Timelike directions

 The house at Westrill, which went by different names depending on the direction you approached it from, was built atop a small rise.  Looking west towards it now, as the name suggested, it appeared to be ancient: it was black-beamed and white-plastered and, if it were a cottage, could easily be believed to have been built six or seven hundred years ago.  As it was it seemed to have two stories and a couple of outbuildings and so maybe had been built only two or three years earlier.  Smoke rose from all of its eight chimneys, which clustered together in the middle of the roof, creating a tiny grey-white cloud above the house.

Around it, daffodils were springing up from the grass of the rise, and the tiny river, the rill, that contributed to the house's name was running in full spate by my feet.  There was a distant lowing as cattle grazed nearby, but I couldn't see any of them and it was entirely possible that I was hearing them along the time-axis and they wouldn't be here for a few hours yet.

Justin smiled at me and I bit back my frustration.

"Cows?" he asked.  I nodded.

Justin is one of the Timeless Ones.  They have a proper name that matches with Schehdim and Seraphim but I'd forgotten it again.  It's not like I need to refer to his kind on a regular basis anyway, unlike the others.  He and his kind seem to have an effortless control over time; they can move around in it to suit themselves.  I haven't figured out yet what kind of changes they can effect but Justin seems interested in showing me.  There's something about a point-of-reference that is crucial: you can change things after the point-of-reference because that's the 'future' and you can't change the 'past' but after you cover that he starts getting mathematical and my head starts to swim.

"I can hear them, but not see them," I said.

"Point to them."

"I just said I can't see them!"  I pointed anyway in the direction the lowing seemed to be coming from.  He nodded.

"About a year away," he said.  He vanished for a moment and I realised, too late, that he must have walked off in a timelike direction for a better look.  He reappeared a moment later looking sweaty so I guessed that it must have been a fair distance there and back.  It was nice of him, I supposed, to put the gap in between his disappearance and reappearance so I knew what he'd done; he could just have seemed to have the knowledge already.  He was laughing now.  "You should definitely come back here in a year's time," he said.  "It's hilarious."

"Can't I go there now?" I asked, trying to see where he might have gone.  Looking timewards feels very weird to me, like trying to see the back of your own eyeball.  Sometimes it hurts, too.

"Only if I guided you," said Justin.  "You're getting better, but that's a long way to go by yourself.  At the moment.  But... let's come back in six months, you should be able to walk the other six by yourself then."

"Thanks," I muttered, feeling slightly useless.

"But anyway," he said, sitting down and let the water run over his hand.  "Tell me about the angels who want you dead."