A smile flickers. “Death happens, Allen. We’re destined to die. Some of us earlier than others, sure. Some of us by accident, some of us by choice, but it happens. And you can’t just… stay here.”

“I can,” Allen retorts, hating the petulance coarsening his rebuttal, the way it sharpens each syllable into a resentful whine. “And I have.”

“You can’t. You can’t just stay here.” Fatimah withdraws, thirty-nine now and dressed in military attire.

He blinks.

Now, she is twenty-six, buxom from motherhood, the nurse she became in a parallel existence.

Another blink.

Eight. Seventy. Fifty-two. Even as Allen watches, her form continues to coruscate between every variant of her. Only the smile remains constant, too heavy with grief to participate in the temporal fluctuations.

“I won’t let you.”

“What?”

Too late, he registers the seismic hymn of the propulsion engines, the adjustment of ballast and gears, an ecosystem of preparations, too many to name. Too late, he realizes her intentions, even as Fatimah takes another step back.

“Let go. I’ve done so a million years ago.”

“No.“ It is not a shout, not even a word spoken, just a gasp of noise, a stolen breath.

The world turns white.

“I love you.”

And suddenly, he is elsewhere.

the quiet like a homecoming

Travel to Scandinavia if you can, the older cats told me, the queens in their raftered kingdoms. The coffee there, they said, is bitter as an old lie. The Norsemen are beautiful, their women even more sublime, but most importantly, they are quiet. Preoccupied only with Nordic things, disinterested in the outside world. This is crucial. This is what makes them safe.

But this is not the only reason I am here.

I shade my eyes against the noon sky, its cerulean without dimension or depth, no gradient of quality; the color is absolute as a rich man’s confidence. Malmo tastes like a memory, like a word misplaced. I can smell the ocean, an afterthought in the air. It is cold and clean and old, so very old. Older even than the myth of marriage, than selkie stories, than Adam, than the Eve-that-never-was and the Eve-who-lives.

I follow the crowd onto the platform and then into the station, pouring through their pale bodies. Everyone looks but no one is gauche enough to comment on the tail that droops from the hem of my black woolen coat, the fur a little ragged. Months ago, I’d have been better groomed, more together, more cognizant of propriety, the profound obscenity of wearing my skin like a point of pride.

Then again, months ago, there would have been nothing to see, nothing but dark hair worn in a long, sleek braid. A smile. Skirt, knee-length. Pastel blouses. Nothing of me. Nothing at all.