SAGES IN SPACE: THE BEGINNING AT THE END OF THE WORLD

Try to allow what you don’t understand.

And so.

We begin at the end.

SAGES: A SPACE-TIME SAGA

from CA Ives

PART ONE

1. SHONA

Shona sits cross-legged on the floor of her dark room, focusing on her jagged breath, slowing her inhales and smoothing her exhales with deliberation. Her silhouetted posture exudes the controlled fury of a warrior; lean muscle, rod-straight spine, set jaw, fists clenched palm-upward on her knees. She slowly releases her grip, opening to the moment. Unconsciously, her tongue pushes on the back of her cut lip; she sucks in the leftover blood, iron’s bite reigniting a livid fire in her throat and belly. She focuses her breath again. Moon-glow shines through ornate wrought-iron from the window behind, cutting jagged shadows across her like a shredded document. Shona begins swaying gently, one torn strap of her top falling limply as she lifts her arms like an orchestral conductor, preparing to conduct her thoughts. The wave-reader diodes at her temples transmit and project her cerebration onto the wall in front of her.

SHONA (VO)

Sometimes hard men become powerful, sometimes powerful men survive by hardening themselves. Some shield their tender souls, but others have a rock there. It’s up to me to know the difference, it’s my failure if I don’t. 

It’s taken all I had to get here, to gain the freedom to at least choose the terms of my service. I’ve earned that right and tonight it was stolen. I can’t let that happen again. I need to get out. I need to get us all out. 

A loud “buzz” from the lobby abruptly interrupts her musings, startling her into a rigid, watchful stance. She holds perfectly still, sensing with all her senses. She hears bare feet pattering down the hall, then a quick knock on her door. She doesn’t move.

CANDY

Someone’s here. 

SHONA

So I hear.

CANDY

What is it?

SHONA

Can’t you tell? 

CANDY

Can’t you? Just grab the feed, okay? Please?

SHONA

 Yes, I’ll do it. 

Shona has barely recovered from her earlier experience, which she hopes to hide from the others for now, so she keeps her mind closed even though she knows it will hurt her triond’s feelings. She feels doubly unnerved by an unexpected visit so late without any intuitive warning. She’s afraid of who might be out there. 

Shona waves her hand, flicking the display to the feed for the front door, then sits, staring, arrested by confusion. She shakes her head, refocusing to understand what her eyes see. They see Flora. 

Flora was their mentor at the Sages learning pod, where Shona trained with Candy and Nell; the one who brought them together and started this whole life. She is all tied up with everything they purposely left behind. Four years after passage, none of them has any reason to expect Flora now, let alone randomly, on their doorstep, an hour past curfew. Shona feels deeply embarrassed to be caught off-guard. Flora is someone she should have seen coming a mile away. But she’s even more surprised that Candy’s in the dark. Candy always knows first. 

CANDY

What do you see?

SHONA

It’s Flora.

CANDY

But…that can’t be right.

SHONA

That’s the face I see. Older, though. She looks old.

(Silence as Candy processes this information that does not compute)

SHONA

Someone better let her in!

CANDY

I don’t want to. 

SHONA

I know. Something’s off.

CANDY

I just can’t. Can you?

SHONA

Nell will answer it.

CANDY

Yeah. Nell! 

The buzzer cries out again, somehow sounding more impatient this time. Another set of feet thunder down the hall, skidding to a thumpy stop outside Shona’s door.

NELL

Someone’s here.

CANDY/SHONA (at the same time) 

So I hear! 

(all laugh for a moment of enjoying each other)

CANDY

 Shona says it’s Flora.

NELL

No, that can’t be right. 

SHONA

That’s what I see on the feed. Flora’s on our doorstep.

NELL

Is someone going to answer it?

CANDY/SHONA (at the same time)

I’m not gonna answer it!

NELL

Aaaugh! Fine! I’ll go! Geez you two. Get it together. I’m not dealing with her by myself.

Shona sits perfectly still. She hears footfalls pat away. She makes no effort to understand the indecipherable voices through the comm. She ignores the warning alarms of Nell allowing Flora into the entry chamber. She focuses on her breath and the moment she inhabits in time and space. She hears the hiss and clunk of Decontamination, then the suck of vacuum seal opening and closing again behind Flora. Only then does she rise smoothly to standing, slowly stretch herself out, long and reaching; take another deep breath, and turn to the mirror. Shona touches her freshly fat lip, eyes flashing re-lit anger. Candy and Nell will see that, there’s nothing to be done. She pats at her hair and ties her torn strap, then throws on a kimono. She unlocks her seal, and enters the hallway.

Shona knows she should be curious what Flora is doing here, and how she arrived undetected, but instead, she finds herself feeling only the cold dread of certainty that everything has shifted, and nothing will be the same ever again. So what else is new, right? But she can’t sluff off the ominous foreboding that chills her fingers, toes, and nose, closing her throat and slicing her breath in half.

Shona is not zen. If the world is really shifting uncontrollably in the way she intuits, that really sucks. Tonight notwithstanding, and despite her angst, Shona knows that she lives a rare and comfortable life with access to many of her favourite things every day. The world might be ending, but she and her girls have carved out a gorgeous space in the middle of it, doing important work fending off nasty eventualities while smarter people figure out what to do. 

But do you trade too much? asks Mother Mae, always in her mind. Too much for what? she argues back. For freedom? Some control in an out-of-control world? Maybe that’s worth a chunk of soul. Maybe it tips the balance for Earth in the bargain. In the meantime we get a great place to live, regular tally, and we have each other. That’s all a million times better than anything I had before escaping to Sages. Most days, I’d say it’s at least an even trade. 

As usual this tirade silences, but fails to impress, her gnawing conscience.  

Shona knows better than to get attached to any specific reality, but she already feels grief welling in her heart for what she is about to lose, because she knows she is about to lose something important. What she knows, she knows, and when she truly knows like this, she’s never wrong. 

The others obviously sense something, too. Candy stands half-blocking the hallway to the common area, not moving forward in greeting like her normal, bubbly self, despite her long-standing relationship with Flora. Instead, her arms cross defensively across her chest. Shona scooches by her, squeezing her shoulders in a supportive mini-hug along the way. Candy touches her hand in thanks, but doesn’t move from the doorframe.  

Nell stands tall and strong in her functional, flannel pajamas. Shona doesn’t know why she’s surprised to see her triond take command; Nell always comes through in a crisis. Nell stands directly in front of Flora, subtly blocking her way, while Flora surveys them all like the Queen inspecting her troops. It irks Shona, that Flora feels justified to hold that expression here, in their own home. 

Flora’s eyes move over them, noting their positions with a subtle nod. Quickly, Shona moves to stand beside Nell, so close their arms touch from shoulder to elbow. Each leans just perceptibly into the other in solidarity. Shona feels briefly grateful that both Nell and Candy remain too preoccupied to notice her cut lip. Now isn’t the time for questions and I-told-you-so’s. Flora, on the other hand, doesn’t miss a thing. 

FLORA

Well, girls.

No one speaks for several beats. Flora’s assumed air of superiority falls away, and her impatience wins centre stage.

FLORA

Step back, let me by, I’m all sanitized.

The “girls” exchange uneasy messages in their glances. Shona believes she should be the one to invite Flora in, but she feels queasy with the desire to push this specter out of her home space. No one moves to welcome the late-night intruder. 

In the end, it’s Nell who steps up for all of them, but she’s shaky. In that moment, Shona feels Candy’s attention kick in, lighting up their entwined threads, so she relaxes into the connection, adding her strength to the umbilical feeding Nell. She feels relieved that Candy’s finally joined the show. 

NELL

 It’s a…surprise, you’re here, now. It’s a weird time to show up. 

FLORA: 

Weird time! 

SHONA

Or is this really just a casual visit out of the blue? 

FLORA

Out of the blue, into the black!

CANDY

Why are you here?

FLORA

It’s the end of the world as we know it, we’re out of time.

They stare intently, waiting for more specifics. Where is this going?

FLORA

Look, girls, I have one place to be. You’re in this with me now. Let’s sit down. 

Nell moves reluctantly aside, so Shona steps with her. As Flora crosses the threshold, the air in the room shivers with an almost-imperceptible shimmer of translucent pastel rainbow, but Shona doesn’t see it.

(rewind)

1. NELL

Nell sprawls on her cot casually beside the projection of Therran, who is in his own space, a thousand miles away. It’s the next best thing to being there, being over-air, and the quantum sensor-kits built into their comfy pajamas ensure a satisfying tactile response when they touch. There’s usually very little actual touching with Therran – he identifies Aut-Int, so even over-air stretches his boundaries. But he and Nell have an ease between them, evolved over two years of regular conversations, so when she strokes his arm like she’s doing right now, he is starting to enjoy it. What he needs most is just to feel interesting, while talking about what interests him most. That’s a rush and a rarity so important in his life that he doesn’t mind paying for it, especially since his research institute covers most of the sum. 

NELL

So, you’re saying, you can’t mess up the original timeline because there is no original timeline.

THERRAN

Exactly! There is just the timeline, period. It’s being created and exists all at once, saved in the current state, so any changes, including changes to the past and future, are already just reality. No matter what happens, it’s just the timeline. 

NELL

So, that’s why you think that your experiments with time aren’t dangerous? Time is always changing, in all directions, but we don’t notice so it doesn’t matter if you change it? 

THERRAN

Well…basically, yes.

NELL

So, do you think maybe that’s why everything feels so confusing, all the time? Because we can’t keep track of a reality that’s always changing?

THERRAN

Well…not quite, that’s not exactly where I was…but, don’t stop, you’re really close in your thinking. Keep going.

Nell doesn’t want to keep going. She’s tired and bored. Interested-bored, the worst kind of bored. She keeps thinking she’s going to get to some point in the conversation where she understands enough that she can just coast to where he’s headed, but she realizes now that she’s following Therran down a winding, rocky river of thought that may or may not have any plausible, useful outcomes in real life. Which is her job, of course, if she could just focus. 

Nell likes to believe that she doesn’t personally care much about why’s and how’s, but the truth is, she’s an intelligence junky. She vacillates between being too lazy to strive for understanding, and getting off on the mental gymnastics her Encounters demand. 

Nell took this extra gig for the tally to upgrade her over-air rig, but she always forgets how much it takes out of her, trying to keep up with Therran. At least, keep up enough to intuit what’s important to him and ask smart questions, then extract a pithy sentence or two from his answers to push his thinking. She can usually help him figure out when he’s onto something, and she knows for a fact he can attribute several breakthroughs last year to these sessions with her. Therran’s more effort than other Encounters: it’s a huge intellectual load, but the emotional load doesn’t correspondingly reduce. Quite the opposite. Navigating the emotional inside the intellectual is one of her specialties, after all, but that doesn’t mean it’s not difficult. This kind of high-maintenance gig, especially over-air, makes demands from Nell on every level while only tallying out at government rates plus status bonus. Right now, she just wants to go to sleep. It makes her push him a little.

NELL

Okay, well, I’ll say this – since Ahmed & Drinkwater’s Proofs, you scientists just keep getting closer and closer to accepting what we already know at Sages – reality is fluid. 

THERRAN

I won’t accept it. Their findings are impossible, their “proofs” hardly qualify, it’s not reproducible. 

NELL

But that’s part of the proof! Anyway, what if it’s not about proof? What if it just is? I was tested for what they call “innate comprehension of fluid reality” before being accepted into Sages. It’s something I know, not something I’ve learned. It’s just true. Like seeing the colour blue.

THERRAN

That doesn’t even make sense. 

NELL

We start from different places, but the outcome is the same, that’s the value here. When something I say doesn’t make sense to you, and you feel inclined to dismiss me, what choice are you making?

THERRAN

Ignorance. Of course. There is value in every viewpoint, there is something to be tested and found in every statement from someone I respect. 

NELL

Right?! You’re so aware, see how fast you got there? 

Nell knows his ego will need a bit more stroking and the topic will definitely require a refresh, but she’s having trouble rallying herself to meld with him enough to pull it off. Luckily, she hears a loud Buzz from the front door. 

NELL

Sorry, sounds like someone’s out front. Do you mind if I check?

THERRAN

Oh, we can finish up now, Let’s just plan the next session, does the 28th work for you, same time?

NELL

Um, can I book you later? I should really…

THERRAN

Sure, okay. Wait, I just want to say, thanks for listening. Sometimes I think I’m going crazy with what the science isn’t telling me, but when I explain it to you, and you understand me, it makes me feel like maybe I can keep going with the work, even if things don’t make sense. You help me make the world make more sense. So, you help the world. You know. In your own special way. By helping me.

NELL

Wow, well…I mean, thank you, for saying that. If you feel that way, maybe you could score me so…I get the higher credit, next time?

THERRAN

Er…I think they only cover the standard rate, so I have to give you a mid-grade. It’s the policy.

NELL

Okay, I get it. I know you’ll do what you can. Maybe a commendable note?

THERRAN

I’ll try. Thanks. 

He signs off abruptly, leaving her suddenly alone on the bed. Almost immediately, her wall flashes the standard credits transfer but she isn’t looking at that. Preoccupied by the jarring flip from emo-intellectual connection to commercial transaction, Nell forgets for a moment what precipitated the long-winded compliment and awkward exchange about credits. 

Nell flops on her back feeling deeply disturbed, in a way that she blames on Shona. Shona has been thinking in disturbing directions lately, pulling their entwined threads towards Emancipation. Unlike Shona, Nell has not reached top tier rates. Her portfolio of private Encounters tends to choose her for sympathetic intellectual stimulation, which is steady work at third-tier tally, and very demanding. This contrasts with Shona’s roster of high-powered manipulators, who seek her out for sensing and response practice. No conversation, more connection, for a lot more credit.

Nell doesn’t aspire to Candy’s natural talents, but she admits to herself, privately, that she’s jealous of Shona’s rapid progression. It’s a little galling to still find herself furthest behind. But, she doesn’t think about that. She is gaining ground every day. It’s a helpful side-benefit of her entwinement with the other two that she draws on Candy and Shona’s capacity as nourishment for her own growth. She feels her power still waking up, but for now, Nell works harder for fewer credits than any of their trio. Her financial position is not as secure. She’s years away from even starting to think of Emancipation, if there are even years left. Everyone knew that going in. 

CANDY (distant)

 Nell!

The buzzer sounds again, breaking Nell’s anxious preoccupation. She jumps to her feet, smacks the door to release the seal, and she’s halfway down the hall before she realizes she hasn’t even sensed who’s out front. She’s not exactly sure what time it is, but she knows it’s after curfew. She stops just short of ramming into Candy outside Shona’s door. 

NELL

Someone’s here.

CANDY/SHONA (at the same time) 

So I hear! 

(All laugh)

CANDY

 Shona says it’s Flora.

NELL

No, that can’t be right. 

SHONA

That’s what I see on the feed. Flora’s on our doorstep.

NELL

Is someone going to answer it?

CANDY/SHONA (at the same time)

I’m not gonna answer it!

NELL

Aaaugh! Fine! I’ll go! Geez you two. Get it together. I’m not dealing with her by myself.

Nell affectionately fumes about how she has to do the grunt work when they have so much more experience dealing with the unexpected. Some people are just do-ers, she thinks, and that’s her fate. She can’t leave something undone. 

NELL 

(using system tone, a specific pitching and enunciation associated with alerting and interacting with a digital system)

Comm.

A quick, shrill beep indicates the comm is on, but suddenly Nell doesn’t know what to say to their guest. A projection of Flora’s face flashes up on the closed front door. Magnified and illuminated from above by the harsh blue-white overhead light, Flora looks so much older that Nell feels shocked. 

NELL

Flora? Is it you?

FLORA

Let me in!

NELL

What are you doing here?

FLORA

After decon! Hurry! I’m almost gone!

NELL 

(using system tone)

Allow entry.

HOME SYS (VO)

Initiate decontamination?

NELL

Yes.

A loud warning beep sounds from every appliance and speaker in the living unit. Out front, the entry chamber inflates. On the closed door in front of her, Nell watches a full-sized projection-Flora walk her way through the maze of inflated tunnel that is the Entryway Decontamination Unit, or EDU. Nell continues watching Flora walk at a quick but even pace through the winding tube, exposing herself to a gauntlet of aerosol sprays, uv lights, and a few liquid mists. No needles, Nell notes with satisfaction. She finds it embarrassing when a guest gets poked. Sensors at every step light up meters and graphs on the side of the visual, letting Nell know which viruses, bacteria, and other contaminants are being targeted and whether they have been neutralized. By the time Flora winds her way to the actual front door, any bio-based threat she might have posed to the three of them is now, at least temporarily, rendered benign. Her risk score is 0.292, considered “Negligible”, so the system won’t lock her out. 

Flora steps forward, into a plastic space between the EDU and the door. The EDU begins deflating and retracting behind her, while the vacuum-sealed door slides open in front; suddenly, instead of a projection, Nell finds herself face to face with the real Flora. Yet, this is a Flora vastly aged. Nell shivers, and then she knows – or is it Shona’s knowing she feels, tweaking her strings – that something is really wrong. Everything has changed. 

Stepping inside, Flora catches and acknowledges Nell’s glint of sudden knowing, simply by meeting her eyes. Nell feels unnerved, and suddenly small, cold, and alone. Instantly, Shona slides up beside her, lending her physical and moral support. 

FLORA

Well, girls.

No one speaks for several beats. Flora’s assumed air of superiority falls away, and her impatience wins centre stage.

FLORA

Step back, let me by, I’m all sanitized.

The “girls” exchange uneasy messages in their glances.  Nell feels like she needs to say something, but can’t make words come out of her mouth. She feels an unreasonable resistance to having the woman come any deeper into their sanctum. Candy transmits uncharacteristic dismay, and Shona’s as stiff as a board pressed up beside her. Thinking of her trionds, Nell suddenly becomes stronger, bolstered, connected. She feels their power flowing through their shared threads, and knows she is not alone. Now, she can speak.  

NELL

 It’s a surprise, you’re here, now. It’s a weird time to show up. 

Flora: 

Weird time! 

SHONA

Or is this really just a casual visit out of the blue? 

FLORA

Out of the blue, into the black!

CANDY

Why are you here?

FLORA

It’s the end of the world as we know it, we’re out of time.

They stare intently, waiting for more specifics. Where is this going?

FLORA

Look, girls, I have one place to be. You’re in this with me now. Let’s sit down. 

Nell moves reluctantly aside. As Flora crosses the threshold, the air in the room shivers with an almost-imperceptible shimmer of translucent pastel rainbow, but Nell doesn’t see it. 

1. CANDY

Candy moves gracefully through a series of flow-stances that usually balances and centers her being, but she’s unusually distracted by a ripple of discontent regarding her next Encounter, Louis. Candy has never experienced possessiveness or jealousy. She loves having fun with so many different personalities, in so many different ways, that she can’t imagine ever locking her feelings in one place. It’s not in her nature. But she’s been the object of possessiveness and jealousy enough times that the signs don’t escape her. Over the past several sessions, Louis has started mentioning the future, as if they will be in it together. He suggested that he could improve her situation if she cleared her other empathy ties. He sent her a gift of a single orchid, something very rare and delicate, a responsibility she never asked for. Candy feels distaste growing, like the tang of metal under her tongue. She has zero tolerance for anything she’s not actively looking forward to, and she is not looking forward to Louis. Immediately decided, she touches the wall, bringing up the light display, and cancels his session without explanation. She also blocks him from making any more. Candy picks up the orchid and places it, pot and all, into her wastespace. 

The instant she’s done, Candy feels the woosh of relief and excitement that tells her she’s made the right choice. Louis’s loss is…her eyes scroll over her waiting list…Ellian’s gain. She smiles at the picture of her next new Encounter on the wall in front of her, tummy fluttering with possibilities of fresh connection. 

Candy keeps a rotating roster of just three slots, no more, protecting the rest of her time like a mother bird protects the nest. Her overflowing waiting list for Encounters doesn’t tweak any guilt – she gives exactly what she owes, with love and light and openness. Candy’s astonishing capacity for love, light, and openness inspires almost universal attraction, and at the same time, protects her from entanglements. Candy sees exactly what people are. She loves who she’s with, fully, deeply and cleanly in the moment, without any need or expectation. When they go, she doesn’t think of them at all, until she’s happy to see them again next time. She earns top credit plus double-bonus and it doesn’t cross her mind that it could be any different, because she knows she’s exceptional. She never doubts what she is – a playful love magnet. She’s here to engage with the beauty, have fun, and contribute to the peace, while first and foremost piecing herself together. She never wavers in this prime directive. 

Relieved of the burden that was Louis, Candy returns to stretching, this time engaging strength poses, but a mind-worm continues weaving anxiety through her brain and body, telling her something is off. It’s not just Louis, then, it’s something bigger. She uses her body as an antenna, feeling out into the world for what is scratching at her, disturbing her quest for serenity. But reaching outside the living unit, she encounters a psychic wall, as though someone has locked her in, or locked something out. Someone is psychically protecting the living unit from the outside. The cold fear in her gut feels unfamiliar, she’s so rarely uncertain. She feels blind, unable to tell who or what is blocking her, and whether it’s helpful or malevolent. She takes deep breaths, recognizing a shift she can’t understand. 

The front buzzer sounds, an inevitable culmination to her disquieting contemplation. Closing her eyes to see, Candy gets a vision of snakes, or eels, or something slithery under human skin; dead eyes, an aura of buzzing flies. She doesn’t understand who or what she’s intuiting at the door. It’s not a person, not completely. What she does know, without any doubt, is that whomever is standing on the threshold is about to change everything. She unseals her door and heads reluctantly for Shona’s space. Shona will know what to do. But the door is closed, and Shona’s mind stays locked. Candy feels abandoned; she knocks. 

CANDY

Someone’s here. 

SHONA

So I hear.

CANDY

What is it?

SHONA

Can’t you tell? 

CANDY

Can’t you? Just grab the feed, okay? Please?

SHONA

 Yes, I’ll do it. 

Candy knows she could have pulled up a feed for herself, but she’s reluctant to actually see, in real life, what she’s sensed in vision. She’s soft, that way, she doesn’t like to see the ugly with her eyes. 

CANDY

What do you see?

SHONA

It’s Flora.

CANDY

No. That can’t be right. 

SHONA

That’s the face I see. Old, though.

Candy tries to reconcile what she intuits with what Shona sees. She feels like she’s missing something obvious. She longs briefly for the near-serenity of ten minutes ago. 

SHONA

Someone better let her in!

CANDY

I don’t want to. 

SHONA

I know. Something’s off.

CANDY

I just can’t. Can you?

SHONA

Nell will answer it.

CANDY

Yeah. Nell! 

The buzzer cries out again, somehow sounding more impatient this time. Nell appears in the hallway, barreling down on Candy but stopping just short of slamming her into the door. Nell wobbles with momentum; Candy smiles at the cuteness of her loved-one’s clumsy exuberance. 

NELL

Someone’s here.

CANDY/SHONA (at the same time) 

So I hear! 

(All laugh briefly, enjoying each others’ company)

CANDY

Shona says it’s Flora.

NELL

No, that can’t be right. 

SHONA

That’s what I see on the feed. Flora’s on our doorstep.

NELL

Is someone going to answer it?

CANDY/SHONA (at the same time)

I’m not gonna answer it!

NELL

Aaaugh! Fine! I’ll go! Geez you two. Get it together. I’m not dealing with her by myself.

Candy slowly follows Nell’s faster pace down the hallway, stopping at the entry to the common area. She feels like an invisible barrier keeps her from crossing the space to the front door, where Flora-not-Flora waits on the other side. 

NELL 

(system tone)

Comm.

HOME SYS

(quick shrill beep of activation)

Candy watches the feed flash Flora’s face up, noting the deeper lines and rougher skin of someone aged fifteen or twenty years, not the four it’s been since they saw their mentor last. She can’t sense the Flora she knew, as though a radio signal has blocked her. She senses only something that feels vaguely like decay and smells like old flowers.

NELL

Flora? Is it you?

FLORA

Let me in!

NELL

What are you doing here?

FLORA

After decon! Hurry! I’m almost gone!

NELL 

(system tone)

Allow entry.

HOME SYS (VO)

Initiate decontamination?

NELL

Yes.

A loud warning beep sounds from every appliance and speaker in the living unit. Out front, the entry chamber inflates. Candy doesn’t watch Flora’s progress through the labyrinth. Instead, she is astral-scanning out of the living unit, into the street, trying to find the rest of the world and failing. 

Candy is so lost in her searching she barely acknowledges Shona’s quick squeeze as she pushes by to go stand beside Nell. Candy realizes that she just assumed Nell was fine, and chastises herself for not picking up sooner on her triond’s unconfident vibes. Nell comes across so together and on top of things that Candy often forgets how much younger and less experienced she is. 

FLORA

Well, girls.

No one speaks for several beats. Flora’s assumed air of superiority falls away, and her impatience wins centre stage.

FLORA

Step back, let me by, I’m all sanitized.

The “girls” exchange uneasy messages in their glances.  Candy gives up her futile search for life beyond the barrier of their living space so she can focus her energy on bolstering her trionds. Immediately, their entangled threads brighten to full colour. All three stand taller, feel stronger, think more clearly, and understand more implicitly the connections between their feelings and the sensory input around them. They sense each other more keenly, but that doesn’t mean Candy feels any less discombobulated; if anything, she’s sharing her strength of stability to offset their unbalanced energy. But whatever is about to happen, she knows that the three of them will face it as a cumulative force, stronger together. Not for the first time, Candy thanks her lucky stars that she found these two. Together they are more complete.  

NELL

It’s a surprise, you’re here, now. It’s a weird time to show up. 

Flora: 

Weird time! 

SHONA

Or is this really just a casual visit out of the blue? 

FLORA

 Out of the blue, into the black!

CANDY

Why are you here?

FLORA

It’s the end of the world as we know it, we’re out of time.

They stare intently, waiting for more specifics. Where is this going? 

FLORA

Look, girls, I have one place to be. You’re in this with me now. Let’s sit down. 

Candy sees Nell step reluctantly aside, Shona glued to her side. As Flora crosses the threshold, the air in the room shivers with an almost-imperceptible shimmer of translucent pastel rainbow. Only Candy sees it, and she doesn’t doubt her eyes. Reality has shifted. 

1. TRIO

Shona and Nell move in unison, sitting together on the sofa across from the pert, puffy chair where Flora now perches like a diver at the edge of a board. Her tiny, bird-like frame, all angles and sharp edges, exudes a coiled strength, ready to spring at any moment. 

Although they leave her spot open, Candy doesn’t join the party, turning herself only slightly towards them as she addresses Flora directly from the doorway. 

CANDY

 Where are we?

The question should sound odd, as they clearly sit in their own home, but Flora regards her without surprise or subterfuge. 

FLORA

 In a pocket.

As if Flora’s appearance isn’t enough, this proclamation hits two of them with a suddenness they’re not used to anymore. They usually see news coming. Time pockets are still theoretical; real, but not actual. Like balloons pressed together, sub-planck “momentins” of time touch and affect each other with some degree of elasticity, but never overlap. The infinitesimal bubbles of time-space caught between their attracted membranes, the pockets, do exist, proven with inference instruments years ago, but as far as most of the world is concerned, no one has ever put this knowledge to practical use. A momentin can’t even be teased out and measured, in real life. 

The idea of being “in” a pocket doesn’t make any logical sense from Nell or Shona’s perspective, but Candy knows too well the truth and implications of Flora’s statement. The other two startle to feel her fury at finding them all where she swore she would never be again. Candy’s rare anger feels as incomprehensible to her trionds as the science of a pocket. Shona tries to understand, but Nell can’t focus on anything but catch-up. 

Confused and frantically feeling outwards, beyond the walls of the living unit, Nell realizes what the other two have already acknowledged – a kind of nothing that has never existed for her, like she’s entered a silent chamber that is also a solid wall of living flesh, breathing and jostling the boundaries of her psyche. 

Nells’ mind jumps back from the unfamiliarity; she is now wondering how time works inside a pocket, and what implications that might have on their corporeality, to be morphing “When”, “Where”, and “What”. She thinks, did we somehow bring a copy of time into a pocket? What about the pockets between momentins that we’re experiencing inside the pocket? What do NOW or EXPERIENCE or INSIDE even mean? Are we still physical or is this all… She shakes her head, catching herself running down the wrong rabbit-hole, when her trionds ask the real question of the hour.

CANDY/SHONA (at the same time)

 Why?

FLORA

You three stayed intact, your pacts turned binding. 

The cryptic statement doesn’t answer their question, nor ask them one. 

Candy watches from her door frame, gently feeling ahead to see where things are going, but finding a vague, foggy static where the near-future-probables should be. 

Shona narrows her eyes and pushes protectively into Nell’s arm, instinctively angry that she can’t intuit more about what’s happening or block Flora’s clear insight into their personal workings. 

Nell feels Shona’s anger as protective, while Candy’s furious undercurrent only makes her more afraid. 

Flora’s eyes flick over each of them in turn as though watching the whole show inside their bodies.

FLORA

I see you’re entwining. 

CANDY/SHONA (at the same time)

 Entwined.

Flora’s voice takes on an increasingly raspy quality; painfully dry, with a wheeze and whistle. She ignores this infirmity as she speaks with increasing difficulty and breathiness.

FLORA

Entwined, then! My! The only trio from your pod to try the bind. Félicitations! A rare thing is a valuable thing. 

NELL 

Let me get you some tea! 

(system tone, ignoring Flora’s gestured objections)

Hot tea to the guest

HOME SYS

(Chimes)

FLORA

(gruff dissolving into incredulous hilarity)

There’s just no point. No time. Oh, ha! Ha! No time! No time like the present, eh, girls? No time! 

Flora seems to be sharing a joke with herself. Candy finally moves to Nell’s other side, sitting on the sofa to face this unreadable, bizarro-Flora. She reaches behind Nell, swiftly pinching the back of Shona’s tricep, making her triond jump and wince in alarm before quickly cluing in. Candy pets the sore patch gently, then cups her hand on Shona’s arm, fingers wrapped around her muscle, palming the pinch spot. The pulses of muscle and palm synchronize, meld. She presses her forearm into Nell’s back. Immediately, all three women feel more flow in their connection, more unity in their response, their minds able to begin accessing the shared Mind of Three. 

In the same instant, like a glitch, Flora’s raspy laughter devolves into a dry choking sound. She covers her mouth delicately while wracked with violent coughing. Nell watches in horror as one of Flora’s canine teeth lands on the floor by her foot like a portent. Flora clamps her lips closed into a thin line and kicks the tooth under her chair.  

A trolley rolls from the kitchen doorway, parks itself beside Flora’s chair as an end-table, and slowly elevates a small, half-full cup of steaming liquid to hand-height. Flora ignores it. However, her voice has regained some strength and power, and she is back to business. 

FLORA

 I am here with a proposal. Proposition. Communication. An opportunity that you’ve already taken. Girls, Earth is done.

NELL

What do you mean, done?

FLORA

Done like dinner! Earth is destroyed. Will be destroyed. Has been, will be, ever was, done. Fried! Ablaze!

(laughs again, then stops immediately)

But you, my beauties, have been saved. Are being. Saved.

Nell understands that her calm is only a piggy-back calm. It’s clear to her that, even though her trionds remain as in-the-dark as she is about the specifics of what’s happening, the other two are not surprised. Last to the party again, she thinks fleetingly. They knew enough to be prepared for the worst, and she missed it. Even now, she’s only avoiding a complete meltdown because they are holding her in flow. Their energy feels like a sedative, or a leash, but there’s something nagging her mind. 

Earth. That’s, everything. Everyone! Every One. Of course they aren’t as affected. Shona’s already lost anyone she cared about besides their trio, and Candy’s teflon spirit treats anyone outside their unit with the light weight of non-attachment. But Nell still has parents, two brothers, people she once cared about. One person in particular, the one who still matters most of all, even after everything – Pash. She throws up a fence around Pash in her mind, keeping her thoughts for herself. 

Nell can feel the other two drawing her focus back to the room, the Now, what is going on, but her sudden, violent grief at Flora’s news drags her sideways, knocking her out of flow. She experiences a desperate unreality overtaking her, blocking her connection, and she welcomes it. She wants to think for herself, with her own mind, about how she feels about what’s happening. She wants to be upset, not calm, in the face of news that is impossible to accept.

Shona feels Nell slipping and tries harder to grasp her energy, force her to stay in their shared flow, but only manages to increase resistance and friction that widen the rift. Candy realizes they’ve lost Nell and turns her energy to calming Shona – the two of them need to be strong in connection before they try for Nell again. 

Let her process, gentle, patience, Candy emanates to Shona, who sees the logic but can’t reconcile the counter-intuitive demands it makes from her own current state of agitation. Instinctively, Shona’s energy flails aggressively to grab for Nell again, but as Candy predicted, this only creates ripples and waves that push their triond further away, straining their tenuous connection until it snaps. Nell is no longer with them. 

Worse, Shona finds herself in danger of losing connection; her frustration with Nell’s weakness, and her own failure, dangerously shake her control. She feels into Candy’s hand on her arm, focuses on the pulse between them and her breath, fighting to regain control, knowing that fighting is the opposite of control. She lets Candy’s waves wash over her and synchronizes her breathing to her love. She holds on for dear life. 

All of this internal processing happens almost instantly, but it’s not lost on Flora. She sees the cracks in their armor and she knows where the weak link sits, right in the middle. Out of nowhere, she flicks open a light-contract on the table between them, directly in front of Nell, red light blinking around the tiny, sharp pin that takes blood consent. 

1. NELL

FLORA

Sign here, chickadees, and let’s fly!

As Flora speaks, Nell sees her former mentor’s mouth elongate and wobble, her voice distorted. Darkness fills in the periphery of Nell’s vision, narrowing her focus to Flora. It’s just the two of them, Flora and Nell, joined by a ray of light. Flora speaks directly into her mind, disconcertingly mouthing the words in an exaggerated way, but a second behind. 

FLORA

Time is done, little one – decide! Your souls end here, or your time gets glorified. You’re chosen for our voyage, your gifts have bought your way. See the universe or stay, and be vaporized. Decide!

Simultaneous to these words, Nell sees, clear as if they’re in the same room, the curled, sleeping form of her first lover, Pash, hand tucked innocently under eir chin. Her heart leaps with recognition and tenderness. Immediately Nell knows with a deep knowing that Flora is making a promise – if she gives her consent, Pash can be saved, too. She doesn’t need to know how that’s possible to know it’s true. Around her, the living unit dissipates, until she exists only in the tunnel stretching from her to Flora, the contract shining between them. Nell feels a pull, like an opposite wind, tugging at the back of her head and arms. She reaches briefly for Shona and Candy but they have somehow receded behind her, as the apartment begins to take the shape of a donut with Flora as the hole. In the distance of Nell’s mind she feels Shona reaching for her, but this time she doesn’t reach back. 

Nell feels a fleeting warm pull from Candy brush along her cheek, but it’s like a sunbeam in a pool, quickly washed away. All she sees now is Pash and Flora juxtaposed, and, wavering large-as-life on the table, the glowing pin. Before she knows what’s happening, Nell sees her finger moving forward, not in slow motion as much as it seems like the pin is moving back at the same speed her finger moves forward, so she’s always pushing her finger forward to be pricked, but never reaching the prick. 

SHONA

(distant and elongated)

No, wait! 

Nell hears Shona as though from a far distance, then feels herself physically yanked back, Shona’s vice grip on one side and Candy’s desperate claws scratching her other arm. At the same moment, Flora comes suddenly and strongly into firm focus. Time speeds up – faster than possible, Nell falls forward, her finger slamming down hard on the pin and her forehead smashing into the table. 

Nell gasps back into real time as she feels the pain of the prick, sharper and more vivid than she ever could have expected. Hot pain races from the puncture, encases her whole finger, expanding to her thumb and other digits, one by one, burning down the outside meat of her hand, like a poison spreading. She shakes her hand like she can shake the pain away as flames lick into her wrist, a glove of throbbing. The opposite-wind pulls harder behind her. Nell blindly grasps for Shona with her burning hand, clutching on with relief and scrabbling for Candy somewhere on the other side. She feels a surge of love as Candy’s arms find her. Connected physically, the three hold each other tight as Flora turns inside out from her mouth, sucking them into her like a vacuum hose.  

1. SHONA

FLORA

 Sign here, chickadees, and let’s fly!

Shona realizes immediately what’s being asked. Blood consent means a master, someone willing to buy their time, assume their ticket. What will be required and expected? Will they ever have Emancipation? She feels tugging on her back as though her molecules are being magnetized out of her body. The textures in the room flatten, lines deepening, like a comic-drawn overlay on the space. Shona abandons her attempts to reach Nell. She still feels Candy’s palm pulsating on her arm, like it’s the only solid place in the room. But her own arm feels further and further away, like it is receding into imagination. Suddenly, with a roar in her ears, her vision narrows to a tunnel where she can only hear and see Flora. 

FLORA

You’ve been chosen, be delighted, you’re special to a god. Our master is magnificent, you won’t regret the bond. 

SHONA

There are no gods and I am my only master. 

FLORA

Then you choose to die? Three lives? Or four, or more. 

Shona resents the pressure to process so many implications so quickly. She hates having no information when her life is at stake. But solid at her core she knows that she cannot be a slave again. She will not have her body turned back into a puppet, her mind clawing its cage door day after day, year after year. She’d rather die.  

FLORA

You are needed, you are called. Not subsumed, just enthralled! Only your idea of freedom enslaves you. Be everything you meant to, and so much more. Isn’t that what your loved souls died for?

Shona bristles with indignation that Flora would use her grief and guilt to manipulate her, but Flora has no time for her indignation. She waves her hand in front of Shona’s face like a magician disappearing an invisible handkerchief. 

FLORA

A split second decides it, your blood oath now to bind it. There really is no choice you know. Let’s go.

Shona hesitates. This choice is impossible. Is she ready to die, to stop being, now? Is that better than taking a chance of becoming beholden and trapped by whatever or whomever is making this escape possible? If anyone knows that death is not the worst thing, it’s Shona. She is well aware that some lives are not worth living, and that not all death is easily obtained when needed. Yet, there’s no time for hesitation. Suddenly entering her field of vision, she sees Nell’s hand moving towards the pin. 

SHONA

No, wait! 

Shona grabs for Nell with all her might, dislodging her connection with Candy in the process, but she only manages to knock Nell into the table, where Nell’s finger slams down directly on the pin, as her forehead smacks the glass. Fighting the strengthening pull backwards, Shona grabs for Nell, just as Candy latches on from the other side. Shona feels a surge of power as the three come together, a molecular level bond holding them as one unit. The Entwinement. Even in the midst of magnetic erosion dragging harder and faster, Shona smiles with satisfaction. Live or die, she is one of three. Her smile flattens to her flattening face. It feels to Shona that she is becoming two-dimensional, surface, all substance lost to the time-space vacuum. She holds onto her trionds for dear life, as Flora turns inside out from her mouth, sucking them in like a black hole.  

1. CANDY

FLORA

Sign here, chickadees, and let’s fly!

Candy watches Flora connecting into her trionds with a mixture of horror and exasperation. She can see right through the smoke and mirrors Flora weaves, so she knows that Flora is creating some kind of warped reality in their minds, blocking their connections. She’s disappointed that they let down their guard and left her stranded. The strong barriers that Flora’s erected obstruct Candy from the two minds she’d hoped could never lock her out. Both Nell and Shona sit slack-jawed, pie-eyed, caught in Flora’s mind web, while Candy watches, powerless. Suddenly, Flora turns her face and spears Candy with her eyes.

FLORA

Come on, Candy girl, you know this game. Planets end, so you jump another train. This is premium, first class caviar. Do your girls a favour, stay together. I can’t hold tether here forever. 

CANDY

It doesn’t matter what I say, Shona will never agree.

FLORA

Would she doom you all to scatter? It’s better, if you choose together. But really, no matter. 

CANDY

What do you mean, no matter? Is this a choice or not?

FLORA

 As you say, three entwined! I don’t need all of you to sign. Three for one! Nell signs, you’re done. 

Candy feels the sickening truth of Flora’s assertion clunk down in her stomach. That’s the nature of entwinement – if Nell gives blood consent, she commits them all. Candy tries to warn Shona, but despite a shared pulse, she can’t find even a thread to access Shona’s mind. Too late, she sees Nell bending towards the pin. Instinctively, Candy grabs for Nell’s arm but misses, instead leaving a long scratch that fails to break the spell. She sees Nell pitch forward, finger into pin, forehead cracking on the tabletop. Candy’s heart fills with fear, as a strong matter-distorting vacuum yanks her from behind, the unstable pocket paradox collapsing in earnest. With tremendous effort, Candy exerts against the force, grabs Nell, and fastens onto Shona, clutching them as close as she can get while the vacuum wind roars around them. She feels their energy click in, three as one. Candy closes her eyes and hangs on tight as Flora turns inside out from her mouth, sucking them in like an open airlock.  

PART TWO

1. NELL

Before she even opens her eyes, Nell knows Pash is here. She feels her first lover like she feels the beat of her own heart. Pash’s presence sears and balms in a crashing wave of being that floods over Nell’s senses. Love found, love lost, love never comprehended in the first place. Pash. Here. Wait, where?

Nell keeps her eyes closed, feeling into the space around her body, realizing she has no idea where she is. Whatever rectangle of atmosphere she and Pash occupy, it’s small – maybe fifteen square metres, contained and blocked. She feels a tightness in her chest like there’s not enough air in the room; her breath gets shallow, then she is gasping, tearing at her throat, leaping from the cot where she’s been lying. She lands roughly on her knees on a hard, metal floor, panic rising. She feels the walls she hasn’t even seen yet closing in on her. She is not used to being confined. She has always been able to reach out as far as she wants – beyond her room, beyond her locality; eventually, even beyond Earth. She feels ravaged with claustrophobia. 

PASH

Nell? 

Slowly, Nell opens her squeezed-shut eyelids. Pash has crowded eimself into the back corner of eir cot, back against the wall, arms wrapped around eir knees, shaking like a leaf while rocking back and forth.

PASH

Nell? What’s happening? What are we doing here? 

Pash in distress shifts Nell immediately into savior mode, shoving claustrophobia aside and clearing her mind. She jumps to her feet but Pash cringes back, afraid. More slowly, Nell moves to sit at the opposite end of Pash’s cot. Pash tolerates this. 

NELL

 I don’t know, I don’t know, Flora came, and she said…

Pash just stares, like Nell’s a ghost. Ei mutters to eimself.

PASH

Dream, dream, dream, this is a dream.

NELL

 I’m sorry, I think…I think that…

A flash flies into Nell’s mind, a vivid, fast-forward recounting of the last scene with Flora, her announcement that Earth was ending, the searing pain of a finger pricked, a forehead smash, a whirl of vacuum space. Suddenly Pash falls to eir side, keening and crying so loudly it reverberates off the walls of the small, metal, room.

PASH

Gone! Gone! Everything’s gone! Everyone…everyone…

Nell realizes that, frayed and aged as their connections are, she is still transmitting when it counts. Pash saw everything. Ei continues wailing, shaking, rocking, fists crushing into streaming eyes.

NELL

You saw that? After all this time? I’m sorry! I didn’t think…Pash…hey, hey. Sweet Pash. Please. Just breathe.

Nell tries to patch more deliberately into the connection she and Pash once shared, to help her loved-one stabilize, but Pash’s defenses kick in, and eir energy repels Nell like sharp porcupine needles.

PASH

Don’t touch me! 

Nell pulls back the hand that has barely reached out, as though she’s been burned. Pash glares at her, eir voice a bitter hiss.

PASH

But not you, right? You’re not gone. Why aren’t you gone? It should be you, not them. Not Earth. What did you do? Why did you bring me here? Let me out! Let me out!

Pash lunges for Nell, fists up, and it’s all Nell can do to roll out of the way and steady herself, ready to deflect the next blow, before that blow comes. Pash lashes out viciously but clumsily, and Nell’s muscle memory has no trouble avoiding contact. She weaves effortlessly out of the way. 

NELL

Calm down! 

Nell jumps back from the cot, steps smoothly behind Pash, and quickly restrains eim in a body hold. Pash immediately slumps in resignation, and Nell holds eim more kindly, letting her love shower over Pash like a warm waterfall. Pash collapses into Nell’s arms; Nell sits on the cot with Pash, holding eim closely, stroking eir hair and whispering reassuring sounds.

NELL

Shh, shh, I know, it’s just too much. It’s just too much.

PASH

Yeah.

NELL

I don’t really know what’s going on.

Unexpectedly, an invisible door slides open on one wall, revealing a young teen, maybe fourteen or fifteen, with black, pixie cut hair atop five feet of compact grace. Almond eyes shine out from perfect caramel skin above sharp cheekbones. A face beau ideal, youth personified, posture perfect. The teen steps into the room with an air of authority, and the door slides back into wall. 

BUD

What a ruckus. You’ll bring down the house. Hush!

NELL

What? We don’t know where we are. Who are you?

BUD

I’m Bud. Well, of course you don’t know. You just arrived. Don’t make a bunch of noise. No need to draw any more attention.

NELL

Where are we?

BUD

At Sages, of course!

NELL

This isn’t Sages. This feels like a prison cell. On a space ship.

BUD

Ha! Sages in space!

Having delivered the line with a dramatic flare meant to signal shared reference, Bud seems visibly deflated facing blank stares. They shake their head sadly like a comic disappointed in the audience. 

BUD

It’s not a cell, it’s a holding…unit, till you sort yourselves out, in case there’s anything unsavory to process before you pollute the rest of the space. Like, for instance…

Bud gestures to Pash, who slumps in Nell’s arms like a fresh corpse, completely checked out.

BUD

Your friend looks like a weak transition. I’m surprised we took that one at all. You must have cut a great deal. Here, let me help.

Without waiting for permission, Bud takes Pash under the arms and pulls eim onto their lap. Despite their small stature, Bud demonstrates surprising strength, moving Pash as easily as a paper doll. With their chin resting on Pash’s head, Bud intones a soft throat-humming, massaging Pash’s temples. Slowly, Pash’s cheeks take on a healthier hue. Nell can feel Pash’s electrolytes replenishing and the familiar glow that was missing from eir energy patterns returns. Though Pash still rests, eyes closed, the rest seems peaceful, a small smile playing on eir lips. 

BUD

There. See, all better. Okay, time to wake up!

Bud claps their hands once, and Pash opens eir eyes. Ei sits up, calmly looking around, taking in the small, enclosed, metal room. Eir eyes rest on Nell, then scoot away quickly.

PASH

Why is she here? 

BUD

I hear she saved you. The Earth was ending. She had a choice to make, and she chose you. So, maybe the question is more – why are you here?

Pash narrows eir eyes.

PASH

Chose me? Well, that’s new.

Nell bristles. Pash has it backwards. 

BUD

Don’t worry, Nell, ei’s just in transient shock, no filters. That’s not all ei feels about you. Pash, look inside, find your love for Nell. You’re going to need it. Time to pull together!

The deep command lacing the teen’s voice reels Nell’s spirit into obedient acceptance, but Pash just stares. Bud takes Pash’s hand, turning it palm-up, softly tracing patterns along eir fortune lines while whispering a wordless song. Pash starts to pull back but almost immediately becomes lulled. Pash’s face softens. Eir eyes slide closed. Eir mouth relaxes, then the corners creep upwards, just a few millimetres, enough to activate a dimple on the left. Beloved dimple! For that moment, Nell’s heart strains to re-connect. Pash seems to recover eimself, shaking eir head and sharply pulling back eir hand. Ei takes a deep breath, then faces Nell.

PASH

Okay, Nell. It seems like you somehow spirited me away from Earth at the last minute, so, thank you, I guess? But where is everyone else? Ricky? Joel? Cash and Jackie? 

Nell feels flustered and attacked. Pash doesn’t have to remind her of her brothers, the men Pash chose over Nell, or her parents, maybe more Pash’s parents after all these years. The accusation in the question hits home, even though she knows that she couldn’t control who got saved and who didn’t. The truth is, she may not have chosen her estranged family even if she’d been given the choice. They hadn’t chosen her. And yet, she’s now chosen Pash, who’s fault it all was, the same Pash who stares at her now in horror. 

NELL

 I didn’t choose this! I don’t even know where we are. I didn’t make this happen. I had a chance to get saved, and a chance to save you, and then the world imploded and now, we’re here. That’s all I know!

Nell and Pash watch each other while Pash registers what’s been said. Nell feels herself softening with compassion. At least she had some foreknowledge that Earth was ending, that a save had been offered, and a change was happening. But Pash didn’t know anything at all. One second ei was sleeping at home, and the next, here. Suddenly, Nell’s mind arrests with an ominous noticing. Candy. Shona. Where are they? 

NELL

I was with my trionds, my…entwinemates – where are they?

PASH

You’re entwined?

BUD

Well, you can’t be! How could you have come here without them, if you’re actually entwined? You’d be messed up, dissipated. Or, they’d be here, because you’d have pulled them with you.  

Nell realizes that’s true. The knowledge falls, heavy and sickening, into the pit of her stomach, because she suspected it. Despite their assurances, their deep love, the strength and consistency of the connection, she has always held a small, anxious suspicion that she never achieved true entwinement. Her stronger trionds covered for her, but she wasn’t honest with herself or them. Her connection to Pash means that she has never really been all-in as one of three, she is still splintered. She knows it’s her fault. Somehow, she left them behind and brought Pash instead. She let them down. 

NELL

Are they dead? Oh my god, did I kill them?

BUD

As if you’re the center of creation! Anyway, no way they got left for dead if we picked you two up. I mean, they’re choice, first tier…don’t worry. We’ll find them soon.

Nell’s mind feels too preoccupied to wonder how Bud knows anything about her trionds, or to feel insulted by the implication that she’s not as good a catch. Her subconscious quickly chooses to focus on relief, wanting to believe Bud’s assurance that they are alive and waiting to be found.

Bud takes their hands, one in each, like a conductive circuit. Nell feels thick, warm, golden energy flow over her skin and sink into her; all worry dissipates. She feels calm and connected. She can feel Pash on the other end of Bud as conduit, all of them peaceful together like garden nymphs meditating in a forest. 

NELL

You’re subduing us.

BUD

(laughs)

If you say so! I’m letting your bodies regulate without all the fear and confusion so you can be clear. Clear feels better. I just want to be friends. So, are we ready already? Because it’s past time to go.

Pash looks up in alarm.

PASH

Go? Go where?

BUD

To class, of course! What else do you do at school? 

1. SHONA

Shona can’t make sense. She exists; she is thinking, so she must exist, but not in any way she recognizes. She experiences existence like she’s in the middle of a sandstorm, chaos all around her. She opens her eyes to brilliant, blinding, shifting, flashing lights, so bright, moving so fast, that her eyes feel like they are being sliced with flying diamonds. She is buffeted about in wind so quick, so capricious, so strong and deliberate, that it seems intentional, slapping her head, battering her back and forth and all around like a leaf on a branch. Eyes open, she is blinded, unable to track the sparks and lines that flash and cut in every direction. Eyes closed, she is blown about, sometimes hit hard by a whirling bit of matter, involuntarily dancing in the wind. Is she on a surface? Is she hanging in mid air? She hears high-pitched screeches, a searing sound like metal grating, and the constant thrum of wind smashing into itself, whooshing and roaring all around, hinting at a musical rhythm just beyond her range, a chorus of unintelligible voices catching the corner of her ear drums. Every breath feels like trying to drink from a firehose. She feels her body, intact and functional, giving her this experience, so there must be an atmosphere she can tolerate, something holding her from floating into space. But this is no Earth.  

What terrifies her most is feeling, knowing, that the fast-moving lights are conscious, the winds are aware. Alive. Beings. She stands in a crowd of conscious beings moving so fast, as air, as light, that she cannot hear them except as a product of their movement, cannot see them except the light signatures they trail, cannot understand their language or intention or what their movements mean. She tries to feel whether they even know she exists – she thinks maybe, but they don’t care, or find her irrelevant. She feels lost and afraid. 

Go inside.

The words ride the wind, flying by her ears, a whisper and command. She knows what this means. Going inside is the first thing everyone practices at Sages. But she doesn’t know who’s asking, and she doesn’t feel safe to leave her body vulnerable that way, right now, in this alien place among these fast-living creatures. For all she knows, she’s standing in their town square, or in the middle of a stampede. Maybe there is a Where she can get to that’s more tolerable. She wants to stay conscious and protect herself. 

Determined, Shona decides to take a step, but what is a step in a world made of moving light and air? She wills her foot to lift towards her knee, unable to imagine movement other than in relation to her own body. Her foot dutifully lifts. She wills her knee to unfold, to move her raised foot away from her body. The knee thrusts the foot out. She tells the foot to return to the ground – what ground? But the foot obeys, lowers as far as a foot lowers, so she stands mid-stride, the wind and light racing and slicing around her, then wills her other foot to lift. Eyes squeezed shut blind, deaf to anything but the roaring and her own grunts of effort, Shona moves as if driving herself through sludge, the light and wind acting as forces around her, forces she pushes against with all her strength for each inch of movement. She has no destination, no direction, no purpose other than to not stand still, to take control and do something.

She senses a consciousness take notice of her, an immediate malevolence followed by a hit – a large piece of debris smashes into her leg, then another into her back. Her arms fly up to protect her face as the wind whips and winds around her, spinning her fast in one direction, then the other, as more bits of matter smack into her body at speed from every turn. Conscious wind has decided to attack her, and she has no response. She screams with the pain and frustration. 

I am being pelted with rocks like the woman accused of adultery in the Christian bible. That’s what she finds herself thinking of in this moment, the Christian bible, the barbarism of humans. 

Judgement. 

The word whistles loudly down her ear canal. But what is she being judged for?

Jerked around and spun in the opposite direction again and again, she vomits, wet chunks flying into her hair, and off into the wind. She chokes and stumbles, finding hard ground face-first as the wind kicks her over. She curls into a protective ball, blown rolling and rumbling across the planet’s rough surface, scraped back and forth by wind so powerful she wonders how long she will suffer before she is ripped through and completely crushed. This is her end, then. Not blown up with Earth. Not enslaved in space. Cast off, lost, tossed somewhere in time-space dimensionality to be killed in a huddled, shivering ball by whatever creatures live here, with no way to fight back. Something sharp bounces hard off her shoulder-blade, breaking the skin. She screams out again. 

Suddenly, all sound stops. Shona’s eyes fly open. A transparent dome extends about two meters around her in every direction, only visible because it is blocking the world – turning the blinding flashes into a light show instead of a lightening storm, and keeping the wind and its flying missiles completely at bay. Inside the dome, light coalesces, tries to hold still, the yellow air swaying gently, thick and moist, almost a fog, shining with glittery specks that float and bob on an unseen current. Outside the dome, the wind continues tossing random bits of matter, but they deflect harmlessly. Nothing can touch her here. The sudden silence and oppressive stillness pressurize her ears. 

Shona takes an involuntary gulp of air, but breathing the thickness surrounding her feels twice as hard as breathing the pelting gusts outside her protective prison. Her lungs pull her throat into a collapsed straw, trying to draw enough oxygen from the thick atmospheric milkshake. She hears a high-pitched giggling sound, modulating like fast conversation. She feels that the light and air around her in the dome are having a conversation. They don’t want to hurt her. They want to…well, they want something from her, but they don’t want to hurt her. Around her head, the glitter recedes, pulling the thick moistness back and leaving a clear bubble around her head where the space holds fewer particles, and more of them oxygen. She finds she is able to breathe, not deeply but with regular breath. The light and air of the bubble are trying to help her. Whatever that means. 

Her head aches with throbbing pains that her fingers discover are both bumps and bleeding wounds. Every part of her feels bruised. She sits up and examines her body, checking functionality, wincing her way along, relieved to find that she seems more bashed than broken. She wishes she had something to clean the open cuts; who knows what molecules are rushing her alien bloodstream already. She fleetingly allows herself a moment of sadness to think of more scars on her face, as though that matters now, here. She attempts to stand, crying out when her wrist gives way under her weight. One wound, at least. She manages to stand hands-free, to her great satisfaction, as the molecules of light and air around her frantically swim to keep her breathing bubble intact.  

Shona walks to the side of the dome. She touches the invisible place where the wind and lightning frenzy stop, bemused to find her fingers sink right through to the other side, immediately whipped by wind and smacked by particles. She pulls her hand back in surprise. So, not a prison, but if she steps out, she’s back in the fray. 

Shona feels suddenly, overwhelmingly tired. The air she breathes in the ring of space around her head smells faintly sweet, bringing a heady euphoria not unlike cannabis. She feels calm and aware. 

Go inside.

The words seem to emanate from the space, entering her skin, muscles, blood, brain, heart. She feels that her captor wants to reassure her that no harm is intended, that she is safe. She doesn’t believe it for a second, but she’s already bored with this stupid situation. As long as she’s safe for the moment, she wants to get on with the show. If someone wants to meet her inside and tell her what the hell is going on, she might as well do it. 

SHONA

Fine!

Shona sits cross-legged in the centre of her dome, closes her eyes, and begins. 

1. CANDY

Nell and Shona tumble to the floor, dead-weight, knocking Candy off balance as she scrambles to hold her clutch on them. Candy stumbles, cracking her temple on the table, so her head spins and she sees dots of light dance and float. She falls back on her rump. She pats around her hair carefully, feeling for blood; nothing sticky. She’s alive. Still here. But Shona and Nell loll ungracefully on the carpet, like sleeping beauties dumped out of bed. Frantically, she reaches for their essence – they are not dead, but they still reside behind Flora’s well-sealed mind cells. Candy struggles to sit up, regarding the scene with bleary eyes. She leans forward, placing her hands on their warm bodies, one on each, smoothing her palms up and along to make sure they feel intact. Breathing. Beating. Alive. But inaccessible, walled off in a dream she can’t share. Without removing her hands from their arms, she sits back and looks around, simultaneously weaving an energy connection through their shared conduits. No minds, but she can feel their bodies, their nervous systems, reacting. She sends waves of love through her palms.

Flora sits right where they’d left off, watching her gather herself, gather her trio, in the middle of their living unit. 

FLORA

They’re fine, don’t stress, they just have to pass some tests.

CANDY

You said it was a done deal. Nell signed. It’s not fair. Bring them in!

FLORA 

You should know we get the welcome we require. Where you’re at is how you’re tried. I gambled on your trio, three for one, and one is you, the gem. But they have something to prove, to earn their way in. It’s for their safety, not a penalty. Not everyone survives in space. 

Candy realizes that’s true. There’s nothing she can do for them right now, Flora has them locked in some kind of game to see what they’re made of, and they will sink or swim as they do. It’s Sages all over again, like four years away have been nothing. Candy knows that her girls may wake up fine, any second, or in a week, or never. She may never see them alive again. She glares at Flora.

CANDY

You took us entwined. They’re mine! If they fail, you give them back to me. I’ll work their debt.

FLORA

You owe their debt either way, Sweet Pea, but our patron decides what’s next. They may get damaged in the fray. If they pass the tests they’ll join your nest, but if they fail, I can’t say. 

Unsatisfied but resigned, Candy looks around. Everything appears the way it did before the world collapsed into a vacuum of time and space. Or maybe not precisely the same. Flora herself is different. Younger, looking her proper age. More poised, more real. And not made of eels. She smells good, like a memory of cookies. This Flora exudes a familiar energy of exasperation tinged with love. She is the eternal pragmatist, but she’s on their side, she’s rooting for them. 

Candy feels a hint of relief, to find something of the Flora she knew, instead of whatever that was in the pocket. Immediately, she remembers not to let the endorphins of relief make her careless. Flora will always choose Flora first, it’s how she’s built. Candy needs to stay alert. She’s not used to feeling so disoriented, so blind, so alone, trapped with someone she can’t read and doesn’t trust, with her trionds out of commission. She knows they are being put to the test in ways she both can and can’t imagine, because she’s passed many kinds of tests. Every test is unique to the learner. Are they ready? How long will it take? 

Candy reaches outside the living space, but it’s like banging her head. She literally hits the walls in every direction. 

CANDY

I can’t find anything beyond these walls. Where are we?

FLORA: 

You’re home, can’t you see, I took it piece for piece, atom for atom. All that mattered of your matter. Bodies intact, the walls and important facts. A familiar place, floating in space. Enjoy it while it lasts! But Earth is in the past, done, gone, caput. Ashes and soot. There’s nothing out there but more out there. I saved you!  

Candy knows they are not safe at all, but she doesn’t feel like arguing with Flora. She hauls herself up, struggling against her increasingly painful head and suddenly weak arms, to gruntingly shove the low table out of the way. She pulls and prods first Nell, then Shona, so they aren’t bent and twisted, but lying peacefully on the floor with cushions under their heads.

CANDY

(system tone)

Bring two blankets

She hears no bing of response.

FLORA

Sorry, catch as catch can, despite our best plans!  In a rush, systems are harder than stuff. Some things will work, some not so much. I did my best to bring it all intact, but it’s a balancing act. 

Candy accepts this explanation wordlessly, focused on a single goal, to cover her girls up, keep them warm. She makes her unsteady way down the hall to where the blankets reside, placing her hand to the wall. Nothing happens. She bangs on the place that should be sliding open, but the wall stands stoic. She tilts her head, regarding the situation with curiosity, then quickly taps a specific spot with her finger, fast and hard, like poking it in the eye. An almost invisible slit appears in the wall where she tapped; she slides her fingernail into the slit, feeling along it’s edge, until she reaches a small indentation, where she applies pressure at just the right angle. The door slides open, and Candy smiles, taking pleasure in this moment of problem-solving even amidst uncertainty. She grabs two quilts and drags them behind her, then lovingly places them over Nell and Shona, tucking the fabric around each woman carefully. She notes that the quilts have somehow reversed colours in the transition; cyans now magenta, yellows now blue, reds now green. Black now white.

Flora watches all of this without getting up or offering to help. Instead, their mentor slurps at her still-steaming tea, like no time has passed. But the moments have happened, the moment the Earth existed and the next moment, when it didn’t, and now it feels like nothing has changed and everything has changed. A flick of a switch. 

CANDY

I want them awake, here, with me, so you can tell us what we’ve signed on for. At the same time. 

FLORA

No can do. It’s not my call. They either fall, or shine. What shall we discuss in the meantime? The weather? 

CANDY

Okay, then, what was that back there? That wasn’t you.

FLORA

It wasn’t not me, just me spread over two wheres. You got a stripped-down version, what I could spare.

Candy accepts this without further question. The two continue to sit. Flora slurps her tea. Candy sighs. 

CANDY

I wasn’t done. With Earth. There are huge parts of me still missing. 

FLORA

You could never have been done. Some parts are gone. It’s sad. But you got away this far intact. Be glad!

CANDY

I’ll put myself together again eventually. But Earth! It’s such a loss! I know it was ruined, not what it was, or what it could have been. But right to the end, Earth still had it all – trees, water, wind, life! My life, scattered and immersed. Is everyone gone?

FLORA

Not all. Those who could, fled, sped off into space, thought they’d win the race. Some got out like we did; some, some other way. Not many knew the day, let alone the moment to split. That’s it. There’s no fall back. 

CANDY

But you kept us whole! That’s amazing, this place, in space, I want to know how.

FLORA

I wish I could say. It’s just play for Them, I play conduit and They play deity.

CANDY

So it’s someone else’s tech?

FLORA

It’s the magic of a god.

CANDY

If you’re really Flora, I know you don’t believe that. Advanced beings are not gods, and science is not magic. You should know it’s not helpful or friendly to talk like that around Shona. 

FLORA

Our patron has changed me. I’m not just what I was. I am Enthralled, it’s true, and so will you be soon, when you meet the part of Them you call. 

CANDY

What is up with you? You used to be a straight talker. I think I recognized you better when you were eels and snakes. Flora, YOU always say to be wary of what my eyes see, and even more wary of what they don’t. You’re not all here, just like you weren’t all there.Tell me the truth. Are we about to be subsumed?

Flora’s reverent expression falters. She drops the cup, which falls with a soft thud to the carpet, tea seeping quickly into the fibres. Flora falls to her knees in front of the chair, prostate, eyes cast down.  She begins to rumble and change, elongating, growing, rising into a transformed body, a grand personage; an unreasonably tall, muscular, elegant, humanish creature who shifts fluidly between angularity and softness, their skin seeming to shimmer with movement, and their movement shimmering with energy. This is the most beautiful being Candy has ever encountered.  

ROSES

Subsumed? Not on your life. We would spit you out like a bad taste if you tried to subsume before you’re ready. We only want the best of you. 

PART THREE

11. SHONA

Sitting cross-legged in her strange, protected space, Shona engages the first step to going inside: trust in place. Achieving trust in place seems unlikely in a hostile world of raging wind and cutting light, despite the illusory safety of the moment in this dome of yellow air-soup. It’s dangerous to go inside without a solid foundation. You might end up somewhere you aren’t expecting. You might not find your way back. She’s determined to try to achieve trust in place if she can. 

Breath at the centre, breathing the molecules of the physical space where she finds herself, letting them flow through her blood, seep into her pores, the atoms of this place becoming part of her. Shona sits, breathing, for several minutes. Eagerly, it seems, the air around her hugs in close like a blanket, like water made of golden light. Everywhere she makes space in her body, the yellow light joyfully rushes to fill it. She feels the ground of this planet holding her legs and buttocks, the fine grain of its sand scratching the bone outside her ankle. Shona no longer feels any boundary where her skin ends and the atmosphere of light and holding-still wind begins. Ignoring her surprise at her success, she breathes into trust in place. Inside her, a wide, open space rushes out; she stands, Inside, looking around at the impossible nothing, so impossible that she quickly fills the background with the scene of a wide, open field, blue sky, crisp breeze, bright sun, trees in the distance. Inside, she now stands in her favourite place.

Trust in self comes next. Shona scans the field. An almost-panic threatens to disturb her foundation; she isn’t sure she’s here at all. Is this a projection? But no, her ears catch a sound, a quick movement, shallow breath, fast heart-beat growing in volume until it echoes loudly around her, vibrating the grasses and causing ripples in the air that solidify into a large, marbled rock in the distance. Her self is here, hiding from her. Shona approaches the boulder, peeking around at the small child huddled and hugging her knees on the other side, more afraid than she knew she was. She makes soothing sounds and reaches out her hand, but the child scoots away, refusing to meet her eyes. 

Shona sinks down on the opposite side of the rock, focusing on her foundation of trust in place. She allows her breath out to carry voice, a low hum of mi with each breath, a wordless mantra expanding from her chest. With each breath out, she allows her powerlessness to be, and with each breath in, she accepts her power to be, anyway. Each breath dissipates the rock a little more behind her, until only the thinnest crust separates her back from the child’s. Shona goes silent. The child cries out a painfully sharp, despair-filled fear. Shona breathes out “yes” and all trace of the rock is gone. She sits back-to-back with her child self. She takes the girl’s hand; the child grips back, hard. Shona breathes out a deep, vibrating hum. She feels the vibration join them like conjoined twins. The child’s voice joins the next breath out, melding them further together, and on the third breath, they are one, Shona has absorbed the child. She has accepted her current state and subsumed her fears. Shona’s breath explodes from her in a loud “huh” as her self settles in. 

All around, Shona feels giant eyes watching her, peering in closely, invisible but there. She is inside, being watched from the outside. She is the bug under the microscope; the feeling is disconcerting. She senses the largeness outside gathering itself, folding in tight like a collapsed umbrella, into a single point. 

Shona smells smoke. She turns quickly; a stone fire pit has appeared. A naked stranger sits on a log, watching the dancing flames. In the same instant, the bright day has become end-stage sunset, the sky a dark azure streaked with pink. Shona feels violated, even though she knew she was summoned inside. She hasn’t even engaged the third stage, trust in all, which might help her feel more welcoming. The stranger has intruded rather than meeting in the overlap; taken liberty with her carefully-constructed space like a bad guest moving the furniture and sticking his finger in the peanut butter jar. In her old life, a minute ago on Earth, she would be shocked and appalled by this breach, but here, she feels no choice but to accept his presence. 

BLOOM: 

(deep, welcoming laugh)

Ha! Bloom accepts Shona’s presence.

12. NELL

The door slides open. Nell and Pash follow Bud into a hallway much like a longer version of the cell they just left. They quicken their paces to keep up. Bud looks back over their shoulder.

BUD: 

Just curious – what do you see?

NELL: 

What do you mean?

BUD: 

Here, around us. Right now. What do you see?

Nell shrugs, looking around.

NELL: 

I see the hallway. Like, walls curving into ceiling. 

BUD: 

Hmm. What colour?

NELL: 

Grey. Or silver. Or something.

PASH: 

No they aren’t!

BUD: 

And what are the walls made of?

NELL: 

I don’t know. Some kind of metal?

PASH: 

What are you talking about? We’re in a cave!

BUD: 

Oooh, interesting! You two are going to be fun in class! 

Bud stops abruptly. The wall opens to an expansive, oval-shaped room. Stepping over the threshold, Nell feels like she has entered the inside of a hollowed-out egg; organic space, fragile, warm, safe. The room is illuminated by a transmuted light that seems to glow through the curved enclosure. A soft yellow-hued light, a neutral space. 

Nell recognizes a rendering room and excitement surges through her body. Rendering means this class is not all human, and that can only be interesting. Noticing how interest tugs her down a one-track tunnel, she pinches her arm, reminding her mind that there are people to worry about, unresolved questions. Almost everything in her wants to put down that burden and just flow into what is happening, but she feels a resistance deep within that won’t let her just settle in. She needs Shona. She needs Candy. Is this the entwinement? Not a failure, just incomplete? She doesn’t know and she doesn’t care. She just knows she needs to find her girls.

BUD

The fastest way to get to them is to do well here.

NELL 

Are you listening to my thoughts?

BUD

Just feeling your eminence! Tone it down if you want privacy. Sit, we’re last already.

Now, three padded kitchen-style chairs stand at the centre of the room, situated in a wide triangle, facing in. 

PASH

What is this? Those kiddie desks are too small for us! 

NELL

I don’t see any desks, just chairs. 

BUD

Don’t worry, you’ll fit. Sit!

Pash looks around as though seeking any other option, sighs deeply, sits in one of the chairs, and abruptly disappears, chair and all.

Nell feels startled but then realizes that Pash isn’t gone, ei’s just being rendered. She’s worried ei will feel disoriented and afraid; as far as she knows, ei’s never encountered non-humans, let alone submitted to rendering. 

BUD

Seems like you better get in there, then! See you on the other side!

Bud sits, and disappears. One chair left. Despite everything, Nell’s primary emotion is excitement. She can’t help it. This is interesting, and she’d rather be interested than worried. Letting herself be what she is no matter what’s going on, that’s a gift from Candy that she leans on now, because really, what else is she going to do? She sits.

13. CANDY

Gaping at the most fascinating being she has ever encountered, Candy barely notices that Shona now lies peacefully on the sofa, head nestled on a fluffy, pink pillow. Nell reposes gently in an arm chair, tucked under her nice, warm quilt. Candy herself now sits comfortably on a new, swirl-patterned settee which has appeared directly between the other two, each of her hands holding one of theirs. Candy isn’t surprised by any of these sudden switches. Everything seems to make perfect sense to her – of course these things have happened. She senses both of her trionds clearly, even though she’s blocked from the conversations in their minds. She feels their bodies shift from floor to furniture like a finger snap. She doesn’t suspect she’s in a projection, or even question what’s happening, she intuitively knows exactly what’s happening. What’s happening is Roses. 

Candy feels joy – Roses is here! A power current flows and vibrates the air between them; waves of delicious release, lovely like the smell of honey baking and cedar sapping in the Spring; a breeze wafting over warm currents of pastel translucence. Candy’s whole body soaks up this energy, the pores of her skin sucking, suckling, starved for as long as she’s been human. She basks in the glow that emanates from Roses, which warms like rays of sun. Her head stops hurting, suddenly clear and light. Candy feels deeply known by Roses, and she has always known Roses. She is loved by Roses. She has always loved Roses. 

Candy understands that if she wants to, she can deeply comprehend a small part of Roses, and that the dawning will fill her completely to bursting, will be her fulfillment and undoing. She realizes she can release her whole Being into Roses, and her Being will only expand. She feels a joyous reunion calling her with clear, unbridled intensity of welcome-home love, love as hot and alive as a sun. It’s only her tether and entwinement with Nell and Shona that keep her grounded from running to embrace Roses as the most dear of longest-lost lovers. She grips Shona and Nell’s hands more tightly. 

Candy has no doubt that Roses can move planets with this power. However they do it, Roses plays with aspects of reality and perception that Candy doesn’t even try to imagine. She just accepts what she sees, what she knows, is an Advanced Being before her. Knowing this, she is not lost. She recognizes every aspect of her response, at the same time as feeling herself respond. She watches and she feels. She is not enthralled, though she is definitely not immune to the charismatic pull that beckons her to give up her self for a chance of belonging with Roses. She has reason to fear this creature who can probably make her do anything they want, but she feels no fear, so she holds the idea of fear in her mind as a warning, while enjoying contentment edged by poignant longing. 

ROSES

Oh! Candy, my love, we’re together at last! We’re so happy, so happy. May we hug?

CANDY 

Yes! Yes.

Candy starts to propel herself off the settee, toward Roses, when her two trionds’ hands both suddenly grip tightly, holding her down. The women still rest, unconscious, except for their death-grip on her wrists. Candy sits back down, and their hands go slack again. By this time Roses has already crossed the room, arms outstretched, and Candy finds herself enveloped, her cheek melding with Roses’ chest, a thousand strong arms around her, a cocoon of love, a strong healing energy, a mitochondrial burst that warms her with youthful glow. Her head clears, her brain floods serotonin, her muscles relax to rubber. She feels even more fantastic than usual, her body infused with lightness, wrapped in pleasing pressure. Being held by Roses feels like sinking into Home, a sweetness almost painful in the poignancy that it might eventually end. Candy feels as though her skin cells are making room, fusing with Roses, like their bodies are becoming one thing. Roses’ cheek brushes her cheek; Candy nuzzles in, rubbing her face gently under Roses’ chin and over their jaw, lips just brushing over lips, the anticipation of a kiss, nose stroking nose. The love feels intense enough to transcend physical form.

As Roses gently releases her, Candy feels disoriented, drunk, lovely. So lovely. Stirred, excited, turned on, aflame. Not just physically, but spiritually, psychically stimulated. Roses feels better than any drug. She wants more, and she wants this for her girls. 

CANDY

Them too, please! 

ROSES

Oh, sweet love, of course! But it won’t wake them. They’re out until they’re through. 

CANDY

I just want them to be strong. For whatever they’re facing.

ROSES

You are all strong. That’s why you’re here.

Roses kneels down beside Shona’s limp form, lifting her torso from the sofa like a dancer, cradling the back of her head with their large hands, their lips brushing close above Shona’s throat in vampiric style. Candy feels aroused in every way, watching Roses lift Shona with such tenderness, ease, and desire. She loves to see and feel Shona receiving Roses’ loving embrace, cheek to cheek; the way she glows, the blood rushing back to her skin, even her hair softening around her face. Candy can sense Shona’s liver regenerating, her heart strengthening, her lungs clearing. Even though Shona is locked away in her mind, she is also her body, and her body responds to Roses like a bloom. The cut on her lip heals over before Candy has time to wonder how it got there. Shona has gained several years of health. Gently, Roses places Shona’s head back on the cushion, stroking her hair around her face. 

ROSES

Wow, she is something! You’re an interesting pair.

CANDY

We’re two of three. She’s exceptional. So am I. Not so strange we came together. 

ROSES

We didn’t say strange, Goose! Quite the opposite. Maybe the only thing in this galaxy that makes you defensive is your relationship with these humans. You shouldn’t, should you? Entwine? Do they know what you are?

Candy is finding it difficult to navigate a conversation with Roses emanating so strongly all around her. Her whole Being wants to meld with them, know everything they know, have them already know everything in Candy’s own tiny brain, and at the exact same time, she wishes Roses would leave them all alone. She doesn’t want to answer the intrusive question about her entwinement, but everything in her feels compelled to do whatever will make Roses happiest, so the answer is on the tip of her tongue. She believes that Roses could just look into her mind and see, if they wanted to, despite any of Candy’s best fortifications. That defenselessness makes her resent Roses’ power over her, over them all, while equally craving Roses’ approval. She finds a version of the truth croaking out her unwilling lips.

CANDY

Do I even know what I am?

Roses sees Candy’s struggle and cries out in apology. 

ROSES

Oh, Sweets, we’ll turn it down. No harm or force intended!

CANDY

Don’t call me that!

Roses’ genuine surprise melts into pure compassion; they nod assent.

ROSES

 Take some breaths, take your time. It’s a bit trial and error. How much eminence can you endure, how much diminishment can we manage? We’ll get there.

CANDY

Don’t forget Nell.

ROSES

Forget! You’re too cute. To every act its moment. Never worry, our timing is impeccable, love. 

Roses now sits in the armchair where Nell rests on their lap, enveloped in their long arms and legs like a mother holds a baby. Roses’ expression holds that tender wonder, the protective gaze of pure mother-love. Candy feels Nell’s muscles regenerating, her heartbeat slowing and strengthening, her stomach acids harmonizing, her spine aligning perfectly to the fetal position in which she reposes. The nasty cut and bruise on her forehead smooth, lighten, and disappear. Roses leans into Nell’s nape and breathes in her smell deeply with a smile of peaceful contentment, sweet immediacy, that absorbs into Candy’s chest, throat, tummy, and heart, as shivers of comforting pleasure. 

Then Roses just isn’t there, where Nell rests perfectly tucked into the cushions where Roses used to be. Now, Roses sits cross-legged on the floor in front of Candy. 

ROSES

Isn’t she a crisp beach breeze at the end of teenaged summer? 

CANDY

 (laughs)

That’s perfect, very Earth! I love her so much. Both of them. Please, bring them back. 

ROSES 

(continuously touching Candy in a natural and affectionate way as the conversation progresses, on the feet, legs, hands)

Oh, Sweets, for you, we hope they make it through.That’s not nothing, our hopes can tip the balance, but the work is the work. There are certain demands, inherent. A simple matter of fit.

CANDY

Let me help them. 

ROSES

They need to handle themselves. Equal to you. Are they? Equal to you?

(rises, takes Candy’s face in their hand, gently tilts her eye-to-eye)

CANDY

(Looks down then up)

In their own ways

ROSES

Do you vouch for them? Or not?

CANDY

(seems to hesitate, weigh, then jumps into her answer as though the hesitation is a betrayal she regrets)

Of course I do! Of course they are equal to me, they are worth a thousand of me. 

ROSES

You really believe that? Nell, still thinking her way through, Shona, still protecting herself? Both of them tied to their past like an anchor to weigh you down?

Candy feels defensive for her trionds like a mother bear ready to swipe. She feels, and realizes, that Roses must be giving her space; the energy field feels more like a light breeze than high tide. She can think for herself.

CANDY

I can tell you’ve turned down your eminence. I feel myself resisting you. 

ROSES

Good, stay whole, don’t get enthralled. Not just yet. And your girls? Will they stand?

CANDY

We are made of the same stuff. I found them. And they found me! We each have our gifts. Together we’re a whole package.

ROSES

They need to be the whole package on their own. 

CANDY

Why? They have me! We have each other! But yes, they stand alone, we could never have entwined otherwise.

ROSES

Indeed.

CANDY

I believe in them. 

ROSES

Yes, believe in them, that might help. But for you, the Universe awaits! Let’s go!

CANDY

Go where? How far? I can’t leave them. 

ROSES

Entwinement’s a tether, not a cage, little songbird. 

CANDY

 It makes me feel like I’m being stretched apart. I don’t want to do that again, especially now. They need me close, they need to stay strong and connected. 

ROSES

You really need to get out more, Candycane. We will sustain them and hold your connection. Painless! Come on. 

Candy finds it hard to remember not to trust Roses. She feels overwhelmed with the desire to see what Roses can show her of the Universe. It’s been lifetimes since she’s seen anywhere but Earth. The nagging reminder that her girls need her feels like a mosquito in need of a good swat. What can she do for them now? Shouldn’t she scope out their situation, be ready with answers when they awaken? Hardly noticing, she lets go of her girls to take Roses’ hand. 

14. SHONA

BLOOM: 

(deep, welcoming laugh)

Ha! Bloom accepts Shona’s presence.

The man’s rich, vibrational voice exists like the air is made of his sound, so completely at one with place that Shona feels like an outsider in her own Inside. Shona suddenly suspects a trick has been played, that she is not where she thought she was. It was all too easy, going inside, despite the stress, the skipped steps – it went too fast, even for her. Even though this is her field, and she found her Self here, something feels fundamentally different. She isn’t sure that her consciousness is actually still inside her body. She feels a frantic panic that makes the space around her shimmer and hesitate. Shona breathes into her trust in place, shaky as it is. Inside or not-inside, Shona knows that this interaction decides her life. 

BLOOM: 

Throw down!

For a split second Shona expects to feel confusion, but immediately understands that Bloom is inviting her to a game. He reaches down, grabs a handful of grass and soil, and pitches it into the fire, sending sparks flying and smoke billowing. He watches her expectantly, but Shona doesn’t bow easily to expectations. 

Shona approaches the fire, and sees that all around the flames and embers, the grass and mud are not burning or melting but moving; like oil in water, they gravitate and glom together, building up into something solid. Bloom intently watches his creation grow in the flames, looking more and more human in form as it rises, a sculpture of mud and grass, fired into clay. Shona paces around the outside of the fire pit, fascinated, watching his offering grow into a doll-size replica of Bloom, glorious in every detail. A tiny, perfect human figure stands naked in the middle of the flames, patiently waiting for her to do something. In the smoke he seems to breathe, and in the flicker his eyes seem to follow her. 

Shona finds herself longing to pick the effigy up in her hands. She imagines running her thumb over the perfect belly button, the veined biceps, the chiseled jaw, the comfortably flaccid penis. She wants to slide her baby fingernail along the luscious lips, to see if they part, if a wet, pink tongue waits inside. She wants to squeeze a leg in her fist, feel the muscles resist and the prickle of wiry hairs between her fingers. She wants to put the feet in her mouth and run her tongue over the tiny toes. The sculpture feels like something she has always craved without knowing it; it is her destiny to possess it. Her life depends on it. Wait, that feels very over the top, it doesn’t even make sense. 

Just in time, Shona restrains herself from the absolute imperative impulse to thrust her hand into the fire and take the little man for herself. Involuntarily, she grabs her left hand with her right, pulling them both into her chest. 

Bloom’s laugh rings around her. She realizes he has scored his points. This game doesn’t have clear rules, and she can’t believe she’s playing here while her body sits on a strange world, possibly unprotected. More than that, she can’t believe she’s already losing.  Shona hates to lose. Almost as much as she loves to win.

BLOOM:

(mutters, to himself, thoughtful, as though memorizing facts or learning a poem by rote)

Game. Rules. Play. Lose. Love. Win.

Suddenly, Bloom shoots to standing. He heavily stomps one foot and then the other, reverberating the ground in ripples that run through the grass, tickling Shona’s toes. 

BLOOM:

Shona sets the game.

His words literally ring with authority, bouncing around the air in a tight echo like a loudspeaker. He sits back down, as though something has been decided, his intertwined fingers casually bridging the space between his comfortably-spread knees, his testicles dangling freely below. He leans forward with an indulgent smile, waiting for her to do something.

Silence is Shona’s default response, often the strongest, like paper over rock. She doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of asking for more explanation. She doesn’t need to understand to know how to play. She knows this game. She has always known this game. Its name is Control. 

Shona lifts her pendant over her head, the token of her entwinement, a thick oval of hair from all three of her trio, cut during their ceremony, then intricately woven with oils and coloured waxes to a combined strength and beauty. She squats low to the ground, and as she springs into the air, she flings the pendant straight upward with all her strength. It flies up, up, into the dusky sky, higher than Earth’s gravity would ever allow, and where it flies, the sunset colours dissipate like clouds, revealing a trail of afternoon sky-blue. The pendant seems to stop in mid-air. It shudders, growing and shaping itself into a small, speckled hawk. The hawk dive-bombs straight through the blue path, right towards them, too fast to react. At the last second, Bloom seems to realize that the sharp claws and hooked beak are headed right for his face. Crying out, he raises his arms, hands clenched, as the bird veers off-side, completely missing him. Point for Shona, she notes. 

Ignoring Bloom, the hawk grabs the little man from the fire, then beats her wings, staying low, wildly flapping, flapping the fire down to embers and smoke, with the little man held helpless in her taloned fists. Shona resists the urge to save him. 

When the smoke becomes so dense that neither token can be seen, a sudden silence descends. Bloom waves his hand so a breeze moves the smoke aside. In the fire pit, amidst the smokey fog and red embers, stands a doll-sized Shona, regaled in a golden hawk-feather cape, standing beside the naked little Bloom. Now they both have points on the board, and they each have a worthy game token. Bloom smiles in appreciation, waving his hand at her creation, acknowledging her score. 

BLOOM:

Now we play!

15. NELL

The moment she sits on the rendering room chair, Nell is immediately transported. Disconcertingly, she finds herself now sitting on the floor of her childhood school rec space, in a scene that happened more than a decade ago. Her thirteen year old self is part of a circle of tweens too big for Circle Time; in fact, all the peers she remembers from her eighth form year. Some of the kids lounge awkwardly, while most, like Nell and young Pash beside her, hold a strong, relaxed posture with legs neatly crossed. The teachers –  Linæol and Atisma, she remembers their intense efficiency well – stand off-side observing, having reluctantly released the room to Flora. 

Sitting comfortably on the braided carpet with the youth in the circle, Flora looks amazing, powerful, compelling; everything Nell remembers. Her skin glows an aura that even the most mundane can’t miss. Her tiny frame sports a stylishly understated, tapered, rose-gold suit, so different from the austere movement-wear favored by the school that she makes everyone look drab just by being in the room. Her arms move precisely and fluidly in time with her oratory. Her voice carries rhythm, melody, and cadence that touches each of Nell’s chakras in turn. She exudes a knowing that implies she has seen the future, and a passion that promises she can use that knowledge for good. She looks, sounds, and feels like the utopian world she represents. 

Nell recognizes exactly when and where she is; she knows this day. It’s the first time she encountered Sages in real life, the last day before everything changed. She feels her thirteen-year-old body, lythe and breast-free, churning with excitement and yearning towards Flora. She hears her thirteen-year-old mind catching on Flora’s words as the first adult to make any sense, before she knew everything she knows now. She longs to tell her past little self everything, but would anything change, really? She spent enough years at Sages to know that this is an observational lesson, not a chance to act. She’s on a ride-along, experiencing history from inside her younger body, but she has not moved in time. This is a projection of her own memories. 

Thirteen-year-old Nell glances at Pash, always by her side then, baby-entwined by accident before they even knew what that meant. She feels the tickle of their shared threads lighting. The two repress a giggle-wave, which doesn’t mean they aren’t riveted; quite the opposite. The intense way they are both responding to Flora, amplified by their connection, overwhelms their immature systems until a giggle becomes the only outlet. Nell feels her young self struggling not to let loose, when Flora looks her right in the eye, cocking her head with curiosity. Nell feels that Flora sees her, now, not just thirteen-year-old her. She sees them both.

FLORA

Let it out.

Nell feels her giggles fading as a sweep of embarrassment washes over her. But Flora isn’t calling her out; instead, the mentor mirrors Nell’s repressed giggles, air-snorting to keep from laughing out loud, her face contorted ridiculously. That pushes both Nell and Pash right over the edge. Nell’s mirth comes bursting out as “Ha!” and all three, Nell, Pash and Flora, devolve into fits of laughter. The relief feels so complete that Nell releases into it, letting tears flow down her face, not even trying to contain herself. Her hand finds Pash’s hand, intensifying both their joyous exclamations as their threads light up in colour. All around them, the hilarity catches like a wildfire, until the whole room, even Linæol and Atisma, are gasping for air, holding their stomachs, rolling around on the floor, kicking their feet, and no one more enthusiastically than Flora. Nell loves this memory, the first time in her life that she laughed like that, with abandon, in a room of people. In her mind, this laughing fit overtook the class for a long time, so she’s surprised to find people calming their breath, wiping their eyes, re-settling themselves in the circle already. But the mood of the room has lightened, postures relaxed.

FLORA

If anyone doubts what I say, you see today it’s true. Consciousness naturally connects from me to you, to you, to you. We are none of us alone. It matters how we gather, the when, the where, the who. We are always a little bit merged, it shifts what we feel, think, and do. But will you harness it, or let it rule? 

Nell observes the way every cell in her young body aches and pulses with excitement, imagining complete control over mind, body, spirit, and the connections. If only she could tell herself the joke of how her quest for control, solidified in this moment, has always yielded the exact opposite.

Nell is loving how she feels in this body. She’d forgotten what she lost, growing up. She feels acutely aware that this moment may be the last time she ever feels truly at home in her body, as herself. If only she didn’t know what’s coming, Nell feels she could live happily in this moment for years. But her young self has other ideas. Her fresh, muscled body and the youthful spirit already there feel so amped up she might start freaking out, or jumping up and down. Nell had also forgotten this overwhelming energy, her body a feisty colt barely contained. She needs to bolt. At that moment, her eyes intersect with Flora’s eyes, and the world around her falls away.

FLORA (vo)

Run!

Nell runs. She doesn’t know if anyone follows, she’s given over to her body’s imperative and there is nothing left that matters but letting her move. Nell bursts from the rec space, pelts down the rough-hewn hall, and explodes from the exterior structure with a force that blows the heavy doors open in front of her. She has never felt so free and powerful. What a gift, now-Nell thinks, to relive this moment, to be here again. Outside, the warm evening air rushes by her cheeks. Nell sprints across the small field, breaking through the dense trees at the far side in mere seconds. Her thirteen-year-old body feels so light, so strong, that she wonders why bodies ever decide to keep growing up. This body is the perfect vehicle to explore a world. She knows these paths by heart, and she runs full-tilt parcour, skipping branches, avoiding holes and sudden drops, skidding and leaping through the darkening forest. She grabs a long, thick branch mid-stride, using it to pole-vault over a stretch of swampy mud in her path, without missing a step. Her strong heart beats regularly, and her lungs breathe deeply. She feels the oxygen flooding her cells, bloated with potential energy. Nell’s young athleticism was truly spectacular. She can’t believe how much she forgot.

But the forest only goes so far – a hundred acres of protected land. Even circling and spiralling through, there are finite paths, so Nell arrives, still not breathless, heart still pounding for more, at the centre tree. The centre tree is their special place, she and Pash. The tree, Gian, speaks to them directly. No one in their lives will allow that to be true, so they keep this secret, that the elder tree of the locality’s forest is the conscious, living heart of their community, not just mechanically, but spiritually, truly. In the upper branches, hidden from the path below, she and Pash have constructed a crude platform. Without hesitation, Nell runs towards the tree at full speed, leaping as high as she can to latch onto its trunk, easily grappling her way up to branches that offer a solid foothold. She climbs like a squirrel through the thick upper branches, fast and sure, landing with a thump on the platform she built with her own hands. She leans her back against the trunk, breathing into her friend.

NELL

Hello, Gian.

CANDY

Hello, little one!

It’s funny for Now Nell to feel her body’s heart jump at the unexpected voice, since she already knows who’s up there. A teenaged Candy is lounging in the upper branches of the tree, one leg swinging casually over the last thick branch before the peak, completely at ease. Young Nell feels excited, curious, and a sense of wonder about what’s next; a click and clunk into place, reminding her that she was expecting this moment, this visitor, all along, but only just now realized. She peers up through the foliage and catches sight of a narrow running shoe, kicking the air. Squinting a little higher, she glimpses the edges and form of a female-bodied person, long milk-and-honey hair dancing lazily around her face as if to obfuscate her features. Leaves flicker light and dark, creating the illusion that Candy is not quite solid up there at Gian’s pinnacle. 

NELL

Little one? We seem about the same size to me.

CANDY

Do we? Well, I’m older.

NELL

You don’t sound much older. How old are you?

CANDY

Oh, at least eight hundred. Or a million. I forget.

NELL

You sound thirteen.

CANDY

I’m well past that, kid.

NELL

Are you here with them? Sages?

CANDY

Yeah, I’m along for the ride. This is like the tenth time I’ve seen her little show, and it’s still just me. But not anymore! This trip will be so much more fun together. It may be the last time we’re out for awhile, so let’s enjoy.

NELL

You think they want me to test? That’s amazing! 

CANDY

Want you? Of course we want you, you’re amazing, you’re Nell! Your test is why we came to this strange little place. Only this tiny forest, only one elder tree? Cut off from everything. How can you stand it? Living in the rocks to hide from the sun? It’s strange you’re here. But here you are, so here we are! 

NELL

You don’t even know me.

CANDY

I guess. Wanna try something? 

NELL

What?

Candy rolls off her perch, deftly catching a branch below, swinging down to land gracefully on the limb directly behind Nell, so they sit back to back with the huge trunk between them. Nell still has not seen her face. 

CANDY

Keep your back flat to the trunk, close your eyes, and reach back! Take my hand. 

Nell twists to see Candy’s arm reaching as far as it will go, fingers stretched on the bark. It’s clearly not far enough. The thick trunk triples her span. There is no way Nell will ever reach her from this position. 

NELL

It’s too far!

CANDY

Your resistance only prolongs the lessons, didn’t anyone ever tell you that?

NELL

Um, not in so many words. 

CANDY

Well, I just did, so you can take it in and skip over the resistance. We don’t have time for that! Now close your eyes, and reach back.

Observer-Nell smiles to herself, knowing she is still trying to learn this lesson that Candy skips over so lightly. But she doesn’t want to be the Aware Watcher right now. She wants to completely feel this moment, this first, alongside her young self. 

The moment Candy finishes speaking, young Nell’s heart leaps with recognition, suddenly knowing that she is absolutely in love with Candy. This is not an exclusive kind of in-love that forsakes all others, but an all-encompassing need to be near Candy, influenced by her, seen raw and real by her, see her raw and real, every single day forever. It’s not just that Candy called out her tragic flaw and trusted her to let it go. It’s not just how she moves through Nell’s tree like a second home, or the cadence of her voice, or the fact that Nell has felt their consciousnesses nuzzling up since Candy first spoke Gian’s greeting aloud. It’s all of those things, and something older, deeper, that has always been there inside her. Candy has arrived at this moment because they were always meant to be together, from here on. Young Nell feels all of that like an acorn, a kernel, a concentrated seed with the potential for everything curled up inside. She waters that seed with her desire. It’s that immediate, that complete, the sudden in-loveness that is now an integral part of her being. Now-Nell basks in the poignancy of overlapping this first exquisite dawning, like a gong, with the reverberations she feels from the other side of a decade. Her love for Candy feels completely renewed, and her longing for Candy has been woken from whatever induced slumber kept her numb to the loss. She can’t believe she doubted their entwinement. Here it is, fresh and new and complete from the start, not a decision but a fact. 

Feeling no more hesitation, young Nell closes her eyes, and reaches back, fingers inching along the bark, both expecting and not expecting the moment they find Candy’s fingers waiting there. Nell sucks in her breath at the little electric seizure she experiences up and down her arm as her fingers find flesh. It’s not possible, but she is able to comfortably grasp Candy’s hand. Warm skin, hand to hand, not imaginary but real. Her fingers wriggle around Candy’s fingers, verifying. She feels like the sun has concentrated its energy on their hands, a warm glow that could be emanating from inside out or outside in. She marvels at this glow, centred, whole. Now-Nell and Young-Nell meld completely in this moment of first connection with Candy, wisdom and wonder bestowed both directions.

NELL

How are we doing this?

CANDY

How? Is that the question? 

NELL

Of course it is!

CANDY

Well, it’s A question, but not the real question.

Nell desperately wants to intuit what Candy considers the real question, but her brain stays stuck on the need to know how. That’s her nature. Candy squeezes her hand. Immediately an answer leaps from her lips.

NELL/CANDY (in unison)

We’re doing it by doing it. (both laugh)

NELL

That’s not really an answer.

CANDY

That’s the only kind of answer you’re getting with Sages. It’s not a science institute, you know. You’ll get some who, what, where, when, maybe even why, but not a lot of how. It’s really all just do, you’ll see. 

Nell still feels every millimetre where her skin touches Candy’s skin, their fingers entwined, their palms warm and damp so that it’s hard to tell where her own hand ends and Candy’s begins. She never wants to let go. 

CANDY

Ei’s coming.

From the distance, Nell hears the fast movement of someone running the main trail. Pash. Instinctively, Nell drops Candy’s hand.

CANDY

See you soon, little one!

Candy leaps from her branch to one of the smaller trees crowding the forest centre, and with a brush of foliage, disappears just as Pash’s shadow enters Nell’s field of vision in the clearing below. In seconds, Pash runs at Gian, rustles up through the leaves, and flops on the platform beside Nell. The world continues darkening around them, the air finally relenting some coolness.

PASH

Knew you were here. Dummy. Why’d you run? 

NELL

Just needed to.  

Nell thought she would jump right into dishing on Candy, but something stops her short. They sit side by side like they do all the time, yet today there’s a palpable distance and strangeness in the silence. Nell takes Pash’s hand, but the familiar tingle of connection feels almost pale and babyish after the revelation she just experienced. She thinks she’s hidden the observation, but Pash yanks eir hand back. 

PASH

You’re already gone!

NELL

That’s not…well, so what? Good! I need to go. You, too. We don’t belong here. This is the plan. We go together!

PASH

I know, that’s what we chattered about, it was exciting to imagine, but Nell, we can’t go join the circus just because we’re bored here. 

NELL

Where is this coming from? Last week, yesterday, we were together on this. This is what we’ve waited for. It’s not like Sages comes around often! There aren’t many chances like this for us.

PASH

Maybe they won’t even want me.

NELL

Of course they will! We’ll test, we’ll pass, we’ll be invited, we’ll be together! 

PASH

And then what? Do you even know what they do? At Sages?

NELL

They’re bringing peace to the world so the Arrivals don’t take over.

PASH

That’s not what my father thinks. He thinks they’re taking young folx from their families and training them to be…

NELL

What? To be what?

PASH

(in a very small voice)

Space prostitutes.

NELL

(bursts out laughing)

Come on! Do you hear yourself? That’s…

PASH

Well, do you know? What does it mean, to train there? It’s two years, that’s what she said, that Flora person. Two years you have to stay with them, no contact. No contact, Nell. That’s just to initiate, then summer home, and another two years, and another two after that. You’ll go from child to grown away from home. And what comes after? Have you ever even met anyone who got out, after?

NELL

They don’t get out, they stay out, don’t you get it? They don’t go back, they go forward. They make a life that lets them see the worlds and know what’s out there! They influence every important thinker and decider on our planet and beyond. They get a living unit in any city, for life, even if they leave! 

PASH

Now you sound like an evangelist. I don’t even think you know what they do.

NELL

I know what they don’t do. They don’t hide in caves learning how to sew and weave and churn and weld or a thousand other hard old jobs because they’re afraid of the rest of the world. They don’t limit themselves to one big tree in a tiny forest. So that’s a good start in my reckoning. Our reckoning, I thought! Now you don’t think so?

PASH

Now I know I don’t have a choice anyway.

NELL 

What do you mean?

PASH

My parents won’t let me test. 

NELL

Can they stop you?

PASH

It’s not like your family. You guys believe in the cause, the whole Peace in Three Generations. You’re actually afraid of the Arrivals. Hey, I am too! I don’t think you’re wrong. But most people aren’t like you guys, it’s still considered crazy on our side of the mountain. It’s only really…because of you, that your family…but my father thinks it’s all lies made up to control us. He withheld consent for testing. I wasn’t even supposed to be at Flora’s thing. 

NELL

Oooh, you’re a rebel! Just makes me love you more.

Nell pretend-pinch-tickles Pash’s side, and Pash retaliates with some shared giggling. 

PASH 

Love you more. Nell, we’re only thirteen, don’t go. I’m sure they’ll come back. There are other chances, other ways to go. Wait a couple of years.

NELL

If anything still exists in a couple of years. 

PASH

You don’t have to go now. Stay with me. Stay for me. Please.

NELL

Come with me! Come for me. Please. 

PASH

How? 

NELL

I don’t know, but we’ll find a way. We’ll make sure you test, and then if they want you, maybe they have ways of making your father say yes.

PASH

What does that mean? Torture?

NELL

No! Why would it be torture? I mean, like I heard sometimes families get a…boon. 

PASH

You think he’d sell me? He’s already afraid they’ll make me a Space Prostitute.

If Nell didn’t know Pash so well, she might have thought ei was genuinely insulted, but she sees the gleam and knows she’s being egged on.

NELL

Not sell you, dummy! Okay, but if they want you I think they can make things happen. Change his mind? 

PASH

It doesn’t matter, I can’t even be tested.

NELL

Once we know when and where the tests are, we’ll figure out how to get you in. Okay? Don’t worry.

PASH

But Nell? 

NELL

Yeah?

PASH

If it doesn’t work, if I can’t go, you’ll stay, right? You won’t leave me behind?

NELL

It will work! Just…

Nell cups Pash’s cheek in her hand. It’s gotten so dark as they sat talking that they can’t see each other at all. It’s as though they are sitting in infinite space. Nell kisses Pash gently on the mouth. They lean their heads on each others’ shoulders, arms entwined, holding each other in the dark, until suddenly Nell knows she’s being sought.

NELL

We gotta get back! Don’t worry, we’ll sort it out tomorrow. Love you.

PASH

Love you more!

Young-Nell doesn’t yet suspect what Now-Nell knows: her test is already over. She won’t see Pash again for two years. 

17. SHONA

BLOOM

Now we play!

That’s all Shona needs to hear. Immediately her token falls into a comfortable fighting stance, alert to learning the moves of this game.

BLOOM (laughs)

Learn what you know?

Shocked at what feels like eavesdropping, Shona’s attention hurries to check her mind gates, and in that moment, Bloom’s token spins, one leg out, toppling Shona’s lady with a crash that sends the sparking ashes flying like last autumn’s leaves, catching in her feathered cape. From the ground, Hawk spins sideways like a pinwheel, rising into the air just above token-Bloom, swirling her cape-wings like an ever-moving net that confounds the token’s movements as she swoops around him. Token-Bloom… 

BLOOM

Too slow, Shona, too slow to see. 

18. NELL

Suddenly, Nell finds herself back at the beginning, in the tween circle, but one spot over. She’s in Pash’s body, Pash’s memory. 

As Pash, Nell notices that eir body feels much less comfortable. Smaller, weaker, more constrained. Breathing feels tighter. The other kids look bigger. Pash is noticing Jiem Waylay, a sullen, mean-spirited boy that Nell remembers vaguely disliking; now she realizes he was someone Pash deeply feared. She tries to find other memories but she is locked to this channel, this story, so she only sees the one memory that Pash is focused on, this morning, Jiem blocking the hallway, his stinking breath too close, hulking over eim, pinching eir arm in a tight grip which parts you got down there? Nell feels sick that she never knew Pash was being intimidated like this. How did ei hide it? But this inside view already gives Nell some idea how to answer her own question. Being Pash is not like being Nell. Being Pash feels closed, armoured, almost distant from eir body. The wrong body flashes through eir mind. Even when they were at their closest, Pash was always holding most of eimself back. Young Pash glances at Atisma, who smiles back tenderly, allowing a moment of warmth. Nell had also never noticed this connection to the teacher. She wonders what else she missed. 

Just a few inches to the right have shifted Nell’s perspective. Through Pash’s eyes, Flora slides from a formidable fascination to a suspicious stranger, her slick suit a sign of falseness, her expansive movements over-done dramatics. Nothing like they’d expected at all. Pash feels a giggle rising at the ridiculous peacock where a serious Sages mentor should be. Ei glances at young Nell, knowing full well that glance could cost them both their control. Nell looks away quickly. Eyes back on Flora, Pash sees that the stranger is about to burst out laughing herself. Pash glances from Nell to Flora, feeling the connection between them that leaves eim out, hearing second-hand the silent command to “let it out”. Pash could never do it alone, but ei catches the moment young Nell lets lose with a “Ha!”, leaping on that energy like a surfer on a wave, the way ei often attaches and rides Nell’s emotional wake to make up for what ei doesn’t quite let eimself feel. Nell feels Pash riding high on young-Nell’s energy, and realizes in a moment how often she felt Pash sucking on her flow, riding on her tail; how she encouraged that, feeling like she had enough for the both of them. If she sometimes got depleted, she restored herself quickly, and it was worth it, for Pash. Pash needed her, and feeling needed felt like love. 

These realizations strike Nell as truths she already knows, things she’s already dealt with, but forgotten, now presented with a new headline: Pash as an emotional vampire. Nell immediately rejects this summary, observing from inside her beloved’s experience. If she didn’t know it before, she feels it now: Pash is a fragile and resilient creature who deserves to feel safe but doesn’t know how. Maybe Pash subconsciously siphons what ei needs to survive, but ei still suffers a crippling anxiety and self-preservation that ei largely keeps hidden, even from Nell. All eir strength goes into holding back, holding off, building a show to satisfy everyone’s expectations. Even Nell’s. But none of this negates their devotion to each other, at thirteen. Their love is a real thing, tangible, important. Co-dependent, maybe, but not lopsided. They give and they take with each other. Nell won’t let any other spin intrude on what she knows about her childhood pre-twinement. It’s too much a part of her to be questioned. She realizes that she always knew Pash was hiding this tension and fear, on some level. She loves eim, complete with this knowledge, now as then.

FLORA

If anyone doubts what I say, you see today it’s true. Consciousness naturally connects from me to you, to you, to you. We are none of us alone. It matters how we gather, the when, the where, the who. We are always a little bit merged, it shifts what we feel, think, and do. But will you harness it, or let it rule? 

Pash feels young-Nell’s yearning and latches on, imagining yearning for eimself, pretending to feel the same way, feeding it back to eir loved-one in the flow they’ve developed, confident Nell won’t notice the emotions are recycled, watered-down, returned directly. But Flora notices, and Pash feels her notice sharply, like a judgment, like a slap. 

FLORA (vo)

Pretender!

Pash feels deeply ashamed, caught out and pushed off, not worthy. At the same moment, Nell drops eir hand, bolting from the room before Pash can register what’s happening. The rest of the circle begins moving around, murmuring, muttering, Flora’s spell broken. Flora herself doesn’t seem phased. She allows the circle to break naturally. She rises smoothly to standing from cross-legged like a genie from the bottle. She steps back, waves her hand, and immediately Linæol and Atisma move into in-charge mode, business as usual. 

Flora glides to where Pash still sits, dazed and unsettled, debating whether to run after Nell and risk trouble, or join the rest of the class at lesson. Flora sinks to cross-legged in front of eim, knees touching. Pash looks around nervously, certain Linæol will intervene, but everyone ignores them where they sit incongruently on the floor in the middle of the room. It’s like they are in an invisibility bubble. 

Without asking for permission, Flora takes Pash’s hand, and places it palm-up inside the cup of her own hand. She turns Pash’s other hand palm-up on eir knee and spoons her own hand inside. Each leans a little forward to allow this, bringing them eye-to-eye. 

PASH

You sent her running?

FLORA

Yes.

PASH

You’re taking her. 

FLORA

Yes.

PASH

But not me. 

FLORA

Do you want to be taken as well?

PASH

Yes!

FLORA

Or do you just want to stay with Nell?

PASH

Yes.

FLORA

You don’t want to join us. 

PASH

I don’t know what I want.

FLORA

Yes. 

PASH

So maybe I do want it, if I don’t know. Maybe I want what Nell wants.

FLORA

Latching onto her wanting is not the same as wanting for yourself. 

PASH

Yes. But I can do that! I can read her, latch on, and send back. Which means I’m a good candidate.

FLORA

One measure of match, but…

PASH

So you won’t take me?

FLORA

You won’t come.

PASH

Then you will take me? If I say I will come?

FLORA

I have no choice. It’s your voice here. 

PASH

What do you mean?

FLORA

Nell will make it through, but you, you’re not built to tough it out. You’ll use her, no doubt, bluff every day to stay by her side, but you’ll suck her life away. You’ll wish you’d stayed here, where things are clearer, until the day you come to hate her, after you have ruined her, after you kill her chance for glory. That’s when you’ll be sorry. 

PASH

So don’t take me! What are you even saying? If you don’t think I can cut it, why are we sitting here communing?

FLORA

You’ve entwined her. You’re entwined. We see it all the time, these baby ties, but yours still binds, though she passed twelve. She can’t go without you and stay well. But I can arrange a sever, I can make it all better, so she can go and you can stay, and no one needs to suffer. It’s up to you. She is coming with us, that is certain, she is too important to leave, so the question now is, how do you, Pash, want to live? A tag-along shadow vampire never fitting in? Or home, where your heart can begin again?

PASH

She won’t go without me.

FLORA

Then she won’t go without you.

PASH

Maybe she’ll stay.

FLORA

Is that the way you want to live? Holding her back from all she can give the world?

PASH

I don’t care about the world!

FLORA

You see the problem. I hold a solution. 

PASH

She’s happy here, with me. She doesn’t need to leave. She’s all I have, don’t take her! Please!

FLORA

Try then. She sits in the tree, Gian. Let’s see if you can make her stay. But fair play – if she chooses us, you must select your forever: come and attempt to train with us, or stay and take the sever. This is your test.  

Flora rises to standing and walks swiftly from the room, without drawing any more notice or attention from anyone. Pash stays where ei sits, reeling from the encounter; so does now-Nell, re-writing and re-evaluating every single word and event that came after this, in light of what she now knows. Pash, in the tree. Candy, Flora, this day, every aspect. Everything Nell thought she knew is tinted green, ten degrees off kilter, slightly altered, and she can’t yet begin to fathom the implications.

End of written

 Pash runs at Gian, rustles up through the leaves, and flops on the platform beside Nell. The world continues darkening around them, the air finally relenting some coolness.

PASH

Knew you were here. Dummy. Why’d you run? 

NELL

Just needed to.  

Nell thought she would jump right into dishing on Candy, but something stops her short. They sit side by side like they do all the time, yet today there’s a palpable distance and strangeness in the silence. Nell takes Pash’s hand, but the familiar tingle of connection feels almost pale and babyish after the revelation she just experienced. She thinks she’s hidden the observation, but Pash yanks eir hand back. 

PASH

You’re already gone!

NELL

That’s not…well, so what? Good! I need to go. You, too. We don’t belong here. This is the plan. We go together!

PASH

I know, that’s what we chattered about, it was exciting to imagine, but Nell, we can’t go join the circus just because we’re bored here. 

NELL

Where is this coming from? Last week, yesterday, we were together on this. This is what we’ve waited for. It’s not like Sages comes around often! There aren’t many chances like this for us.

PASH

Maybe they won’t even want me.

NELL

Of course they will! We’ll test, we’ll pass, we’ll be invited, we’ll be together! 

PASH

And then what? Do you even know what they do? At Sages?

NELL

They’re bringing peace to the world so the Arrivals don’t take over.

PASH

That’s not what my father thinks. He thinks they’re taking young folx from their families and training them to be…

NELL

What? To be what?

PASH

(in a very small voice)

Space prostitutes.

NELL

(bursts out laughing)

Come on! Do you hear yourself? That’s…

PASH

Well, do you know? What does it mean, to train there? It’s two years, that’s what she said, that Flora person. Two years you have to stay with them, no contact. No contact, Nell. That’s just to initiate, then summer home, and another two years, and another two after that. You’ll go from child to grown away from home. And what comes after? Have you ever even met anyone who got out, after?

NELL

They don’t get out, they stay out, don’t you get it? They don’t go back, they go forward. They make a life that lets them see the worlds and know what’s out there! They influence every important thinker and decider on our planet and beyond. They get a living unit in any city, for life, even if they leave! 

PASH

Now you sound like an evangelist. I don’t even think you know what they do.

NELL

I know what they don’t do. They don’t hide in caves learning how to sew and weave and churn and weld or a thousand other hard old jobs because they’re afraid of the rest of the world. They don’t limit themselves to one big tree in a tiny forest. So that’s a good start in my reckoning. Our reckoning, I thought! Now you don’t think so?

PASH

Now I know I don’t have a choice anyway.

NELL 

What do you mean?

PASH

My parents won’t let me test. 

NELLt

Can they stop you?

PASH

It’s not like your family. You guys believe in the cause, the whole Peace in Three Generations. You’re actually afraid of the Arrivals. Hey, I am too! I don’t think you’re wrong. But most people aren’t like you guys, it’s still considered crazy on our side of the mountain. It’s only really…because of you, that your family…but my father thinks it’s all lies made up to control us. He withheld consent for testing. I wasn’t even supposed to be at Flora’s thing. 

NELL

Oooh, you’re a rebel! Just makes me love you more.

Nell pretend-pinch-tickles Pash’s side, and Pash retaliates with some shared giggling. 

PASH 

Love you more. Nell, we’re only thirteen, don’t go. I’m sure they’ll come back. There are other chances, other ways to go. Wait a couple of years.

NELL

If anything still exists in a couple of years. 

PASH

You don’t have to go now. Stay with me. Stay for me. Please.

NELL

Come with me! Come for me. Please. 

PASH

How? 

NELL

I don’t know, but we’ll find a way. We’ll make sure you test, and then if they want you, maybe they have ways of making your father say yes.

PASH

What does that mean? Torture?

NELL

No! Why would it be torture? I mean, like I heard sometimes families get a…boon. 

PASH

You think he’d sell me? He’s already afraid they’ll make me a Space Prostitute.

If Nell didn’t know Pash so well, she might have thought ei was genuinely insulted, but she sees the gleam and knows she’s being egged on.

NELL

Not sell you, dummy! Okay, but if they want you I think they can make things happen. Change his mind? 

PASH

It doesn’t matter, I can’t even be tested.

NELL

Once we know when and where the tests are, we’ll figure out how to get you in. Okay? Don’t worry.

PASH

But Nell? 

NELL

Yeah?

PASH

If it doesn’t work, if I can’t go, you’ll stay, right? You won’t leave me behind?

NELL

It will work! Just…

Nell cups Pash’s cheek in her hand. It’s gotten so dark as they sat talking that they can’t see each other at all. It’s as though they are sitting in infinite space. Nell kisses Pash gently on the mouth. They lean their heads on each others’ shoulders, arms entwined, holding each other in the dark, until suddenly Nell knows she’s being sought.

NELL

We gotta get back! Don’t worry, we’ll sort it out tomorrow. Love you.

PASH

Love you more!

Young-Nell doesn’t yet suspect what Now-Nell knows: her test is already over. She won’t see Pash again for two years.