Part 1, if you missed it. And Part 2. And Part 3. And Part 4. And Part 5.
Oliver opened his fin-hand, and there, in what would pass for a palm, sat a perfectly clear cube of something that looked like ice.
“What am I supposed to do with that?” said Stumpy. “An ice cube?”
“It’s not an ice cube,” Oliver said, this time knowing better than to toss it, given Stumpy’s inability to catch. He leaned down to rest it gently on her feet, his long tooth-horn uncomfortably close to Stumpy’s shoulder.
It was cool, not cold.
“Then what is it?”
“How should I know? Aunty Ida only told me I had to give it to you.” The cube glowed yellow in the warm light of the egg. “Looks like you’re off,” he said as the yellow grew brighter. “Fish for the road?”
With a fluid swing, Oliver reached behind the throne, scooping up a good-sized cod and flinging it at Stumpy. The fish she didn’t miss, gulping it in two.
“Oliver?” she said, the yellow coloring the snow and ice around like a sunrise. The egg within an egg within an egg within an egg cracked in perfect circles at either end, the lines revealing yet another egg beneath,
“Yes?”
“What happens to you if I fix things?”
Oliver raised whatever a fully-evolved narwhal has for shoulders. “Don’t worry about me,” he said, “It’s fine and actually very simple. You see, all that happens is–“
But Stumpy would never hear the end of that sentence, as a wall of yellow rose between them and around her, like a symmetrical cozily lighted prison. If Stumpy had ever been in an elevator, she would know that this time, it was exactly like the that, a smooth, smooth upward motion, occasional dings punctuating the upward shift.
The egg continued to crack, symmetrical lines running the length of it, as the egg within the egg within the egg within the egg peeked through. The cube remained safely nestled on her feet.
The rising stopped, and with a final and more enthusiastic “ding,” the front side of the square of light slid into itself, revealing a polished floor, a hollow parallelogram reflected in it.
The egg ambled off, its cracked disk ends flattening themselves into thin wheels. Once again, Stumpy followed it, that egg now smooth and white but for the disk on either end.
She carefully waddled, not sure how or if the cube she carried would survive a collision with the very, very hard floor. The egg led her up some ramps, back and forth and back again, pausing for her to catch up, its ends lightly crunching against the ground.
They headed down an echoey hallway, the walls made of the same speckled shiny surface as the floor, and arcing to a smooth, high curve at the top. The soft plop plop plop of Stumpy’s feet reached her ears and no further, all sound muffled beyond any kind of distance.
And then they hit a dead end, the dark, smooth material ahead of them.
“Name?”
Stumpy looked around her, nothing but floor and wall and egg to be seen.
“Name?” it came again, and she realized it was above her. Still balancing the cube, she scooted backward until she could see it wasn’t a dead end, but an enormous, but enormous, desk made of that same speckled stuff.
“Stumpy,” she said, squinting at the figure perched atop yet another slick surface. “Edgar? Edgar the Seagull?”
He didn’t look up from the screen embedded in the desktop, and when he spoke his tone was flat, the tone of someone who repeats the same thing over and over so frequently it haunts dreams.
“Ma’am, we do not all experience time in the same sequence. Individuals may or may not recognize one another. Please respect individual timeline order.” He glanced up briefly to point his beak at a flickering sign. Stumpy could only see its top from her angle, so she shuffled backward a little more.
“Please respect individual timeline order,” it read, the letters stretching and waving and then snapping back into shape with a hollow buzz.
“So you don’t recognize me at–“
Eyes still on the screen, he picked up a stylus from the desk and tapped the sign. “Ah, here you are,” he said after a solid minute of silent scrolling. “Stum…py you said?”
She nodded.
“Didn’t catch that.”
“Yes,” she said. “But honestly we–” the glare alone was enough to cut her off. “Right, right.”
“Did you bring the projector?”
“Did I bring the what?”
“The projector, the projector.”
The egg rolled back and forth unhelpfully.
“I don’t know what that is,” she said.
“Honestly,” said Edgar the Seagull who somehow wasn’t the one who knew Stumpy. “Aunty Ida did warn me, though I didn’t care for her phrasing.”
Edgar hopped to the beveled edge of the desk and then dove, grabbing the cube from Stumpy with his feet, swooping around and landing neatly back on the desk almost before Stumpy realized what happened.
“Cool,” she said, and at a full mumble, “you always were fast.”
“What was that?” said Edgar, using his beak to edge the cube to a cube-shaped opening in the desk.
“Nothing,” said Stumpy, stealing a glance at the sign.
“Well,” he said, attention again on the screen, “it seems to be in order. Let’s get started.”
TO BE CONTINUED…
A Bit to Read 
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