Even then, I didn’t think I could get up and search for my escape anyway. My body was heavy and tired, and my eyes already were slipping closed again. Soren brushed my forehead with his lips. “Sleep, Ebba. You need it. We’ll be here when you wake up.”

The man who must’ve been my brother grasped my hand tightly with his own. “Sleep, little wild thing. You’ll feel better soon. I’ll catch your favorite, and we can have rabbit stew for dinner.”

So, some things in this life were the same across all prospective futures. Perhaps the scenarios were different but deep inside … I was still me and I was surrounded by love and warmth and normalcy and the lack of the burden of the entire world, because here, if the world were ending, then no one paid any notice to it or even knew of its changing.

I would need to rip myself away from this warm, comfortable place, and I feared I may not be able to do it. Just give me a day, I prayed. Just give me a day to enjoy this and live in this soft, wonderful world. It wasn’t like I could get up to search the source of my escape anyway. I was still incredibly woozy when I even tried to sit up. I doubted I could move anywhere. I had all the reason to linger in this beautiful world a while longer.

“Jannek.” Both I and the man who was my brother turned. Of course, he’d be the one named Jannek, wouldn’t he, since I was considered a girl and my name was Ebba. “Stop crowding everyone and go and actually do those chores I asked.” My mom’s exasperated voice was the same in both worlds.

Jannek shot me an apologetic look before getting up and climbing back down from the loft. I watched him go, wondering what else was different about this world where I wasn’t needed to fulfill a male role, where Soren was already human, and where life lacked the magic of the Permafrost.

“Sleep, love,” Soren repeated, and my eyelids grew heavier and heavier until I complied and drifted off to sleep.

For a few days, I was still too weak to even get up. Soren had to help me with the simplest of tasks that always had me blushing with embarrassment. My sisters and brother visited me on the regular, telling me of their day, and I lay there marveling at the normalcy of it all.