On the Veranda

We were sitting on the veranda, Lorraine and I, drinking iced tea and chatting gently about the crop and the prayers for rain, when I noticed for the first time the black markings on her legs.
"What are those?" I asked, leaning closer and pointing.
She looked down and drew her leg up toward me. The calves were covered in exquisite lattice tattoos.
"These tattoos," she said, "are for the rearranging of seasons. Watch this."
Lorraine touched with her thumb the middle of the lattice and softly drew it spirally outward. As she did so I noticed a change in the light. I looked up and saw the sun and the moon flashing across the sky, clouds zapping first northward then eastward then back to northward. The trees faded then sprang back to life, water came and went, animals and cars went by like lightening. Then, as suddenly as it began, the quickening ceased.
"That was a year. Neat trick huh?"
"Very interesting," I observed and sat back in my chair, as nonchalent as nonchalent is. I took a long draw on my pipe.
"Can you go backwards?" I asked.
"Certainly. It's just the same thing on the other leg. Observe."
She reached down to her left calf and performed the same action. All that I'd seen moments before happened backwards then and within seconds we were back on that lazy June afternoon in 2006.
The moment we arrived I sprang from my seat and ran as fast as I could to the nearest railway station where I caught a Bullet to Kang Pong, which doesn't exist. From there I took a ferry and found myself on a three year mission to get to the Middle East where the continuing troubles were beginning to worry me. I arrived in 2009 of course and wept loudly for a month. That put an end to all the hostilities and I went for a deserved break somewhere near Tehran.