Notes from a Time Traveller by Elke Stevens

Notes From a Time Traveller!

Belgium, from the early 1980s to the late 1990s.
The classroom moved too fast for the girl near the window.

When numbers flooded the blackboard, she could not hold onto them. Instructions arrived layered upon instructions: divide, copy, listen, hurry. A race she already knew she could not win.

Fluorescent lights overhead. Chairs scraped against the floor. Somewhere behind her, a clock ticked like a tiny mechanical threat.

Teachers called her distracted or disruptive, but the girl was not distracted.
She was overwhelmed!

Multiplication tables dissolved almost instantly. Phone numbers vanished before they settled. Verbal directions entered one ear and disappeared into static. Sometimes it seemed the classroom itself was moving through time differently than she was.

The Time Traveller observed quietly from somewhere beyond the glass. “She had her own questions for the operator”

Interesting, she thought.

The child remembers landscapes but not sequences. Meaning but not symbols.

Outside school, the same child could unfold a paper map and navigate unfamiliar streets with startling accuracy. She remembered places through atmosphere and landmarks rather than names. She danced instinctively but struggled to follow choreographed steps.

Inside the machine, a small red warning light began flashing:

CAUTION: SUBJECT MAY IN FACT BE CLEVER

Belgium, at the time, admired academic intelligence with almost religious devotion. Degrees carried status; arithmetic was treated as proof of worth, and children who learned differently were often discussed in silence, like factories discussing damaged machinery.

And they made sure she heard it.

For years, the past dragged at her feet.

Only much later would the Time Traveller understand the purpose of the journey.

She had not returned to change the child.

She had returned to offer empathy to the girl she once was.

© Elke T.B. Stevens 07/05/2026