pierregringoire

Segundus, Combeferre and Gringoire have been experimenting with scientific magic at Milliways with surprisingly good resutls. Not flawless, maybe, but  very good! Much better than any of them had expected! 

So of course it only makes sense that , having lit a single candle, they're now playing with the flow of time itself.   It seems to be at least as malleable in Milliways as fire, and Combeferre's already had some accidental luck with time travel, and  to  Gringoire's thinking, what's the difference in experimenting with one elemental force or another? 

...All right, for the candle spell they'd had notes and research from the history Segundus' world, that was different. But they've researched the time-reversal spell very seriously, for days, with all the intensity of excited scholars, and they have Combeferre's notes from his last experiment, and it should work. Just a simple thing, something to turn back the time in one of Milliways' rooms back about ten minutes. There's a little hourglass, a cup of tea that was hot ten minutes ago, and a few other small such small indicators of brief change,  set up  with detailed observations, at the periphery of the room to measure the physical effects of the spell, should it happen to spill outside of its circle. 

And in the center of the room--Gringoire's room, chosen because he has no personal possessions to ruin-- is a protective circle, with matching displays,  and an arrangement of powders and items that need to be triggered in just the right order.  If they've done this all right, and their notes say they have, the things inside the circle will revert to their state of ten minutes ago. 

While Combeferre and Segundus take final notes on the control experiments  outside the circle, Gringoire double-checks the order of the ingredients for the spell.  "I still think it's odd that we need red pepper. But -- oh no--" 

The oh no is in response, too late, to Djali nosing at one of the little bowls on the circle's edge. Gringoire reaches to move it out of her reach , just as she moves in to be more within his--

--and Gringoire trips, flailing, into the middle of the circle. He almost keeps his feet, but it's fall or kick Djali, so he falls, his hat tipping over his eyes as he does. The thump onto the ground is both softer than he expected and oddly bracing, as if lightning had struck a touch too nearby.  

Gringoire sits up, moderately annoyed. "Oh, these things happen, but now we'll have all the set up to do again--" 

He stops as he sees what's become of his collaborators--formerly adult scholars, now children, blinking at him with surprise. He winces . "Ah. My friends, I think we must have arranged the warding circles in reverse order, and perhaps made some other errors of our calculations. It seems the experiment has affected only things outside the circle--"  

A soft bleat makes him turn his head. "Oh Djali, no!"  Gringoire steps out of the circle and picks up his suddenly very much younger goat. 

All right, he's starting to worry now, philosophy notwithstanding.   They're all probably going to have to tell someone about this.  What were the names of Combeferre's friends again...?