Shit, they could all see that BF45 was online.

I disconnected.

There was one chunk of writing still in pastel purple. This part was kept private, written in Blithe’s handwriting, a finger pressed against the screen.

Water spurting from the pump onto a bed of mosaic tiles

Scratchy woolen underwear against muslin skirt and saddle

Long blade of the men in long capes who will come to bring her back to her family to be wed

Jewel in soft sack

Frisson—Margaret seduced the Salton Sea engineer so that she could steal his Echometer, a tool that will track the history of the other gems through the soil. Yes, fuck yes. If you dig a spike into the earth, a—

Tapestry will emerge from the ground?

Reading will come up with precise past latitude and longitudes?

Spirit will start to narrate?

The Echometer cracks the earth around it to create a map, and on the map each gem location is marked. The Echometer doesn’t follow the conventions of modern geopolitical boundaries. The map has sixteen circles, each about the width of a wagon wheel, and on eight of them, a shallow hollow has been carved out. When a hand is placed in the hollow, a gem-bearer’s memory emerges in a cloud of dust, smudged and incomplete. Margaret will have to flee from the engineer and find someone who can read the marks in the earth. She sketches the map in her oilskin journal, where she keeps track of her provisions. In a burst of feeling, she runs around putting her hand in all of the hollows. Eight memories crowd the air, bumping into one another.

As I read, I thought of the pink sphere at E-M-E-R-A-L-D’s, the diner in the middle of the desert. He was going deep here, in a way that satisfied ancient, archetypal longings for meaning.

Sinking into the outlines of his words, I fell asleep.

Later, I was sitting on my bed, about to jerk off to an imagined scene between Margaret and the engineer when I heard the front door open. I shoved a pillow on top of Blithe’s pad and pulled my shirt over my opened pants.

“Well, how’d it go?” I yelled into the hallway.

Blithe poked his head into my room.

“We went to Flushing and ate a shit-ton of dumplings and walked around,” he said matter-of-factly.

One morning I woke up early, inexplicably optimistic. I jumped out of bed instead of lying there, ruminating in dread-circles. I went into the kitchen to make coffee. The Witch was standing in the kitchen, cloaked and dropping rose petals onto a hand mirror. She did not acknowledge me, and I let her do her thing.

Desires poured into the dark, narrow space with rosemary branches hanging down from the ceiling, mortars and pestles with half-crushed insect shells and bird-poop tinctures on the counter, spice jars that held flakes of gold and mouse skulls, takeout containers full of spring water (even tho the plastic leeched, the Witch still used them), spindles of twine, a pot of algae. The air was permanently stained with mandrake root, eucalyptus, burnt hair, and something that must have been natural but smelled like wet dry cleaning.