Rebirth of the Indian Chemist.

Velikara, Kerala – 1710 CE

There are some things in life that are sacred.

Rain during planting season.

The last bite of jackfruit.

And not touching someone else's sealed scroll from a mysterious time-traveling engineer.

Devika violated that last one within twelve hours.

To be fair, I had hidden the scroll inside an old rice pot, beneath a false bottom of uncooked millet. And to be fairer, Devika had no business inventing "Surprise Rice Day" just to "clean out forgotten supplies."

"I told you not to touch it!" I shouted.

"You left it in a rice pot. That's an open invitation!"

"It was sealed!"

"And now it's resealed." She handed me the scroll with a new palm-leaf band—tied with jute and passive-aggression.

"You read it."

"I skimmed it. For safety."

"For curiosity."

"For your safety," she said, narrowing her eyes. "What if it was cursed?"

"Was it?"

"No. But it was really boring until the part about canal-lifting lock gates."

My shoulders slumped. "You broke my one rule."

"Please. You broke four water pots, two benches, and one cart axle last week. Let's not pretend you follow rules."

Before I could say anything else, a gust of wind slammed through the yard.

Then came the rain.

Not a drizzle.

A full-monsoon tantrum from the heavens.

In seconds, the sky turned slate gray. Thunder roared. Coconut fronds spun like startled birds. Our front shed's roof promptly flew into the next village.

"MY BLUEPRINTS!" I screamed.

"They're in the goat shed!" Bhairav shouted, running with a half-eaten mango in one hand.

"WHY?!"

"Because I was teaching the goat to recognize triangles!"

The next ten minutes were pure chaos:

Devika and I raced through the mud, hauling scrolls like emergency gold.

Bhairav tried to calm the goat (named Stone) who headbutted him into a ditch.

Lightning struck a palm tree, which immediately decided to nap sideways.

By the time the storm calmed, all three of us were soaked, scraped, and covered in palm ash.

I looked at Devika.

She looked at me.

We burst into laughter.

Because sometimes, history waits.

But rain doesn't.

That night, we dried the blueprints over a fire and tried not to think about how close we'd come to losing everything.

Devika handed me warm rice wrapped in banana leaf.

"I shouldn't have read the scroll," she said softly.

"Too late now."

"But I didn't copy anything. I swear."

"I know."

She hesitated. "Do you trust me?"

I looked at her—the girl who challenged me daily, protected me fiercely, and argued like a champion wrestler.

"With my life," I said.

She blinked.

Then smacked my arm. "Idiot."

Later, as the fire dimmed and Bhairav snored in the corner with Stone the goat curled beside him, I reread the scroll.

It held formulas. Aqueduct schematics. A warning about coastal erosion. And something more:

"If you reach the hills by age fifteen, you'll find the next blueprint hidden in the Ashoka Tree grove. If you're late, it may be lost."

The hills.

The inland path.

The next piece of the future.

I tucked the scroll into a new pouch. Sewn shut.

Let Devika try and read that.

I smiled.

Time wasn't just flowing now.

It was running.

And I had to keep up.