Dot stood outside with Yoleta's royal guards, in the hospital lobby. Each of Yoleta's guards was a poor royal, long on title and short on cash.

They took shifts in the intensive care unit to ensure no one attacked Quig.

Yoleta The Executioner, came once a day to check on them and to place campaign flyers in five-year-old magazines.

Yoleta turned off one of the TVS playing the cartoon I Sparkle Pony, You.

Another flat-screen TV played in the beige-colored lobby, and an old talk show glitched and interrupted the beauty contest. Quig's half sister, through surrogacy, Ida, spoke. "The rebel queen will return, and I predict this queen won't be considered conventionally beautiful and someone the prime minister doesn't suspect. Sadly, it's not me, but a woman with creativity. The lost rebel queen masks her flaws, and Silvan-Mack will drown in garbage."

"The government leaders must have thought that it was Grew-Ella. Couldn't they tell it was a joke? Ida also predicted milk pudding would be sentient." Dot whispered to herself.

"I gave up my daughter, Betsy, to protect her from my enemies." Holes bled through the film, a ghostly image of a woman covered in scars and trash appeared for a moment, and the beauty contest was back on.

Twenty contestants punched and scratched at each other. Females wore black or muted green, and the men wore suits in every color of the rainbow except the contestant with an orange-colored R sewn into his muted green uniform.

An assistant changed Workhouse Leader Voltaire's ascot tie live.

Voltaire started going over the rules of the contest. "Three unacceptable citizens have saved themselves from the workhouse." He morphed partially into a dragon, and another year vanished from his face.

Dot grew bored with the show. "I need to go to the bathroom." She ran inside, washed her face, turned to leave, and jiggled the handle. The door wouldn't budge. She bashed the steel and wood with her body. "Help me. I'm stuck inside! Or are you going to sit around and watch beauty pageants all day?"

"It's because you're weak." Yoleta bashed the steel door with her body. Her pink uniform's black and gold buttons glistened under the lights. She appeared every bit the muscular elf warrior, and her once-long hair was cut short and bleached.

Grew-Ella's brother, Madd-Ox, joined in.

"I'm not weak." Dot was on her own.

An invisible hand yanked her back. Dot swung her fist and hit the air, and the tapping footsteps stopped.

"Who is there?" Dot asked.

Fluorescent lights faded into near darkness, and the rhythmic sounds of boots echoed around her and a phantom glow lit the room.

"I'm sorry that I haven't been the mother that my daughter needs," Quig's oldest sister said from behind the mirror. "Protect Grew-Ella. I fear what will happen to Betsy if Grew-Ella dies or is tossed into the workhouse."

Dot stared at her reflection. Her features morphed into Ida's face.

Ida's nose appeared as if it had hit a stone wall, or rather, a drunk plastic surgeon's fist. Her face became normal, as if Quig's half sister had never bought the back-alley surgery. Gray patches of skin spread, and she became a silvery and beautiful zombie-like monster.

Wavy black hair fell over her shoulders as she touched the mirror on the opposite side. Whatever creature Ida became pounded against the glass. Her white wings expanded. Cracks developed, distorting her image, and she laughed.

"I thought you survived? Ghosts can't hurt the living, so what do you want me to do?" Dot asked.

"But I'm alive again." Ida stepped out of the mirror. "It's better than the phony TV medium I used to be. I travel by reflection, crawl up walls, and do parlor tricks, and unlike spirits, I can kill. Zoreon Kiffed shouldn't have played with death magic." Moths flew out of the cracked mirror.

"Anything is better than the con artist you used to be." Dot stepped back. "Are you going to come for your daughter, or are you going to slaughter people?"

Ida didn't answer.

Footsteps stomped toward her, and the lights flickered on.

A voice that mimicked her own echoed throughout the room. "Turn around."

Dot jerked her head, and a version of herself stared at her with bloodshot eyes. Sand stuck to the woman's florist uniform, and an electronic watch glowed on her wrist. A quarter-sized metal stopwatch was attached to the digital display screen.

"Ban Grew-Ella's sister from entering the hospital, she's evil, and will try to kill Grew-Ella," her copy said.

"Why would Phyllis hurt her?" Yoleta asked from the other side of the door. "Ida, you sound drunk." The executioner broke through, but no one could follow her.

A ghostly woman covered in putrid trash flickered in and out and waved a knife. "You can't save her or me."

"I don't know you!" Ida screamed until the specter disappeared into the air.

"I'm out of time." Dot's doppelgänger flickered away.

"What just happened?" Yoleta asked. "The only person with the ability to time travel is my ex-husband, Ghoul Frog. Time magic chooses the wearer, and why would it pick a florist and not me? If she doesn't have a pure heart, the vision powers go to me because I'm the closest in the room."

"I'm here too, but neither of us is honest. Dot is the right woman. You trained her to fight, didn't you?" Ida asked Yoleta.

"Not very well," Yoleta snapped.

Dot gave her pure bombastic side-eye. "I know I got this because you don't recognize talent."

"You failed my combat class the first time and the second time you got a C-," Yoleta said.

"No, you gave me a B the second time, and I deserved an A+." Dot placed her hand on her hip. "Grew-Ella's sister is dangerous."

"You don't believe that." Yoleta tried to toss her. "Don't take Grew-Ella's side. She's awkward."

Dot held her back with one hand. "Phyllis is the sweetest person; all joy, kittens, lollies, and rainbows. She's not a complete psycho who needs therapy and a workhouse prison sentence. I'd love to save her from her 30-foot ego and deranged personality." Dot Curie-Lock, let go. "I earned that A+, and you judge people too much on appearances."

Guards broke through the door and tumbled onto the floor.

Dot leaped over a gurney, and she rushed towards the near-empty nurse's station. "I'm fine. Race you to Quig's room."

"You're on," Yoleta said. "Jerk, you didn't deserve that B, let alone an A."

Medics and a nurse dressed in cartoon cat scrubs sat down. The head nurse's ginger hair was in a bun, which exposed her elf ears. The reflection of her square jaw was distorted by a metal lamp on the station.

Yoleta stopped running to straighten Nurse Ruby's name tag and hugged her.

Dot scrunched her nose.

Ruby brushed her hand away and took three deep breaths. "Stop touching me, unless I invite you to. I have to touch patients as part of my job, but only Dot and my mother are allowed to mess with my tag or give me hugs, and besides it is unsanitary at work."

"I forgot," Yoleta said.

"Only I can hug Ruby," Dot smirked.

Yoleta ran, almost colliding with a medic.

Guards followed them and mimicked their frantic steps.

Dot's eyes peered down the hall, scanning for Grew-Ella's sister, and they spotted her floating near Quig's hospital room.

"Sis, I'll try to convince Zoreon to leave you alone. You might not believe me, but I'm on your side." Phyllis towered over Grew-Ella even when her feet touched the ground. A glass pendant dangled from her neck, shaped like a shell, and she always wore it, a symbol she was lying that she was unacceptable. The metal bottom glistened.

Phyllis gave her sister a smoothie in a translucent cup.

Grew-Ella took the cup and pretended to sip it. Her mouth puckered to sell the lie. "Would you allow me to have my own life?"

"Of course not. You can't think for yourself." Phyllis's pink and gold curls bounced as she grinned-feathered wings with gold tips stuck through the slits in her dress. A glass necklace shaped like a shell with metal bottom glistened under the lights.

Dot raised her arm and knocked the drink out of her hand. "You're not allowed near my brother or your sister!"

"I need to go." Phyllis stared with dead eyes until she raced to the nearest elevator.

Dot addressed the guards. "Place teams at every entrance. Keep Grew-Ella's sister from visiting the hospital and trail her."

"You're not their boss!" Yoleta yelled.

The smoothie partially melted the floor tile, but Yoleta ignored it.

Madd-Ox, Dot, and Grew-Ella entered Quig's hospital room while the others waited outside.

Nurse Ruby entered the room and positioned a tube in Quig's mouth to aid him in breathing. She waved at Dot. "I'm sorry about your brother. It's weird that I'm his nurse."

Dot wove her dark hair in a bun, transformed into a wolf, and her tail wagged. "I hate for you to see me like this, but there are so few nurses that we were bound to run into each other here."

Ruby nodded in agreement and continued her duties.

Grew-Ella's brother, Madd-Ox, hugged his sister.

She brushed his ginger hair out of his face. His small wings were hidden under his uniform.

Madd-Ox shook his fists. "I hate my life. Quig is in a coma, and I still can't get my status lowered from an elite prince, so I can marry my unacceptable girlfriend."

Grew-Ella raised her brows and mirrored her brother's expression. Madd-Ox was a year younger than his sister.

"I know your brother's a bit taller, but are you fraternal twins?" Ruby asked Grew-Ella.

"Biologically he's my half brother, but I'm also adopted by Mom Karen." Grew-Ella held Quig's hand again but spoke to Ruby. "Between Mom Karen's miscarriage and Madd-Ox's birth, Karen adopted me, flaws and all. In the end, I was too damaged for Yoleta, and she was also too young at 18, but I'm Mom Karen's rainbow baby. My bio mom had such compassion for her. My parents were already divorced when she realized she was pregnant."

"I adore Grew-Ella's bio mom," Dot said bluntly. "She helped both Quig and me adopt, and is amazing."

Grew-Ella nodded in agreement. She grabbed Quig's hand, and her lip quivered. "Quig squeezed my hand!"

Quig gripped Grew-Ella's fingers and tried to speak. For the first time in weeks, he could move, and he motioned for pen and paper on his nightstand and wrote.

*

Who is taking care of Betsy? Where is my sister? Did Ida step up and act like a mom for once?

*

They didn't answer.

He wrote the note a second time.

"Dot's mother and I have been taking care of her. Betsy is upset the hospital has banned children. She's an angry princess." Grew-Ella remained quiet for a moment and then spoke. "They dragged Ida to the workhouse, but she escaped twice. She visited Betsy with a few gifts, but her husband hasn't."

"Your oldest sister is concerned with Grew-Ella's safety." Dot stared at her watch.

*

Two Weeks Later:

The world fell away, and Dot was dragged through the light.

She clawed at the clasp of the watch, but it felt attached to her flesh. Colors pulsated, and the words Time and Universe Shifting flashed three times in black letters.

Copies emerged from Dot's body, and versions of herself were all in different places; she developed new memories, but she couldn't remember the erased timelines because the gifts of time were attached to the individual.

Her feet fazed in reality, and she stood on a beach. Massive dragon shifters flew in the distance.

Yoleta exited her hearse. "Dot, why are you here? Aren't you watching Betsy and your nephew? Why didn't they give the boy to his mom?"

"My mother is with Betsy, and Noel's wife died in childbirth," Dot whispered.

A brass-colored spaceship landed on a cliff. The unusual vehicle resembled a spider, and solar sails appeared to be a web strung behind it. Eight eye-shaped windows, tinted green, opened with the wall, revealing a single hatch.

Yoleta's ex, Dean Ghoul Frog, dressed in tweed, exited his ship. He adjusted his eye patch and his flowing wig. Avoiding the stairs, he flew down with a rocket pack strapped to his back. Landing next to Yoleta, his lips spread into a smile as he clutched a university-branded satchel in his left hand. He transformed into a dragon, a cat, a wolf person, and back into a man.

"You haven't been eating or sleeping, and I packed you lunch." He opened his refrigerated satchel, pulled out hummus sandwiches, apples, and grapes, and gave them to Yoleta.

"Quig awoke, but the rehab is going to take months." She ate her food.

He tossed apples and candy bars to Dot.

Dot grinned and ate the apple. "You're never subtle. Love the new ship, but Dean Ghoul Frog, you're not wearing your school clothes."

"I have a date," he said.

Yoleta dug her foot in the sand. "Chase lied to Grew-Ella, and she didn't know he was dating her sister."

Dot turned to her. "Chase is helping me, isn't he?"

"Dot, your memories aren't complete because you're not used to temporal travel, and we can't tell you everything. Time is warping around us," Frog said.

"It's warping around all of us, and you are wrong." Dot ate a maple fudge bar. "You sent Ida, didn't you?"

"I'm not sure." Frog stepped closer and hugged her. "When I inform you directly, the timeline changes. Ida warned you because she told me a friend had a weird dream."

"Why is this time machine still on my wrist?" Dot yanked herself away, and her thoughts jumbled in her head but became clearer. 'I hope my mind isn't fragmenting.' She stopped speaking. "I'm not wrong. No, Chase is helping me."

"That isn't supposed to happen," Frog said.

"He's manipulating Grew-Ella's sister," Yoleta added.

"Chase is her victim," Dot said.

"Text Avery and request that she send his nuptial bracelet to him. Please remember this time," Frog said.

Yoleta snorted. "Oh, I bet you're planning a fake engagement for Quig, but he's still a grand elite, and he can't marry an unacceptable woman. I bet he's going to become a broken elite and marry Phyllis."

"I thought you liked Grew-Ella. She has flirted with my brother, and he's flirted back."

Yoleta broke into laughter. "I love my goddaughter so much that I almost adopted her myself, but no man would pick Grew-Ella over her sister. Every man who Grew-Ella has ever dated abandoned her for someone prettier. I love Quig, but he's no different from Chase in the long run."

"And you wonder why Frog's your fifth ex-husband? I'm glad you didn't get custody of Grew-Ella. You're a terrible mother!"

"Take that back." Yoleta swung at her.

The watch yanked Dot away, and she returned to her home. Her nephew was finishing his homework with her mother.

"Where is Betsy?" Dot asked.

"Grew-Ella and that government official, Junior, picked her up. They're going to the hospital to pick up Quig. He's going to rehab at Karen's brownstone. Grew-Ella is caring for him and Betsy while he recovers, so he doesn't lose custody. Too bad; Grew-Ella is only acceptable. If only Quig was a broken elite, they could date."

Chase knocked on the rose-colored door, and Dot opened it.

He and Ruby carried boxes of frozen pizza inside.

Ruby jumped and stimmed. "Prime Minister Silvan-Mack canceled Chase's botched plastic surgery TV show. Chase recorded his radio programs, and commercials for the week. He brought pizza, and he is willing to help you at the shop."

"Can we keep him?" Dot's nephew asked.

Chase grinned like a child. "I have nothing to do. Silvan-Mack is angry that I reduced the workhouse population, so I wanted to give you a gift from my new employer. Afterward, I can help deliver the roses for you. Ruby informed me that you were down a man."

Dot took the pizzas. "Thank you. It would be weird having a celebrity deliver for me, but I desperately need the help."