The rooster laid an egg containing its own divorce papers. Ling stared at the shell, which shimmered with temporal custody agreements etched in calcium carbonate. The yolk, when cracked open, spelled Who Gets the Dawn? in sulfurous cursive.
"This is your fault," she said, lobbing the egg at Arbiter's head. The godslayer child ducked, and the projectile hatched midair into a fully grown chicken lawyer demanding alimony in sunflower seeds.
Chu Feng leaned against the moon plow, now inexplicably pregnant with ticking sounds. "At least it's not another class-action from the tides. Remember when they sued for unpaid overtime?"
A sundial on the barn wall began bleeding mercury. The chickens organized a picket line.
The Timekeeper arrived via defective hourglass, his beard braided with leap seconds and his briefcase leaking centuries. He smelled of burnt almanacs and existential panic.
"Ms. Ling," he intoned, consulting a pocket watch that screamed when opened. "You stand accused of gross negligence in temporal stewardship. Exhibit A:" He produced a jar containing February 30th. "Exhibit B:" A moth-eaten timeline where Thursdays never ended. "And Exhibit C:" A cease-and-desist order signed by entropy itself.
Ling kicked the jar. February 30th escaped and began dating a confused leap year. "Your exhibits lack standing. That moth's clearly a paid witness."
The Timekeeper's pocket watch vomited procedural confetti. "The court disagrees!"
Arbiter chose that moment to ride through the cornfield on a stolen grandfather clock, shouting, "I'll save us with horological habeas corpus!"
He did not save them.
The temporal custody battle unfolded in reverse. Ling found herself:
Objecting to objections she hadn't made yet
Signing affidavits in disappearing ink
Being cross-examined by her own ghost from next Tuesday
Chu Feng's moon plow gave birth to twin sundials that immediately sued for emancipation. "They want weekends off," he reported, swaddling the squalling timepieces in statute scrolls.
"Denied," Ling growled, tossing them to the chickens for jury duty.
The scarecrow judge, now sporting a pocket watch monocle, declared the barnyard a sovereign chrono-nation. Its first law: All hay must be baled in parallel timelines.
During recess (which occurred during both opening and closing arguments), Arbiter tried to bribe the Timekeeper with counterfeit millennia. "They're vintage!" he insisted, waving a jar labeled Expired Eternity.
Ling sabotaged the grandfather clock's pendulum with Li Zichen's triage code. The resulting temporal hiccup:
Aged the chickens into pensioners demanding 401(k) worms
Deleted all adverbs from the farm's legal lexicon
Revealed the Timekeeper's secret career as a disco-era second hand
"This changes nothing!" he shrieked, his polyester suit flaring into a jurisprudential nova.
Chu Feng unplugged reality's extension cord.
In the darkness, the farm became a Schrödinger's courtroom—both lost and won until observed. Ling groped for equilibrium, her bioserver scars glowing like radioactive hour markers.
"Compromise," she offered the void. "We'll return stolen hours… mostly."
The Timekeeper's pocket watch swallowed itself. "75% restitution!"
"40%, and we keep the leap seconds as collectibles."
"Deal."
Dawn arrived (68% original flavor, 32% out-of-court settlement). The chickens retired to a timeline spa. The moon plow's sundial twins settled into community college astronomy courses.
Arbiter wore the grandfather clock as a chastened hat. "I'll be good," it chimed unconvincingly.
Ling found Chu Feng debugging the maple tree's calendar. "February's still missing a day."
"Let it sue." He kissed her temporal headache. "We've got precedent."
The music box played a lullaby in 7/8 time—a rhythm that made Wednesdays nervous and Fridays arrive tipsy. Somewhere beyond the almanac's grave, entropy sharpened its pencils.
The audits would continue.
The balance wobbled.
But here—between borrowed seconds and stolen sunrises—they let the chickens keep whatever time remained.