The Smurfs That Canon Forgot, Chapter 5

“You’ve all aged by just around seven months” Father Time informed them all. The returned smurfs, along with Dreamy, had taken the trip out to his home that morning.

“So that’s how long we were time travelling for, hmm...” said Vanity as he gazed into his mirror. “Years pass and this face barely ages, how about that?”

“Well it certainly felt like forever!” Brainy snapped.

“You know… I really wish I could have gone travelling through time too… Some of those faraway times and places sound really smurfy” Dreamy admitted with a sigh. “Seven whole months full of pure adventure...”

“We didn’t know if we’d ever be able to smurf back home,” said Hefty sternly. “That made it kind of difficult to enjoy whatever places we went to. It wasn’t just “pure adventure”, Dreamy, it was like being constantly on the run.”

“It might just sound like fun and games to you in theory, but all the adventure in the world can’t beat being able to sleep in your own bed at night” Lazy added.

Handy glanced over at where Papa Smurf was engaged in conversation with Father Time before speaking in a low voice. “Towards the end of it all, Papa started getting a little – he was just under so much stress all the time. He could never get the right crystal combination. It’s about a one-in-a-million chance that he could have gotten it right on his own, or even with Grandpa’s help, after all. Of course he did his best to stay positive, and for the most part he succeeded – for a while. But there’s only so long even someone like Papa Smurf can keep that up in the face of constant failure, or that level of pressure. He seemed pretty miserable for a little while there. Grandpa had to wrestle those time crystals off him just to give him a break at times; he wouldn’t let anyone else touch them.”

Dreamy reflected on this. Yeah, it was hard to stay positive in the face of difficult odds, didn’t he know it. He’d lived out that reality along with the rest of the village that had been left behind. They kept up hope – until they couldn’t anymore. They knew that there was always the chance that the lost smurfs would return, but it was a very slim chance, and the more time that passed the more unlikely it seemed. They’d already held onto that possibility for so long that they had no choice but to put it to the back of their minds just to be able to keep moving forward in their lives. At length, they put it to rest, and they moved on, because what else could they do?

They’d all carried the hope within them throughout their days, and then they carried the grief that piled up when the hope ran out. And then, eventually, things seemed almost normal, or at least the version of “normal” that the remaining villagers had constructed for themselves.

And then, the missing smurfs had come back.

Normal? Who was Dreamy kidding… What had followed was a different, harsher status quo.

Was it a status quo? The circumstances had been volatile to say the least, but they were consistently volatile.

When he reached back into his mind, all those years before, to when Papa had been there for them all (before he wasn’t), the memories were pleasant. He’d been very content, and very happy, if not a little restless to explore the unknown. But all of his basic needs had been met, and on a fundamental level he was satisfied with the way things were and he’d felt safe.

Even back then, danger had been all around them. The smurfs had many enemies and there were many close calls that were had, but all of that usually worked out in the end. Dreamy had felt protected from danger, despite danger’s persistence, and he’d never been given much reason to feel otherwise. Nor had just about all the other occupants of the smurf village. That is, before Papa was gone and so many of their fellow smurfs were no longer in their lives.

The years that had followed had not been particularly pleasant, and not just because of the monumental task of coming to terms with the fact that seventeen smurfs were now gone, presumably forever. Dreamy didn’t like dwelling on those years very much. As much as there was talk of “swapping stories”, as much as the returned smurfs were eager to catch up on what they had missed… Some stories were better left untold. No use digging up some of those dark memories.

Dreamy wasn’t very attached to those years. He could do without them. No matter what Hefty said, he’d take the time travel over them any day. Would he trade several of the worst years of his life for seven months of time travelling and an incredible chance to see the world? Unequivocally. The uncertainty about not being able to return and “being constantly on the run” be damned.

“...Off in his daydreams again! Dreamy, Dreamy, Dreamy, when will you learn to keep your head in the conversation and not drifting off into the clouds?”

Dreamy found a smile forming on his face at that. Wow, I actually missed being lectured by Brainy. “Sorry, I zoned out for a moment there but I’m listening now.”

“I was suggesting that we should all do our best to go easy on Papa Smurf for a while. He’s been through a lot of stress, so let’s give him a chance to relax” Handy said.

“Yeah, if it wasn’t for that wizard that we found-”

“-That I found” Brainy corrected.

Hefty rolled his eyes. “It was just as well that he helped us out. We’re really lucky, otherwise we could have all been smurfed. I don’t know how much longer Papa could have kept on focusing on the time crystals for.”

“Well we’re not that lucky. That foolish wizard wasn’t supposed to bring us back several years late.” Brainy couldn’t help stating the obvious once more.

“...Anyway, the point is that Papa Smurf gets all of the rest that he wants and needs. Let’s make sure we don’t put too much on his plate” Lazy summed up.

“Oh, don’t worry, that shouldn’t be a problem” Dreamy reassured them all confidently.

***

It was true that Papa Smurf had struggled greatly when months had passed and there had still been no sign of getting closer to the correct combination of crystals that would return them all home to the right place and timezone. It was not that the entire experience had been bad – he did have plenty of good memories from the time travels, and more than once the other smurfs had convinced him to take week-long breaks if they had travelled to a particularly nice place. On other occasions, Papa himself would recognise that he was reaching his limits and would take the opportunity to actually enjoy and appreciate the place they had landed in. But all the while, he was desperate to see the rest of his little smurfs again. He missed them, and he missed the village. It was an overwhelming relief to finally be back.

He’d kept trying against the odds, but in the end it was not his own tinkering with the time crystals that had brought them all home, and just as well. The odds of his success had been overwhelmingly slim anyway.

Frankly, after the umpteenth unsuccessful attempt, part of him began to grow terrified that they’d really be lost in time forever. He didn’t fancy hopping through different (potentially dangerous) times and places for the rest of his life. When put into context, seven months of it wasn’t so bad compared to what could have been. Wasn’t bad at all.

He had done his best to hide his mounting despair from the others that had also been caught up in it all. Putting on a positive facade, even when it was difficult. Sometimes it wasn’t a facade. Other times, it became all too much at once and the facade would briefly give way to some of the negative emotions that lurked beneath.

Would he have ever given up? After, say, they aged fifty years with no results? One hundred? Would he have been able to watch Baby Smurf grow up with no set home? What would that be like? At least all seventeen of them – and Smoogle - would have always had each other, when everything else was in flux around them. If Baby Smurf grew up in an environment where his fellow smurfs were his only constant – well, that would become normal for him, perhaps. If they eventually made it back home, maybe Baby wouldn’t know how to deal with that. With having a set place to live. They’d all struggle to readjust if that much time had passed, he supposed.

What if in their travels they’d eventually all found a really good place, an especially wonderful place that they all loved dearly. Some kind of paradise where nothing was trying to hurt them, and they’d still have the freedom to leave at any time if they needed to or – wanted to, and to continue searching for the village. Safety and having a wonderful place to stay, or continue risking it all in the minuscule off-chance of finding their own home again?

None of this mattered now. But multiple possibilities had started plaguing him back towards the end of their journeys. It was over now, thank smurfness.

The hardest image he’d struggled with throughout the constant time travelling, however, had not been the idea that this was all his life would ever be for the rest of his days. He could live with that. No, what had chilled him the most was the thought of his little smurfs back home waiting patiently in the snow for him to come back, for everyone to come back. And none of them coming back.

Of something happening to everyone that had been left behind – some kind of fatal disaster striking the village – and he not being there for them. Unable to help them in any way, unable to prevent it, unable to stop it. He couldn’t have lived with that.