Back to the Drawing Board Part Two

Sounds like you enjoyed last week's post a lot. Special thanks to Susan Marlow for giving us permission to use her characters. (But what you don't know is they're actually real, because we really met them! Ahem, anyways...) 
Due to some interesting comments we received about our scenery grouping of Canada, we'd like to clarify that yes, we are aware Canada is not all mountains and lakes and snow. We only recorded the real conversation between Marin and me when we first arrived in California.

Enjoy this next post!

I paced the room, staring out at the moon-lit night as I mulled over the possibilities.
It was past midnight, this much I knew. My pocket watch I used to really tell time confirmed this fact, and I knew no one was awake. Everyone in the large and spacious Californian ranch house was fast asleep- except me.
And I had a big problem on my hands. The thing about it though, I couldn't figure out what it was.
The afternoon and evening had gone great. Marin had a blast, it was the first time in a long time she didn't worry about what could happen to us while we were away from the Island. She followed Andi around like a puppy dog, her eyes bright and excited at everything the twelve-year-old girl said or did. Marin had never been one to make many friends, she was too shy and quiet. I'd never seen her enjoy spending time with someone her own age, and I was glad she was having fun. Elizabeth Carter insisted that we stay the night, seeing how we didn't have anywhere to sleep. I enjoyed talking the most to Justin, who was more into my style of thinking and philosophy. Chad and Mitch were friendly, but I could tell they regarded me as a tender-foot Scotsman who didn't have any idea how to handle himself in the wild west. Which was kinda true.
Overall, there'd been nothing in our day that I could think of to wake me up at half past midnight. Certainly not anything I'd said or done, or any event that stuck out in my mind. And yet I was bothered deeply by something. A feeling I'd gotten several years before, when I'd first met Marin in Czechoslovakia and we'd escaped from the Gestapo.
I felt fearful.
This is stupid, I growled to myself. You're Trevor, you're never afraid! You're too excited and energetic to be afraid! Then why did I have this strange sense of dread inside? Like something had gone seriously wrong?
I gave up trying to brood and think up an explanation and slipped into the hallway. Marin was staying in the guest bedroom next to mine, and I gently opened the door and tiptoed in. If anyone could think up a reason to be afraid, it was Marin. No doubt she had the answer.
"Marin," I whispered.
Marin lay flat on her back, snoring quite loud and without any resolve. Any other time I'd laugh at her, but I didn't have the sense of humor tonight to do so.
I shook her and hissed, "Marin, wake up!"
"Trevor did it," she grumbled, rolling over in her sleep. "Take him to jail."
I glared at her. "Thanks a lot, lass. Now get up before I push you out of your bed." I shoved her again.
This time Marin opened one eye, looked up at me, then groaned. "Go away, I'm tired," she whimpered.
"Marin, something's wrong."
That got her attention. She sat up, fully awake and alert. "What did you do!"
I held up my hands in defense. "I didn't do anything, but something is bothering me."
"What?"
"I don't know, I woke up feeling like something was wrong."
Without skipping a beat, Marin demanded, "Did you take 4T off when you went to bed?"
I stared at her, then jerked my arm up and gaped in horror as the truth hit my over the head like a coconut falling from a tree.
So that was it. That's what had been bothering me this whole time. My wrist was bare, empty like the days when I didn't have my amazing Trevor's Time Travel Teleport. My time watch was gone.

~oOo~

It was Marin who decided it would be best to wake Andi up and get her to take us out to where we'd been earlier. The sleepy girl kinda blinked at us in surprise, but readily agreed.
Now we stared at the moonlit surface of the Californian San Joaquin Valley. I dismounted off of my horse and ran over to where we'd run into the rattle snake. "It's not here!"
Marin, troubled, slid off of Patches and came over to where I was. "You had it when we got here, how could you have lost it anywhere else?"
"What are we looking for again?" Andi asked, yawning. She dismounted off of Taffy and walked over to us, surveying the ground. "And why did we have to get up at two in the morning to find it?"
"It's a watch," I explained, "A very important watch. If I don't get it back then we're going to-to-" I didn't say anything else as I once more began to panic and search the ground. The thought was too awful to entertain. If we didn't get it back- then we were never going to get back. 
A strange, tingling sensation came over me and I happened to look down at my hands. Are they fading? They were. Just like when we teleported from one time period to another, except I didn't have my watch on me! What is happening?
I shot Marin and look and she returned it with an equally frightened glance. She too, seemed to be fading. Could it be that we're fading into our correct times because I don't have the watch? I wondered. This was bad. This was really, really bad!
"Trevor," Marin whispered. "What is happening?"
A feeling of total hopelessness washed over me. I sank to my knees and put my face in my hands. "I don't know!" I wailed. "This has never happened before, lass!"
I think by now we'd really freaked Andi out. She was standing there with her eyes as wide as the sun, her mouth forming a little O as she looked from Marin to me. "You look strange," she managed.
"We have to keep looking," I said, ignoring the obvious fact that something was very wrong indeed. I stood up, a little wobbly, and continued our search. The feeling I got when we time-traveled was coming over me, and it was like a strange force was trying to drag me away from where I was. I resisted it, I did my best to push it out of my mind, but it was pulling me... to somewhere I didn't want to go...
"Marin!" I yelled, desperate. "We have to find it now!"
She nodded in agreement. Andi, though she had no idea what was going on, joined in the best she could. Together we spread out and searched everywhere in the vicinity.
But 4T was nowhere to be found.
"This might be easier if I knew what I was looking for!" Andi finally exclaimed, exasperated.
"It's a wristwatch," Marin croaked. "A plain looking wristwatch with a map on the face."
I sat down on a stump, my legs shaking as I attempted to steady my nerves. That pull was still there, getting stronger and stronger by the second.
Everything I knew about time traveling was at odds with each other. Being separated from my time traveling watch shouldn't have caused this. If anything, I would begin to settle into whatever culture we'd landed in. Why had this happened? Why couldn't we find that watch?
My mind drifted back to the conversation at hand, then I leapt up as Andi proclaimed, "Oh, that's what it looks like? Is this it?"
She held up a 4T with a questioning look.
Marin's mouth fell open. I didn't say anything for a long time, then I opened my mouth to speak.
They say I woke up fifteen minutes later after fainting dead away. Not a very manly trait.

~oOo~

It didn't seem quite fair not to tell Andi who we were and what we did after all the trouble we put her through to find the watch. Apparently she'd seen it in the grass when they'd been rounding up cattle, but how it had gotten there when it had been on my wrist right before the rattle snake scare was beyond me. I didn't know what had happened, but I was determined to make sure we never came that close to such a situation like that again.

It surprised me how well Andi took the truth about us being time travelers. I made her promise she wouldn't tell anyone, not even her brothers. "I'm breaking a lot of rules telling you this, so you can't tell anyone," I'd said.

She'd gotten really excited about it, but she'd believed every word. "This is amazing, what is the future like? What do you do all the time? What kinds of things do people do?"

"That we can't tell you," Marin had said. "If we did you wouldn't believe us anyways, and there's some time travel rules that say we can't tell others about these things."

"No reason other than to irritate readers and fans," I explained.

Our last day in California came all too fast. I enjoyed our time with the Carters as much as Marin did, but I was more than happy to get back when it was time. We said goodbye to the family, then agreed to let Andi ride out with us. She knew we were heading back to our own time, and she wanted to see us depart.

Now we stood ready as the watch showed that we had two minutes left until we were transported back to our own time.

"It was so much fun having you," Andi said, hugging Marin. "You have to come again!"

"Yeah, maybe we'll bring Laura Ingalls Wilder along next time," I joked.

"Who's that?"

"Someone you'd like a lot," Marin answered, shooting me a look. "We haven't met her yet, but we know a lot about her."

"Time to go Marin." I grabbed Marin's hand as the dial on the face of my wristwatch began to spin faster and faster, and the surrounding area began to disappear and become our Hawaiian island.

"Goodbye, Andi!" We called.

I didn't hear her reply as the entire scenery changed and we were once more home. I knew from the look of awe on her face she no doubt said something like, "Roasting rattlesnakes!"

After all, what else would a cowgirl say?

The End