“Not at ground level, anyway.” Santi climbed into the lighthouse as a teenager lifetimes ago, through a broken window in the lantern room. The interior is how he remembers it: a gray sketch, the lack of detail almost uncanny. Now, the monotony is broken by a mattress on the floor and a bucket filled with chip packets and bread. “You’re living in here?”

Thora nods enthusiastically. “I figured a landlocked lighthouse accessible only by mystic portal was the closest I could get to elsewhere.”

Something about the bucket strikes Santi as odd. He empties it out. He’s not imagining it. Three of the same oddly shaped bread bun, four of the same pack of paprika chips. The same exact apple with the same bruise on one side, repeated over and over. He looks up at her. “Where did you get all this?”

She grins. “Come with me and I’ll show you.”

In the crowded aisles of the Alter Markt, Santi watches Thora reach out and take a bun from a bread stall.

“Thora,” he starts.

“Before you call the police, just wait.” She points steadily at the corner of the stall. When Santi looks again, another identical bun has appeared in the place of the one she took.

He blinks. He remembers a cup of coffee, unexpectedly heavy in his hand. “That happens every time?”

“Loaves and fishes,” Thora says, grinning.

Santi shakes his head in wonder. “How did you find this?”

Thora bites into her prize. “I’ve been here five years,” she says around a mouthful. “Plenty of time to learn all this place’s tricks.” She takes another bun and shoves it in her pocket. “Once you get the hang of it, they’re pretty easy to spot. You just have to look at things the right way.” She grabs his arm, her face lighting up. “Which reminds me. There’s one you have to see.”

He pulls back. “I can’t stay. Héloïse will be wondering where I am.”

“Héloïse?” Thora stares. “I thought you were finished with Héloïse. You said being with her didn’t feel fair.”

Santi rubs his eyes, still reeling from the twenty-five years that have passed and not passed since he and Thora last saw each other. He remembers moving to Paris, meeting Héloïse, their wedding in the Art Nouveau church in Montmartre under the impossible brightness of stained glass. Images, tied up with emotion, connected by the illusion of a self that experienced them. If his and Thora’s lives in the city are the melody, then perhaps the pauses also have meaning, like the rests in music. He shrugs. “We were already married when I arrived.”