Hey friend!
Welcome to the funny blog for fantasy fun, The Diary of a Wizard. This week I have to help a time traveller get back to his time. This could be more problematic than expected but it’s not really unexpected, being the Enchanted Woods and all, where things tend to get a little strange.
After an unusually quiet start to the week, I popped out for my daily trundle amongst the trees. Nothing gives me more joy, so despite all the crazy happenings of The Enchanted Woods, that’s why I love to call this place, home.
My journey was surprisingly uneventful until I reached the big hill. That was when there was a weird electrical type of storm around me, I got zapped a few times, and suddenly a man appeared as if from nowhere. It was most shocking in more ways than one, let me tell you.
He stood wearing a long cloak and boots and he had a pocket watch.
“I say, old chap,” he said. “Reginald’s the name. Would you be so kind as to tell me where I am?”
“Sure,” I replied. “The Enchanted Woods. At the bottom of the big hill.”
“Oh, thank you! That’s most useful, but could I enquire as to when I am?”
“Mid-morning. Day 2 of the week,” I informed him.
“Oh, thanks for that, that is helpful, but could I be so bold as to enquire, what year?”
I grew slightly concerned that perhaps he was having a memory loss episode. “Are you okay? You haven’t got amnesia, have you?”
“It’s a fair question,” he responded. “Amnesia is way more common in fiction than it is in real life, but no, not this time.”
“How can you not know which year it is then?” I asked.
“I’m a time traveller, you see, and I was not sure of when I am.”
“Right. That makes sense. Anyway, it’s 2025.”
“Wow, 2025!” he exclaimed. “I came further than I thought.”
“I guess that explains your strange clothing and way of speaking.”
“Yes, quite. I’m in a bit of conundrum, however, and I was wondering if you could assist me?”
“Certainly. Come and have some tea and we’ll discuss it in detail. I’m a wizard, see, so if anyone can help, it’s me.”
I poured out the cups as we sat in my kitchen chatting.
“What seems to be the trouble? “ I asked.
“My time machine is kaput, so it seems,” Reginald sounded a little lost. “I’m afarid I’m stuck here.”
I had a little think, whilst stroking my beard because everyone knows that makes you 7.3% wiser, “Well, I haven’t done one in many a long year, but there is a time travel spell we could try. If you want to, that is?”
“Wonderful!” It sounded like he did indeed, want to try it out.
“The trouble is,” I informed him. “it takes 1 day to collect the ingredients and 3 days to brew it up to full pungency.”
“Well, in which case, we mustn’t dilly dally. We should begin the collection at once. Times-a-wasting.”
I admit I thought that a strange thing to say when one is a time traveller because time probably isn’t a-wasting. Secondly,when he said “at once” I informed him we couldn’t collect anything at all until we’d finished our tea. I don’t make the rules.
Now, I’m afraid I can’t possibly tell you which secret ingredients I use for the time travelling spell, any more than I could tell you where to get said ingredients. These are secret things for wizard’s only. If I did spill the beans, I would be turned into a hedgehog by the Grand High Wizard himself.
Needless to say, it was a long day, but after much toil and hardship, finally, we had the ingredients, and I set to work getting the magical brew ready.
Once carefully crafted in the correct proportions, we simply had to sit and wait for it to brew completely. In the meantime, I caught up on some info about Reginald’s time.
He told me where he came from, they don’t have cars or anything like that. They ride around on horses apparently, and they wear top hats, suits and such things as pocket watches.
“Oh, silly me,” I said. “I assumed you would be from the future being a time traveller, but it seems you’re from the past.”
“What makes you assume that?”
“Well, you don’t have any tech. Where’s your phone and large language model type stuff?”
“Oh, no. I’m from 563 years in the future. A hundred years from now, we realised that all that stuff is just a distraction and frightfully dull, so we phased it out. It was making people pretty dumb, to boot. What they forgot is learning isn’t simply knowing the answer, it’s finding the answer. If you cut out the journey, the destination becomes meaningless. Also, we knew that what humans required is far more spiritual and a connection to nature that we once lost. We are, after all, children of the Earth and children of the cosmos.”
“You know, that’s what I keep saying but no one listens,” I said.
“Well, eventually we realised that everything we make or use, relies on the planet’s biosphere to create so makes little sense to destabilise or even destroy it for profit. We developed ways to improve the biosphere while making use of it.”
“It sounds like a very enlightened time,” I said. “Have humans finally stopped fighting each other?”
“Don’t be silly, they’re still tools, just like they always were.”
I must admit I was not surprised.
Much time passed and we shared thoughts and ideas about the past, about the future and about the world, until finally the time travel spell was ready, and Reginald could hopefully return to his own time. I say “hopefully” because I may have forgotten this or that, here and there, over the years when making the spell, and then he could end up anywhere.
Anyway, I took Reginald back to where I found him at the bottom of the big hill, said our farewells and I whispered the secret incantation. Just like that, in a puff of smoke, he vanished.
As I sat pondering the week’s events, my heart was somewhat glad the humans of the future would be reconnecting with nature and their spiritual side. Technology can be useful, but it’ll never be as magical as a sunrise, or the ocean or the stars and if we spend too much time staring at a screen, we may just miss the beauty that’s all around us. In that beauty, is where inner peace lies.
I do hope I sent Reginald back to the correct time, but I guess I’ll never know one way or the other. All time travellers know the risks associated with it so if not, it’s his fault anyway.
I’m off to write cool stories for you now. I hope the week brings you the beauty of nature, the gift of friendship, and the joy of love, because they are the true gifts in life.
See you next time friend!
BB
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Barry S. Brunswick is an author and best selling poet.
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Dreamland Part 1 – The Fabric of Dreams
Dreamland Part 2 – The Masters of Light
Dreamland Part 3 – The Veil of Shadow
