It was windy; people went by bundled in scarfs and coats; and cold. Lydia shivered, though she didn’t feel the crisp air or the wind. Traffic zoomed by. Newspapers and debris blew in the gutters, and watching, she felt very lonely. She saw everything clearly, but she didn’t really smell anything, she noticed. And she only heard the traffic sounds dimly, though cars rushed by just feet away.

She didn’t feel any particular sense of contact with the ground either, though nostalgically she remembered how the click, click, click of her high heels used to accompany her wherever she went; or the soft pouncing jounce of sneakers, or—

She really felt, well, ghostly, for the first time since her death. Was this Oversoul Seven’s way of making her feel uncomfortable, so she’d want to be born again? Though she didn’t sense his presence, Lydia wasn’t sure just how many of her experiences were the natural results of her own thoughts—or how many were directed by Seven. She sighed petulantly: her search for the gods had certainly been cut short; here she was, earthbound enough.

People were all around her, busy, concentrating completely in their cozy time and place, with appointments to keep, and with the arrangement of events so neat and simple! Despite herself, Lydia grinned; without even noticing it, she’d turned back into a woman in her late thirties. She’d never realized before how little of yourself was available when you were alive. In life you didn’t have to worry about balancing youth’s energy and innocence with the wisdom or experience of age, because by the time you got old, you’d lost touch with your own youth. Now she could switch back and forth at will—a mixed blessing, she thought, because she passed a store window and saw that she left no reflection there.

Yet, perversely, she refused to focus all of her energy where she was, in which case she would be able to really smell and feel the air, hear the traffic. But that would be a mockery. A mockery of what? Between ages, Lawrence had said. She sighed again. And suddenly she realized that she was being followed. Being followed? She started to laugh, her unseen image flickering back and forth and changing colors with the extent of her mirth. Who could be following her here?