It seemed like an eternity but the pain started to fade away as your sight did. You just knew that this was the end and you were dying. Your only regret was not asking Megan to marry you earlier.
You became confused as you felt warmth and then saw light. Suddenly you were pushed out of your warm place and you felt cold. This shocked you and you naturally started to cry. You were wrapped in a blanket and a female voice said, "Congratulations. It's a girl."
You were handed to another female who said, "I'll name her Elizabeth Anne Good."
The first female voice said, "Elizabeth Anne Good. Born this day the sixth of December in the year of our Lord sixteen hundred and five to Sarah Anne Good and William Tabernacle Good."
'Did she say sixteen hundred and five?' you asked yourself. 'Did I get reincarnated four hundred years before I died?'
For several years you lived not knowing why you didn't age as you were suppose to. On January thirteenth, sixteen hundred thirty your sister was born when you were two years old. Your mother named her Dorcas Isabelle Good.
The next memory you have is when you turned five. The year was sixteen hundred sixty. At this point you had been alive for fifty-five years but still you were only five. It was then that your mother explained to you that you were a witch and that as a witch you only age one year for every eleven years. She explained that on a witch's fifth or fifty-fifth birthday their training begins. She cautioned you not to say anything about being a witch to anyone unless you knew them to be a witch too. She then gave you your first wand and your first lessons in magic. You had to practice the spells your mother taught you in secret but and you struggled with them at first. Soon enough though you began to master the simple ones and moved on to the harder ones.
Then sixteen hundred ninety-two came and with it the Salem Witch Trials. You knew about the war by this time and you knew that there were those that wanted your family dead. Your parents had protected themselves and their children well from almost any magical attack. Since the unseen enemies couldn't attack your family without exposing themselves as witches they devised a plan. They would use the mortals fear of witchcraft to kill your family. So on January twentieth they made several mortal girls ill. After that it was simply a matter of slipping in a few well placed words into a conversation with the mortals to point at your family. Your mother was arrested and eventually hanged for being a witch. Your parents had made plans for something like this though. in case one of them was found out to be a witch the other would give testimony against them in order to avoid you girls suffering the same fate. It had worked up to a point. Dorcas was accused of being a witch and she naively admitted to having a snake as her familiar. You would have been accused too if you hadn't given testimony against Dorcas. You were heartbroken to see your mother led to the gallows with four others on July nineteenth. You didn't want to be there but your father had said that in order for both of you to survive you had to. You had wanted to save your mother but you knew that in doing so you would expose yourself and so all you could do was watch as your mother died. All through that year you were afraid that you and your father would be sent to prison and eventually hanged for being witches. Fortunately the hysteria ended that year and in May of sixteen hundred ninety-three the governor pardoned those accused of being witches and Dorcas was released from prison. It saddened you that your mother was the only true witch hanged. All the rest were mortals.
Seventeen seventy-six the year America declared independence from England. You had been alive for one hundred seventy years and were only fifteen when it happened. You had mastered most of what your father taught you by this time but still had trouble on a few spells. It was also the year you had found out that you weren't an ordinary witch. When the mood suited you your clit would grow into a penis. The first time it happened was at the beginning of the year. You had been getting changed for the day when you felt the pressure build down there. Looking down you were surprised to see that your clit was growing into a penis. You knew it shouldn't have surprised you all that much because you had done some transformation magic before. However you weren't doing this and you didn't sense any magic at work. Your father told you that sometimes there are witches born who are both male and female as well as some mortals. With a witch however they tend to look like ordinary females at birth but sometime during their teen years they discover what they are. You had quickly learned to control when your clit became a penis and that year you met a mortal named Patrick Blonket who you married. Of course you didn't have any children with him as no witch had ever been able to have children with a mortal. He didn't seem to mind that you couldn't give him children though. He had nieces and nephews from his brothers and sisters so the family line would continue. To hide that you were a witch you cast an illusion spell on yourself that made you appear to age as any mortal. He died a few years later in a fight. A drunk had shoved a knife into his belly and pushed him into the river where he drowned. They found his body a few days later and the drunk was charged with murder and convicted on the testimony of witnesses to the killing.
On went your life. You saw the Civil war when you were twenty-three. You were twenty-eight when World War 1 broke out. The Dust Bowl came in nineteen thirty-five when you were twenty-nine. Of course four years later World War 2 happened. In nineteen fifty it was the Korean war. In nineteen sixty-one it was the Vietnam war. As you saw each war you sighed and wondered what it would be like to have such a short war. You had watched along with the rest of the country when at thirty-three the first moon landing happened in nineteen sixty-nine. Too bad President Kennedy wasn't alive to see it happen.
For most of your life you had been fighting the secret war that most mortals didn't know about. There were periods where you were able to rest but the war was still going on and you couldn't relax too much since anyone could be after you. You had made friends with those that thought like you did and wanted to protect the mortals from those who would enslave them. Many times you each had barely escaped death but the odds caught up with many of them.
Now it's June thirtieth, two thousand ten. It's the day that you're caught in the explosion as you open the kitchen patio door. The day you proposed to Megan. Now your memories tell you that you still did come over and propose to Megan and she accepted. You still went to the kitchen patio door but just as the explosion was happening you felt magic surround and protect you. The explosion still threw you back but it didn't burn you or hurt you in anyway. You however where knocked unconscious when you landed.
You woke to a pounding headache and you noticed that it was night. You were in a bed and Megan was asleep next to you. She groaned and woke up saying, "I don't think I'll do that again anytime soon."
"What did you do?" you asked wondering which memories you had were real.
"I used a temporal spell to create an alternate timeline," Megan said. "Now I know why my mother was reluctant to teach me that spell. It drains you and gives you a headache."
"Couldn't you have done this with your husband?" you asked.
"You have to do it on a living person," Megan said. "Since you were dying but still living it worked for you."
"How much control did you have over the creation of the timeline?" you asked.
"Just enough to make you what you are now and give you to a family," Megan said. "I had to alter Sarah Good's family as well so they would be witches instead of just practicing witchcraft."
"Why Sarah Good?" you asked.
"I wanted to give her a better life and more time with her family," Megan said. "I was in Salem in sixteen ninety-two and saw her hang. Both in the original timeline and in this new one. I saw you there in this one though you didn't see me. I'm sorry that she still had to hang but at least Dorcas didn't. It would have been a real shame if she was."
"Dad really lit into her after she got out," you said shaking your head which made your headache worse.
"Careful," Megan cautioned. "You're still hurt."
There was a knock on the door and Sally came in saying, "Mom, Silverstreak needs to go."
"Well I'm up now so she can go," Megan said getting out of the bed. "Tell her I appreciate her pack helping us."
"I will Mom," Sally said and left.
"Am I going to run into myself in this timeline?" you asked thinking of the paradox that would create.
"In this timeline Rick was never born," Megan said. "It's the way the spell works. Now if you feel up to it I think it's time for supper."
"I am hungry," you said sitting up slowly.
"Where would you like to go?" Megan asked.