Elenore shut off the lawn mower and looked behind her. After five complete attempts, the grass had finally been cut down to a manageable level. Part of her was a bit annoyed at how long it had taken, but she knew it would also take at least five grow-cycles before the grass needed cutting again.
She parked the mower and headed to the house, but stopped when she noticed the pile of fruit beneath her apple tree. Roughly half the apples looked as if they were ready to be eaten, a quarter of them appeared not-yet ripe, and the rest were in various stages of rot. A few of them had even sprouted saplings.
She sighed. She needed to pull the saplings before she could take a break, otherwise they’d grow far too large and be difficult to uproot.
The task took twenty minutes relative-time.
While halfway through throwing apples in the composter, a time-tremor rocked the tree’s base and many of the ripe fruit instantly rotted, while some began sprouting, and still others reverted back to being tiny white flowers. She sighed again. She still had a bit more work to do.
Once she carefully ensured she’d rid the lawn of all apples, pre-apples, and post-apples, she quickly made her way back into the dome-shaped shelter made of a silver-tinged glass-like material. It had no doors, and in fact its surface felt quite like that of a thick sheet of jelly, but once she passed through it and the dome resealed itself, she could immediately feel the difference in her body. The slightly sickening sensation of her metabolic functions swaying forward and backward on waves of time disappeared. She took a long, deep breath of relief as her body, her organs, her cells, and her DNA once again all moved forward through time in a constant, linear motion. The dome wasn’t immune to time-quakes, but it helped smooth things out quite a bit.
She filled a cup with water and gulped it down while staring out at the lawn. The grass was bathed in a bright light, though as the neighboring black hole wobbled, time-tremors caused this light to fluctuate slightly.
She frowned when she noticed a patch of grass a few inches across beginning to outgrow its neighbors… Clearly she’d missed that patch during a few of the passes with her mower. She’d have to go back out and rectify the mistake, but decided it’d be best to wait until the tremors passed.
As Elenore stared out at the lawn, Elenore trudged into the kitchen.
“Ah, it looks like the time quakes are going to be bad today.” Elenore said upon seeing her temporal shadow from the future. “Did I get to the lawn today?” She asked as she groggily reached for the coffee maker.
Elenore nodded to her temporal shadow from the past. “I did.”
Elenore sighed. “I guess it’s good to know I’ll stop putting that off. I’ve been procrastinating long enough.”
“You’ll miss a patch out there by the shed.” Elenore said passively. “I’ll hafta get back out there in a bit and fix that.”
“Eh, it’s hard cutting a lawn with grass that’s not actually grown yet. I’m surprised I’ll only miss a single section.”
Elenore said something in response, but the tremors began to die away and she phased out of the current timeline and returned to her own.
Elenore, coffee in hand, stared out at the lawn. The recent tremors made the grass look disheveled and patchy. She sipped her drink and stretched. During the slip-stream she forgot to ask her future shadow how many times it had taken to mow… She hoped it was less than three.