When Sasha is walking home from school, he stumbles across the smallest and most adorable dog in the world.
"So we're not going to kill her, we might be able to get her victims to wear iron bracelets but not reliably, we can... try to negotiate with her? Try to convince her that going back to Faerie and being a princess is a great idea? Open a portal under her feet to a world where a minute there is a hundred years here?"
"Convincing her to go back to Faerie or opening a portal both sound like good ideas."
Ow fuck —
"So it works," he says once he's caught his breath. "I'm gonna need help getting back up."
Yep that's fine it doesn't hurt that bad. He climbs the tree (Ow fuck ow) and pulls himself back through the portal.
When he's all the way through, Leo and Sasha unfreeze.
"Did it work?"
"Yeah, it did. We'll want to find one where the time thing goes the other way, obviously."
Marlo holds him and says, "I'm okay, hummingbird," very softly into his hair.
"That... is a problem, yeah, so far they've just been closing automatically when we come back. I'd say "send someone else with her with instructions to come back immediately and not tell her what's going on, it'll close when they come back" but then they'd have to deal with the time fuckery too."
"I'm not sure that that would work either, it might close when everyone who went in leaves."