Dirk slowly moved away from Briar, finally getting up to pack up the bath. He went about it with quiet efficiency, the process now routine. Once everything dry had been packed up, he lifted Briar from the water, and wrapped her in towels. He set her gingerly on her feet, stripped off his wet clothes and then took the towels from Briar. Everything wet he bundled into a large burlap sack, and then wrapped a warm dry robe around Briar. A dry set of garments he pulled from his haversack, as well as hand and leg wraps. With his circlet resting on his brow he dressed with astonishing speed. His armor, cloak, and weapons all in place, Dirk swept Briar up into his arms and began the walk back to camp.
It wasn't a long walk, and as they approached, Dirk noticed things out of place. Stones and branches he always avoided disturbing had been moved. Not in the subtle ways of passing wild life, but in a definitely human way. The tracks were not hurried or frantic, and whoever made them had made no attempt to conceal them. His eyes silently searched and he discovered that the tracks were going in two directions. First toward the bathing spot, then back. He concluded it was probably Alba, but Dirk remained vigilant nonetheless.
In very little time Dirk was passing into the camp with Briar in his arms. Once through the tree that acted as the entrance Dirk froze at the sight of a man standing over Alba's sleeping form. Dirk gave Briar an intense look as he set her down without a sound, and with the snap of his wrist flung a dagger at the man. Kukri and dirk snapped into Dirk's hands in an instant and he followed that dagger with more speed than Briar had ever seen a man move. A beautiful sword held in a blood red gauntlet swept out from the man's cloak to meet Dirk's blades. With a slight gesture of his other hand the man magically flung Dirk back toward Briar. He stopped just short of colliding with her, frozen in the air, all his limbs stretched to their limits.
The entire moment transpired so fast a human eye would struggle to follow, and that moment was the time it took for what Dirk had seen to sink in. A man dressed so much like him, the blood red gauntlet, the beautiful swinging arch of Bright Rose as she came up to meet Dirk's blades. The man released Dirk and he fell to his knees, Briar behind him, witnessing the glory. "Master," he said, bowing his head to Ritousaey. Then he stood and crossed to his master exchanging a firm hand shake. A somber faced Rit, pulled down his hood, a small smile splitting his face.
"Hello Dirk," Rit said with a heavy Adelan accent. His form was quite Adelan as well. Dirk was used to that. The changing faces. The sword was always the same though. A constant of every Rit, as well as the sickle. "I see Briar is alive and well on this timeline, as are you and Alba. That's pleasant to witness." He turned and bent to Alba, stroking the girls hair. The color fully returned to her cheeks as his touch healed her body, but the girl remained asleep. "It seems she's a golden thread in this pathway. So many of her branches are dark, but she could be a great force of good." He stood up and stepped around Dirk, as he passed, he touched Dirk, healing him as well. He now stood before Briar, who had amazingly stayed silent through it all.
"Hello Sima," Rit said, to Briar's further shock. Then he reached out and pressed a finger to her forehead. Rit of course knew her ability and knew what contact with a god would do to her mind, and so he mitigated it, letting her power work through him rather than on him. Briar was filled with a vastness unlike anything she had ever felt before, infinite emotions so unknowable, yet somehow she understood. The birth of the multiverse and it's infinite paths, infinite ends, flashed past until it all settled on a moment, insignificant in the grand tapestry but critical to her. The moment Dirk entered her life.
Briar saw it in so many versions of time, and in so many there was a death there. If Dirk had not come, either Briar would have messed up and died, or messed up and killed that noble. In the case of the latter, she was hunted down, always on the run, or caught and killed. That day was the end of Briar, in almost every case. Dirk had shown up though, and he had saved her from those paths. He had kept her from inevitable doom. He had saved himself from inevitable doom as well. Had Dirk not been there, had not found Briar and the path of his life forever altered, today he would have died. Too many brigands at once, all fighting dirty got the upper hand. Dirk died on countless timelines, just minutes earlier. A fact that created an infinite sadness for Rit, because those Dirk's were all dead, a near infinite amount.
Then there was Alba, doomed to be a plaything for those men until she died. Had Dirk not altered the course of his and Briar's lives bringing them there right then, she would still be with those men, and her grey thread would have been cut. Now she was a golden thread. An important figure in the balance of the multiverse, a position Briar and Dirk would never hold. They would always be grey, always unimportant in the grand scheme of things. She also knew though, that her children might be golden threads, though Rit didn't let her see who the fathers could be.
All that flashed in her mind in an instant. Along with that, Rit had healed her entirely. She'd also later discover that she could read, write, and speak all the languages of both this Earth, and Earth Prime. Rit turned back to Dirk and pulled out a book to hand his student and cosmic progeny. Then he was gone. With an audible pop, he disappeared, and Dirk stood looking at the book, which was written in Sanskrit. He held it up to Briar, a couple entwined in a sexual act was depicted on the cover and she could read the title. Kama Sutra.