Grant first noticed that Emily was missing.

Then he woke up.

Lessia was still there, arm draped around a nonexistent form.

She wasn't moving, wasn't breathing.

He ran a hand over her side. She was the same temperature as the room, and her body was firm and unyielding.

She'd been stopped.

Grant had seen it before, when dealing with Sages. Someone who can manipulate time to that extent can just freeze a person in place, keep them locked between moments so completely that they were no more than furniture or decoration.

The fact that she had been stopped, and he hadn't, suggested that there was some reason the Sage wanted him awake, and not her. And the worry had to be that if she was travelling normally through time, he would wake her.

He probably would have.

Likely as soon as he got on his way, the Sage would free her from the spell, and he saw no reason to linger. He took enough time to slip on his trousers, then headed out the door into the morning sunlight.

He wandered a bit through the garden, seeing what he might see, occasionally catching glimpses of someone further up the path, just a little out of reach. Not always the same person. Once it was a man in plain work-clothes, who was just stepping around a corner as he came around a bend; another time, a nude person whose bottom he only saw for a second. Once he turned around to see a flash of a long white dress. He lost count of how many people he'd been just behind, when he turned a corner and ran directly into someone.

A young, soft woman. Naked.

"Oof!" she said as they collided, and Grant's quick efforts to grab her arm kept them both from tumbling. "Sorry about that."

He knew that voice. "Hello, Lessia."

"Grant?" she asked. She smiled up at him. "Good to see you."

"I just saw you," he replied.

She nodded. "Time gets strange here." She giggled. "I kinda like it."

"I see you're still not wearing clothes."

"A little while with Emily made me into a nudist, I guess," Lessia laughed. "Or maybe it's the Sage and his garden. Either way, it's nicer."

"You'll get no objections from me." Grant stood at arm's length, admiring the figure in front of him.

Lessia flushed. "Still a charmer, huh."

"It's part of being a Bard." He frowned. "What do you mean by 'still'?"

"Just that..." she paused. "It's been a while. At least for me."

Grant nodded. "I understand, some. I think."

"I'd better not say too much." She wrapped her arms around Grant's neck. "Besides, I might have something else on my mind..."

Grant felt his body responding to her advances. "Like what?"

Lessia looked deep in his eyes. She whispered something. He shivered, feeling magic in her words. She whispered something else, and the magical feeling intensified.

"When did you learn to—"

"Shh," she said, putting a finger to his lips, and he couldn't say anything. "That's not important. What is, is that I want your trousers off now."

There was no hesitation. He stripped naked there on the path. Her hand reached down and stroked his stiffening cock until it was rigid. She pressed her mouth to his; their tongues danced around one another.

"There's some things you need to know," she continued, speaking softly, "about me—well, about the me you know better—and about Emily." She helped him to the soft grass and knelt down, placing her knees on either side of his hips. "Things that the Sage may... well, that's another story, too."

"Not that I object, you understand," Grant said, his arms encircling Lessia's round figure and his hands gripping her ass, "but if there's something I need to know, aren't there better ways to tell me?"

Lessia laughed. "Might be more efficient ways to convey information," she said, pressing her body against his, "but better? I really don't know about that."

Grant's moan of pleasure was enough to indicate agreement, at least on some level.

"Besides which," Lessia continued, lowering herself onto him, "I need your brain occupied here."

"An... odd thing... to say," Grant huffed, pushing himself up into her warmth.

"But true," she replied, leaning down to look straight in his eyes. "Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to..."

Grant felt himself fixate on that beautiful gaze. He was still sensing, still feeling, he could feel the warm ground beneath him, the touch of the woman on top of him, the heat and wetness of her intimate places. He could see the depths of her eyes and hear the softness of her voice. What he wasn't able to do, was think. He couldn't process the words she was saying, their meaning or their intentions. He couldn't be aware how she was twisting them into his thoughts, weaving magic with ideas. All that was there for him were the sensations, the sounds, the sights, the feelings, the closeness and happiness and power of it all. It was impossible to tell—

"Grant?"

"Yes?" he said, looking up at those big, beautiful, nervous eyes, feeling the soft bed beneath him.

"Are you... is this alright?" Lessia asked, seemingly nervous.

He nodded. "Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful."

The room was warm, even a little familiar after he'd slept in it a night.

"You just... you seemed..."

He shook his head, as well as he could, anyway, lying on the pillows, and stroked her hips gently. "I must still be a little tired, is all, and perhaps my mind was taken with dreaming. This is very much like a dream come true, I must say." 

The young woman flushed with pleasure and leaned down to kiss him lightly before continuing her gentle, almost tentative fucking.There was no scent of the garden flowers at all within the confines of the room, no cool breeze, no warm sunlight. Grant noticed this, noticed that he wasn't outside, but didn't know why it mattered.