“I did it!” Billy shouted. The teenager danced around an orange rock stuck in the air. It hovered several feet off the ground and glowed brightly with heat. “Vanilla! I DID IT!” He yelled at the white-haired woman resting atop a T-rex’s tail. The giant dinosaur was stuck in time like the hot rock. Vanilla hopped off the tail and walked to Billy. She glanced at the rock; then nodded at Billy.
“Good job, now you’re ready to learn something more complicated.” Vanilla reached for the tennis ball-sized rock. Its glow dissipated by the time she wrapped her hand around it; Billy assumed she sped up time to cool it down. She held the stone up with her left hand in front of Billy. “Right now the stone is here,” Vanilla declared. Then she moved it through the air to a spot on her right, Billy’s left. “Now, in the rock’s future, it’s over here. You’ve got a pretty good handle on that since you’ve been looping it through time. The next step is to try and to loop only half of it,” she smiled; her sparkling orange eyes distracted Billy. Then he heard a soft thud on the ground to his right. He looked down at it and saw half the stone.
“Whooaaa,” Billy’s eyes went wide. He looked at Vanilla’s hand and found the other half of the rock still in her grasp. “How’d you get so strong?” Vanilla held up the whole rock in one piece and winked at Billy.
“I had someone teach me like I’m teaching you.” Vanilla lightly tossed the rock at Billy’s head.
“Ow,” the rock bounced off his forehead then stopped in time. He did not react quick enough to stop it before it bumped him. Billy plucked it out of the air. “His lessons were harsher,” Vanilla added and looked into Billy’s eyes. Their bright orange-crystalline color seemed to cloud over. “But he didn’t have as smart a student as I do.” Billy grinned as his cheeks flushed red.
“Thanks! What’s he like? Can I meet him?” Vanilla shook her head.
“That’s enough questions for now,” she pointed at the rock in his hand. “Get to work.” Billy blinked. Vanilla was gone when he opened his eyes.