Mary looked at the stopwatch. Time was running out. She approached her son again. "Your name is Brandon, you are my son," she insisted. "You are changing into someone else, and you need to come home before you forget your real life..."
Mary looked at the shopkeeper. "Quick, grab him," she insisted.
The shopkeeper looked at her. "Are you nuts, lady?"
Mary tried it herself, telling herself that Brinediere Bramos, whatever sort of name that was, would turn back into Brandon when they got home.
Her former son started to back up. "Are you mad?" Flustered, he turned tail and tried to flee the room, mind whirling between his reasserting child memories and the new personality controlling his body.
He hadn't gone several paces out of the room, Mary hot on his tail, the shopkeeper behind her. Mary depressed the stopwatch. A glowing portal reopened to the shop. The shopkeeper ran for it while Mary struggled with her son, who was now the same size as her.
"What in heaven's name?" A new voice said. Both Mary and Brinediere paused, and turned. It was Isabelle Graham. She had found the newcomer fascinating enough to make an appearance at the affair, which she had not originally planned on attending.
"It is..." Mary tried to make something up. "We have to go," she said.
With a final, somewhat vicious move, Brinediere grabbed Isabelle and pushed her into Mary, and started to run for the door to call for help.
Isabelle stumbled as she was shoved and fell into Mary, knocking both women backward, through the portal.
Mary was livid, and untangled herself from Isabelle to get to her feet just in time to see the portal close. "No!!!" she insisted. She looked for the stopwatch, but it was gone. It must have fallen out of her hands when she fell.
Centuries earlier, Brinediere returned with two male servants... "There were intruders...a man and a woman in strange dress..." He insisted.
"There is no one here now," one of them said.
"Yes, I can see that. This is not my house, but wouldn't it be wise to search the grounds, just in case?" he said. "Is that not what your employers would demand?"
"Yes."
"Well, then I leave the matter in your capable hands. I will return to the others." He said, heading back to the table with the other ladies.
