit hesitant now.Lavini was about to retort but she halted. Instead, she felt a strange chuckle coming up. “When did you get so wise?” she asked.“I learned it from the best,” Akita said, chuckling as well before leaning in for a hug.Day 7“What could they mean…” Bridget mused to herself. Once again, she had sat herself at a table in the living room quarters below the church, surrounded by stacks of paper. On one of their trips to the ancient church of time, she had decided to try and write down all of the strange symbols that they had found on the walls. At least, the ones she could find. It had intrigued her ever since they first inspected the church. However, she hadn’t made any sort of progress whatsoever. She had visited the academy, various libraries, and several linguists but she still came up empty-handed.Suddenly, the clockwork woman felt two hands on her shoulders from out of nowhere.“BOO!”“AAAH!” Bridget gasped, shooting up and quickly turning around, only to find Estella rolling on the floor laughing.“Estella!” Bridget snapped.“Got you!” the girl laughed.Bridget just sighed and sat back down. “You’re becoming quite the prankster, you know. You nearly gave me a heart attack,” she said, though she started to chuckle as well now herself.“Do you have a heart?” Estella asked curiously, finally calming down again from her laughing fit.“What? Well, of course I do. Mine is just made of clockwork, and instead of beating like yours, it ticks like the clocks around the church,” Bridget explained.“Ooooooh… that’s cool!” Estella cheered.“Thanks,” Bridget grinned.“What’cha doing anyway, aunt Bridget?” the girl asked.“Well, I’m trying to decipher these old symbols we found in the ancient church of time, but it’s really difficult. I can’t make sense of any of it,” Bridget explained.“Is it like a puzzle?” Estella asked.“Hmm, I guess you can think of it as a puzzle,” Bridget mused.Estella, who had grown considerably in the past week, peeked over Bridget’s shoulder curiously.“You see these five symbols? These appeared the most often so they must be significant in some way, but how? I don’t know…” Bridget explained.Estella stared intently at the five symbols. “That one symbol looks kinda like the grandfather clock in my room,” she remarked.“Your… grandfather clock?” Bridget repeated, giving that fourth symbol some extra attention again.“Otherwise, I have no clue. Sorry, aunt Bridget…”“That is okay, Estella. Every little bit helps,” Bridget said.“Anywho, I’m gonna go ‘say hi’ to aunt Akita!” Estella said with a wink and then stormed off again, before Bridget could protest against it.Estella was right, that fourth symbol did look a little bit like a grandfather clock. But why a grandfather clock in particular? What did grandfather clocks have that other clocks didn’t? “Could it be referring to… a pendulum?”Her thoughts were interrupted though by Akita’s loud scream coming from the direction of her lab, followed by more of Estella’s laughter.“That little troublemaker…” Bridget laughed.Day 8“Estella… it is time we told you something,” Cassie said rather seriously.“You are now old enough to understand it,” Lavini added.Estella looked between both of her mothers. She had never seen them looking this serious before. “Are… you going to tell me I’m adopted?”Cassie raised an eyebrow and exchanged a glance with lavini “How…”“I mean, duh! That was obvious. Storks only bring babies to a man and a woman couple, right?” Estella laughed. “Kinda seems unfair though…”“She does make a good point,” Lavini chuckled, even if the whole stork story wasn’t quite correct.“Hmm, alright, fine, but that is not the whole story,” Cassie said.“It’s not? Then… what is it?” Estella asked.Both of Estella’s mothers thought about their next words for a moment, each glancing at the other to wonder who was going to start first, and how. Eventually, it was Lavini who took the initiative.“Some time ago, a person approached us with a request. A peculiar request perhaps, but one that we were willing to grant,” she started.“What… did this person want?” Estella asked.“They wanted to begin a new life… from scratch. They wanted a clean slate without being burdened by any of their past memories and decisions that they had made,” Cassie continued.“What do you mean ‘begin a new life’?” Estella wondered.“They wanted for us to turn back their inner clock and regress them back down to regain their youth,” Cassie answered.“And this person… was you, Estella dear,” Lavini said.Estella fell silent in disbelief. She used to be someone else? And she forgot all about it?! She sat back on the couch in the living room, just staring ahead of herself.“Are you okay, sweety?” Cassie asked softly.“Why… if I wanted to forget… why tell me anyway?” Estella asked.“Because you are our daughter and we do not wish to keep secrets from you. We do not want you to find out about all of this later and then come to be mad at us for not telling you, my little grain of sand. That is why we are telling you this. The only thing we cannot tell you is who you used to be, nor what you were like. Also, it is for this reason that we have been hesitant on letting you go up into the main part of the church, for you are still growing at an accelerated rate,” Lavini explained.Lost in thought, Estella took in these words. She still had so many questions. Who was she really? Why had she decided to start anew? What had she done? What was she like? But none of these words could really come out. Both of her mothers sat themselves on either side of Estella. She could feel Cassie’s arm wrap around her shoulders and she felt Lavini’s glass hand on her knee.“No matter what happens, or what you decide to do with this information, we will still be your mothers,” Lavini said.“We love you, no matter what,” Cassie agreed.Estella just leaned into her mothers as all she could really do at that moment was cry.Day 9“How is she doing?” Akita asked.“Well…” Cassie started.“I’m alright, aunt Akita!” Estella said while she was leaving her room, as cheerful as she had ever been.“You’re not… mad about what you now know?” Akita asked curiously.“She was distraught about it for exactly 1 hour, 13 minutes and 44 seconds,” Cassie chuckled.“I mean, if I apparently wanted to start a new life without old burdens, why burden myself with who I was, right? I’m Estella Providence now!” the girl said excitedly.“Well, look at you, Gigabyte! I Wish I could be that chill about certain things,” Akita chuckled.“We can’t all be Estella,” Cassie laughed. “She truly is one of a kind.”“Anywho, where is Lavini?” Akita asked.“Mother said she had ‘some things to consider’,” Estella said, doing her best to imitate her mother’s voice.Cassie nodded. “Indeed. I am currently more concerned about her than I am Estella here,” she said.“Hmm… I see… Is it about her own uh… parental issues?” Akita asked.“I believe so, yes,” Cassie nodded.“What? Mother has issues with her own parents?” Estella asked.“Ah… I suppose we had yet to tell you that. About Lavini’s own ‘mother’ and why she is doing her very best to do things right by you, Estella,” Cassie said.“Well, I’ll leave you to that then. I’m at least happy you’re doing great, Gigabyte,” Akita grinned.