“Albhe,” Caelin cried, his voice raised in order to be heard over the steady rush of wind. “We should take a break.”

The wizard was limping. Haunched over his gnarled wooden staff, he struggled to climb a jagged rock along the steep incline of the mountain. He did not look back or reply.

“Master?” Caelin tried again.

“It should be here.” The strain was evident even in Albhe’s voice. “It has to be.”

The blue crystal at the tip of the wizard’s staff glowed faintly as he cleared the foothold. He was expending too much magic, too much energy, but Caelin knew better than to point this out. He knew better than to pull out his wand, or to try and help him, but he worried about whether they could keep this up. He wondered if they’d be able to survive yet another night in the domain of dragons, however dormant it may appear.

“Maybe if we—?“

“Enough,” Albhe barked. The contents inside the thick leather satchel strapped to his side clanged as he spun around. His gray beard, peppered with stray leaves and twigs from the climb, sagged with his scowl. “Stop if you must, but I will see this through to completion.”

The wizard did not wait for a response.

“Time is short.”

He grabbed hold of his satchel, spun back around, and made to climb the next rock, leaving his young apprentice to simmer.

Caelin was getting nervous. This trip was only supposed to take a day. They hadn’t come prepared to stay overnight, yet the end of their third day on the mountain was fast approaching. But the wizard insisted that he was being too cautious. Albhe was much older than Caelin, and therefore infinitely more practiced in both magic and the art of chasing rumors of magic, but the young apprentice knew him. Their many long years together had shown him who the wizard was, and of late he was being uncharacteristically reckless, impatient, and careless.

For starters, the Qern, the fabled ancient home of dragons, seemed abandoned. There were no other signs of life along the volcanic wasteland, let alone any dragons or caves, yet the wizard remained resolute. Stubborn and blustering as ever, he refused to pause long enough to rest, let alone to discuss a plan or their utter lack of preparedness.

“Time is short,” Albhe kept insisting. But for whom?

The wizard’s tattered robe lifted about an inch off the ground as he continued to climb the next cliff of rocks, offering a sobering glimpse at the withered, blackened leg beneath. The sight made Caelin’s stomach drop, his throat constrict with remorse.

“Master, please. If we could just—”

But as both wizard and apprentice cleared the next set of rocks, they were each halted in their tracks. Caelin’s words and his guilt slipped off the side of the mountain as they stared, at long last, at their intended yet elusive destination: the open mouth of a cave.

At first, neither said a word. They just stared. After a few stunned moments, they exchanged a quick look and then continued forward, eager to enter and see what awaited them inside.

“Gods,” Caelin murmured, his voice echoing through the damp dark. With his wand in one hand, emitting a dull light, he reached out with the other to touch the jagged, reflective surface of the walls. Volcanic glass, the likes of which Albhe had foreseen. “You were right.”

“Which means you were wrong,” the wizard teased. Never one to linger, his eyes passed over the glistening walls only momentarily before settling on the path ahead, the cave’s dark depths.

Raising his staff, the wizard pulled the gem affixed to its top close to his lips and whispered a soft, indecipherable incantation — “Sol g’alia un sér,” Caelin guessed.

At once, a pale blue light that was much stronger than anything Caelin could produce flooded the cavern, making the walls shimmer like gemstones and the darkness reveal a way forward.

The tunnel seemed to go on forever. With Caelin following close behind, Albhe shuffled slowly, carefully, and quietly into the depths beneath the Qern’s massive, albeit dormant, volcano. The deeper they went, the colder the air, which only deepened Caelin’s worry that even though they’d found the place, they’d find no dragons here.

Eventually, they came to what appeared to be a dead end. There, the tunnel opened up into a giant chasm, the floor falling away into a deep, black pit. Before Caelin could ask, or even think to say anything at all, the wizard held out his staff and muttered yet another incantation — this time, perhaps, “Sol g’oliúm ou nér.”

A second light emitted from the gem at the tip of the staff. It hovered in midair, traveling in a straight line out over the chasm, stopping only once it reached the center. Then, it began to sink, slow but sure, down into the abyss.

In no time at all, the light revealed the seemingly endless dark to be anything but. Only a few short feet down from where the wizard and apprentice stood, the bottom of the pit became illuminated, along with something else. Something huge.

At first, they only saw the massive figure’s round scaly hips, but then they saw its wings, its long pointed horns, and its slack open jaw.

“Is that…?”

“A dragon,” Albhe finished for his young apprentice. “Yes.”

“But it’s… what happened to it?”

The wizard, who stared down at the beast with a flat, muted expression, answered only, “Me.”

With a flick of his wand, Caelin conjured a rope, and together the pair made their way down to the bottom of the pit, to where the body of the dragon lay. As they got closer, however, the apprentice realized that the beast showed no signs of decay. Its scales were still intact, its flesh still attached to its skeleton. It looked as if it was only asleep, but it had clearly been there for a long, long time, and it clearly wasn’t breathing.

“Stand back,” the wizard commanded once they’d reached the bottom and their feet had once again landed on solid ground.

Caelin didn’t argue. He stopped as instructed and watched with his wand held out before him as his master continued forward without him.

Albhe approached the dragon with his staff held high, the light washing over its enormous arms, legs, and taloned claws. He frowned at the creature’s wings, drooping tongue, and open, expressionless cat-like eyes.

“My old friend,” the wizard muttered to himself. “I am so very sorry.”

Kneeling in front of the dragon’s horned head, he swung his satchel around to his front. From its depths, he pulled out an empty jar and set it on the ground before him. Then, he stood up, stepped back, and held the glowing gem of his staff over its open lid.

Albhe muttered an incantation that Caelin couldn’t hear, couldn’t even begin to guess. Whatever it was, though, it had an immediate and explosive effect. At once, the entire pit flashed with a bright, blinding light. Both wizard and apprentice had to hold up their hands to shield their eyes from the blaze. But as quickly as it came, the light was snuffed out.

With it went the light of the staff.

The gem that had once been at the top of the wizard’s staff was gone, and the jar was no longer empty. Inside — swirling, bouncing, and rebounding around the confines of its glass prison — was a spirit.

“What is that?” Caelin asked from afar, raising his wand and craning his neck to get a better look. “Who is that?!”

The wizard stared at the jar, then back at his apprentice. He did not answer. Instead, he hoisted his gemless staff high over his head and brought it crashing down.

Caelin heard the glass break, felt the momentary rippling compression of air. Then, as if shoved by some invisible force, he was blown backwards, slamming him hard into the wall of the pit.

Sputtering and gasping for air, the apprentice struggled to get back to his feet.

“Albhe, what—“

Before he could finish his sentence, however, his eyes detected movement. Behind his master, he observed with spine-chilling horror the massive chest of the dragon rising and falling. Rising and falling.

The dragon was breathing once more.

Its head began to lift, but Caelin was too stunned to speak, to call out and warn the wizard about what he saw. It didn’t matter, though. Albhe was looking right at it. He was kneeling on the ground before it, his hands held up in surrender as the dragon flexed its weak, atrophied muscles.

“I’m sorry,” Caelin could hear his master screaming, over and over. “You’re free.”

Testing its arms, and then its legs, the dragon became reacquainted with its body slowly. It seemed to ignore, or maybe not quite understand, what Albhe was saying.

The dragon’s new legs, which hadn’t held weight in who knows how long, trembled violently. With every attempt to stand, it collapsed back down the ground with a thundering crash. The effort, if its expression could be properly read, was painful.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

For a moment, the beast seemed to look right at the wizard, and for a moment it seemed to recognize who he was.

Without warning, the dragon let out a deafening roar. The sound made Caelin’s heart stop and the cave vibrate, like it might come crashing down.

“You’re free. You’re free. You’re free.”

The dragon began to rear back its head, and both wizard and apprentice dove to the ground. Covering their heads with their hands in anticipation of what was coming next, the dragon sucked in a deep breath and aimed its snout directly at the open ceiling.

They did not see the beast release the plume of fire and heat that tore through the ceiling of the cavern, but they certainly felt it. The bulk of the flames crawled up through the throat of the dormant volcano, sending bits of melted rock and debris raining down from on high. If there were still any living souls on the Qern, they might have seen the fire burst forth from the mouth of the volcano, as if the volcano itself was what had come back to life.

The heat hadn’t yet subsided when the dragon let out another roar. Caelin held his breath as rock, fire, and ash fell all around him, the dragon finding strength in its massive size once more. It towered over them like the buildings back home, only much bigger and far more angry.

When Caelin finally dared to look up and see what the beast might be doing, to try and anticipate what it might do next, he saw that it’d found its footing at last. It was climbing the cavern walls, its taloned claws digging into the rock. Not lunging for the wizard or apprentice, but fleeing for higher ground, toward the open mouth of the volcano.

Caelin watched the creature go. Only after it had disappeared into the darkness above did he turn his attention back to his master.

“Albhe,” Caelin called, quiet at first. “Where are you? Are you hurt?”

“I’m here,” the wizard responded, coughing. “Over here.”

The apprentice spotted the lump of blue and gray beneath the rubble and rushed over to his master’s side. He was surprised, however, to find him relatively unscathed. His robes were seared, and his gray hair was singed, but his flesh was mostly spared.

“What in the world were you thinking?” Caelin chided, kneeling down to Albhe’s side, helping him get upright. “What did you do?”

The wizard took a long look at his gemless, powerless staff. “I gave it back.”

Caelin was baffled.

“I can see that, but why? What in the world were you thinking? That thing could have killed us!”

The wizard shook his head.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “I gave it back. My magic. It’s gone.”

Caelin didn’t know what to say. He wanted to argue, but understanding washed over him like a wave. He’d never thought to ask about the staff before. He never even thought about it, but now that he was it made far too much sense. The signs were there, right in front of his eyes, that gem, after all this time, was a soul stone.

He had far too many questions to know which to voice.

“Why?” is all he thought to ask out loud.

“It wasn’t mine,” the wizard answered. He turned to face his apprentice, who held up his wand, their only remaining source of light, to better see his face. “I stole it. His soul was the source of my magic, and you know as well as I that my time will soon be up. I had to give it back. I had to make it right.”

There were tears in his eyes, remorse the likes of which Caelin had never seen in all their long years of study.

“You must always make it right. Do you understand?”

The apprentice didn’t know what to say. He thought about the dragon’s soul, which had been trapped in the gem at the top of the wizard’s staff for all this time. He looked down at his master’s gnarled leg, and tried not to think about the wayward spell he’d cast. The wizard’s magic was keeping the rotting at bay. What would happen to him now that it was gone?

More than that, what might be fueling the wand that cast it? His wand. Was there a soul trapped in it, too?

He couldn’t bring himself to ask.

“Always make it right,” the wizard repeated.

Had this trip been enough to make it right?

Shaking the storm of thought from his mind, at least for the moment, Caelin placed a hand on his master’s bony shoulder.

“We need to go,” he said. “Can you stand?”

The wizard nodded, slow and affirmative.

“I think so.”

With Caelin’s help, he did.

“There’s another way out,” Albhe explained, once they were both standing. He gestured ahead, at the opposite end of the cave from where they entered. “Just down there.”

Without the magic of his staff, and in the aftermath of the dragon’s resurrection, the wizard was very weak. He had to hang on to Caelin for support, but the apprentice was happy to take the lead. Together, with master following apprentice, they made their way onward. Deeper they went into the cave, but on an entirely new path. It was a path that would not only lead them home, but on to something, somewhere new. A path, Caelin hoped, would help them both make things right.

I saw him again in the most likely of unlikely places.

We had only been on two dates, but that night my date expressed an interest for the night not to end after the movie. Standing outside of their car, their hands in their pockets and their eyes on the floor, they asked if I would like to come over.

They were sheepish. They were shy.

I said yes without a moment’s hesitation.

There was a restless energy between us, a mix between nerves and excitement, as we shuffled into their small two bedroom apartment.

“I like your place.”

We exchanged pleasantries until one of us took a step closer, right up to the edge.

“I like your face.”

We were kissing before we knew it.

Hands grasped onto my neck, sliding down my back as my fingers traced a similar line down theirs, circling the outline of their backside all the way down to their thighs. My heart beat in my ears, drowning out the muffled sounds of the city around us and heightening with sharp clarity the slow drawing of our heavy breaths.

We were tangled up in minutes, two beings becoming one, but somewhere along the way I stumbled. I propped myself up meaning only to catch my breath, but something grabbed my attention out of the corner of my eye.

I froze, doing a double take at my date’s bedroom window, trying to see beyond our naked reflections.

“Everything OK?” they asked.

I could have sworn I saw someone, but now there appeared to be nothing outside but empty street. What gave me pause, and had me feeling shaken, though, was that the person looked a lot like Anxiety.

“Yeah. I—I’m fine.”

We tried to get back to it, but the seed had already been planted. I saw Anxiety, I was sure of it, and now I was thinking about him, too. That was all it took to pull me out of my body and into my head. Despite my better judgment, I glanced back towards the window as my date kissed me, and there Anxiety was again, standing on the corner of the street. He held up a sign with messy black letters that only I could see.

It read: “Are you sure you’re enough?”

I grimaced, trying to shut out the thought, but it was like water to the seed. In an instant, all I could think about was what my date wanted out of me, and whether or not I could give it to them. Gradually, and then all at once, my focus was ripped away from the present, becoming garbled by both history and potential.

“If you can’t be what they want you to be, you will lose them,” a voice whispered from inside the room. Anxiety’s voice, but I refused to acknowledge it, refused to even look his way. “Just like you lost Hank.”

“I’m sorry,” I gasped, pulling away from my date and into the intangible, unsettling arms of my oldest and meanest friend.

Anxiety’s long fingers dug into my shoulder, his other hand caressing my hair as I confessed to my date that I needed to stop; that it wasn’t their fault; that I was just in my head.

“It’s okay,” they said, sitting up on the bed. They hugged their knees to their chest to cover up their naked body. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t wanna do.”

“I want to,” I replied, my frustration evident. “Believe me, I do.”

“I believe you,” they said.

“They don’t,” Anxiety whispered with a forlorn sigh.

It’d been so long since I last saw him that I thought he might be gone for good. But that was my problem wasn’t it? Anxiety was a puzzle that couldn’t be solved, a problem without a solution. I knew this. I knew him. He always, always found a way to get inside my head, to whisper things that aren’t true, and send me spiraling.

“I really do understand,” my date insisted.

My eyes rose hesitantly to meet theirs, and I was surprised to see genuine understanding.

“I know him, too,” they confessed with a weak smile. “He’ll go away after a while. Can I hold you until he does?”

Anxiety hissed something in my ear, but I could only perceive my date’s arms opening up to me, inviting me into an embrace.

I smiled, too, and allowed myself to be pulled forward instead of backward; to weather the storm of Anxiety’s latest visit in the arms of someone new.

When first they came, I was just a boy. I didn’t think much about the space I took up. I wasn’t yet in the habit of staying on guard even at rest, but that day I started to learn how. It began with a knock at the front door of our tiny home, and my mother’s soft voice asking who it was. When the person answered, and the door snapped loudly shut, I knew that something was wrong.

The house fell into tense silence.

Mother stood several feet away from the door when I rounded the corner, her hands held out in front of her, palms facing the door.

“Get back in your room,” she hissed, glancing at me only momentarily.

I loved it when she did magic. It was part of our culture, the things she insisted were important to pass on to me. Her casting a protection spell wasn’t altogether troubling, but why was she casting it inside our home? And why was her face so pale, her lips so tight, and eyes so fierce?

“What’s going on?” I asked, my little hands trembling and heart beating fast.

With the spell fully cast, both of her hands, each previously rigid, dropped. She held them up to her chest for a moment. Listening. Waiting. The people outside started slamming their fists against the door, the sound muffled by magic.

“We need to hide,” Mother said, her voice wavering in a way that made me scared. She rushed over to me, and took me firmly by the hand. I remember wanting to cry, but the urgency of the situation made me stuff the feeling deep inside myself.

I didn’t say anything, just let her pull me deeper into the house.

“Miss Sïlvond’sēaye, we know you’re in there!”

They said our family’s name with perfect pronunciation. Back then, there were more people like us around. Back then, our presence in the realm had only just been labeled as nefarious, our culture poisonous.

Twenty years later, when they finally got me, too, they used more words with much calmer confidence, only they no longer cared about how they said our names.

“Mister Sill-von-say, as you know, your extended presence in this realm is a direct violation of the good graces of our great king. We know you’re in there. Should you choose to comply, we will escort you and provide safe passage to a holding facility of our choosing. I must warn you, however, that should you choose not to comply, we are authorized to use extraordinary force.”

Mother wasn’t given the same courtesy. She didn’t choose compliance, at least not at first, but she didn’t take me back to my room, either. Instead, we went to hers, and together we climbed into her closet.

“You can’t run from this, filthy little elf.”

The word was said like an insult, but it’s exactly what we were. Our pointed ears and khaki skin wasn’t what they despised about us, though. It was the way we treated gender, not as something we are assigned, but something we grow into. Elves are born genderless until or unless our identity is revealed to us, after all, and that’s what they hated the most.

Mother closed the closet door, and together we sank to the floor behind her clothes, our backs against the wall.

“I need you to be very brave for me right now,” she whispered once we were seated on the floor and shrouded in darkness, our knees tucked to our chests. Her hands were shaking. “Can you do that for me?”

My throat was so tight and my body so tense that I couldn’t speak.

She ran a finger down my cheek, trying to force a smile.

“It’s alright. Everything’s alright. But you need to hide. You need to stay in here for a while.”

I blinked, wondering why she didn’t say “we.”

“Do you understand?”

I didn’t dare say no, so I just nodded.

The pounding at the door continued, making me jump. I squeezed my eyes shut and covered my ears with my hands. Mother took me by the chin. When I opened my eyes, I saw that she was crying.

“You aren’t in danger,” she promised. “They aren’t going to hurt you. Do you remember the spell I showed you?”

There was only one spell I knew how to perform. It helped me deal with my father’s violent outbursts, and cope with the debilitating panic attacks that sometimes drove me from my lessons to the outer edges of the village.

“Vanish?” I asked, speaking very quiet.

There was more pounding at the door, this time sounding much louder. The protection spell was fading… but was she letting it?

“Vanish,” Mother repeated with a nod. “I need you to vanish.“

She started speaking fast.

“No matter what happens, do not let them see you. Do not let them hear you.”

I didn’t understand until after she’d gotten up, stepped out of the closet, and closed the door softly behind her that she wasn’t going to hide with me.

“Don’t come out,” she whispered through the slats. “Don’t let them know you’re here.”

I kept my hands squeezed very tightly to my head as the men burst into our home. I tried not to listen, tried not to hear the awful sounds of shuffling, thudding, and dragging as they took my mother away from me. I tried to stay very still, to keep the spell as strong as possible, but I was crying so hard that I flickered in and out of visibility.

It didn’t matter. They weren’t there for me. Not yet, anyway. They were only there for her. They had only come to destroy everything we’d fought so hard to build after getting away from my father.

When they were gone, and the house was ominously silent once more, I listened with quiet devastation to the reverberations of emptiness that were left behind.

It was the first time I learned how utterly fragile life can be. How quickly everything can change.

Twenty years later, they came for me as well. By then I was tired of hiding, tired of running, and I chose not to vanish. Just like my mother, I let them march me out of the tiny stable I had been living in, and carry me away to a holding facility at the border of the realm. I didn’t know where I was, or what would happen to me, but I heard many stories that were similar to my own.

“They did the same to my brother,” my cell mate told me once. “They beat him, too. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget the sound.”

He and I talked about these kinds of things at night, lying awake in our bunks, afraid to fall asleep for fear that we may open our eyes and find ourselves in a different place. At first, we spoke from separate beds, but eventually our heads ended up mere inches apart from the same pillow, our voices kept to a low whisper.

We didn’t think much about the tears that usually followed our nights together. We were just thankful to have each other. To not be alone.

When first we met, he told me that my name sounded like a common elvish nomenclature that I was unaware of. I was a dark elf. He was a wood elf. They had different stories and sayings.

“Silver in the sea,” he explained. “Sïlvond’sēaye.” He said it back and forth, as if to demonstrate for me how similarly the two sounded. I heard only, “Sill-von-say,” but I adored his explanation. To find silver in the sea is an extraordinary, almost impossible thing, and so, too, was our coming together. He likened the idea, the symbolism, to the idea of the silver lining: something in a dark time, a flicker of silver in a sea of blue, that gives you hope.

I told him I loved him after only knowing him for a week. It was the second night we ever spent together, and it was very late. We were lying side by side on my cot. The only light came from a thin slit that ran vertically up the wall. It was the only window to our cell, and it was a relic of the past, from back when the prison was a fortress, allowing archers to look out and take aim from the inside. It cast a thin line of pale moonlight across only one of his earnest, soft green eyes.

“I love you too,” he whispered back. “So, so much.”

He kissed my tears when I started to cry.

“You will find your mother,” he promised me. “I’m sure of it.”

“You’ll find your brother, too,” I said in return.

It wasn’t until much, much later that he finally confessed that his brother had died in a cell just like ours.

“My silver in the sea.”

I stare into the mirror and notice that my face looks rounder. There are imperfections that weren’t there a couple of years ago.

“You look tired,” I say to myself, “and your teeth look a bit yellow.”

The face in the mirror laughs, only I hadn’t done anything of the sort. The movement, my reflection seemingly moving by its own volition, makes me freeze. But that isn’t me, actually, and that isn’t a mirror, either. It’s a face, and while it isn’t mine, I could have sworn it looked just like me.

I’ve been staring for too long. The face — the man — smiles, and I’m taken aback. His soft blue eyes shimmer in the dim light of his bedroom. His hands trace lines across my skin.

“I really like spending time with you,” he says.

I smile, too, but then I start to cry. I want to say something back, something romantic or charming, and his eyes swim with understanding. He pulls me closer to him, lets me press my face into his chest, and I feel for the second time in as many months like I might not have to hide this part of me from him.

When we eventually say our goodbyes, he goes from lying in bed beside me to lounging in my mind. I see him everywhere, in everything. I wonder what he’s thinking, what he’s feeling, and whether or not I’m taking up space in his mind as well.

I drive home carefully, wanting to wake up tomorrow and see what it has in store. Because I see his eyes in the headlights that pass, and I feel his lips in every word coming through the radio.

Like a clap of thunder, he is a reverberation. And I am the same for him, I think. His growing presence in my life shows me visions, little flashes of a bigger something coming into focus. Where others have leaned away, he is leaning in, talking to me for hours and imploring me to tell him more.

“I want to understand,” he says to me, while wiping away my shame-soaked tears. “I want to be here for you.”

I do tell him more, or at least I try. I let him see me, even if some of it isn’t pretty. He does the same.

“Sometimes I worry that I’m just like my dad.”

“Sometimes I don’t feel good enough.”

“Sometimes I can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

I listen when he says things. And when he’s crying, too — letting me see him even when he maybe didn’t intend to — I hold him close.

“We are not them,” I say.

We both have people in our lives who have shown us the damage that unwieldy emotion can cause. We have both seen what damage even the most fleeting of feelings can cause. It has made us both afraid, but together we are finding bravery and strength.

At some point, we stop counting the number of dates we’ve been on, and start counting in years. For the first time in my life, I learn what it means to really, truly be in love. It isn’t the same as when we first met. He doesn’t just lounge in my mind, he’s moved in. I no long think in the singular, but in the plural.

He loves me, too. I see it in the way he looks at me, and in the words he speaks. I see it in his actions, and in the way we stay together. We listen to each other when we say “that hurt” — the way we sometimes have to, when the years make it easy to say and do things we don’t mean.

But there are things that don’t make sense. Things I notice that he brushes off. Flickers of someone I don’t know in his eyes, someone I don’t think he knows, either. Someone who lies to both of us. Someone who will bring about our undoing.

I don’t have to tell him or this stranger that he hurt me, because they knew he would. That’s why they tried to hide from me. That’s why it took him so many years to drag the stranger out of the darkness, set him down on our living room floor, and finally show me.

“I think we both need to look at this,” his confession seemed to say.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t see it coming. I know him, after all, and I know the things he struggles with, but I don’t know how to reconcile the reality from the fiction. I don’t know how to separate the man I thought I knew from the man he really was, the one who told me he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, but had already been giving himself away to others. I don’t know how to make sense of his lack of courage, pity, or love enough for me to even tell me that it happened. To give me any kind of say.

He was just a mirror.

I was just a face.

At least that’s how it feels.

Now, I know why I saw so much of myself in him. It’s hard not to look back and see anything but the reflection, that shiny surface beneath which he hid a part of himself. That mesmerizing, dazzling smile that I thought I knew, but never really did. It’s hard not to think that it was all just a lie — everything. Like all he was ever really doing was telling me what I wanted to hear, letting me believe that he was someone I could trust.

I believe him when he says he was lying to himself, too, but I won’t let sympathy turn to empathy. Letting myself, even for a moment, try to understand his side of things feels wrong. He made those choices, not me. He told those lies, not me.

How do I know where the lies begin and end?

How do I know he isn’t lying about this, too?

“I’m so sorry I hurt you,” he told me the last time we ever saw each other. There were tears in his blue eyes, my letter in his hands. “I really did love you. I always have, and I always will.“

It’s easy to believe him, but it’s hard for me to look at him, because all I see is the stranger. He displays remorse, and I feel pity, but then I’m right back in the front yard of my childhood home, picking up my things from the curb. Because the people I’ve loved most in this life have an awful habit of throwing me out, and I won’t let him do it, too. They at least did it out loud. She at least taught me how to show up for myself. And even though I thought he’d show up for me, too, I’ll do what I’ve always done and learn once more how do it for myself.

His silence makes it hard to put the love in a box. But I’m looking in the mirror. I’m facing me, fully. I’m telling myself sorry. I’m holding myself while I cry.

And I try to be thankful for his honesty, because it’s better late than never.

And I try to forgive him for making me look at myself differently.

We went to the courthouse together. On the way, we talked like we used to. We were friendly. We made jokes. We smiled, despite the unequivocal fact that what we were doing was sad. We approached our end the only way we knew how, the way we’d weathered every other storm for the last ten years: together.

I held the door open for him, and as I walked into the courthouse behind him I had to physically restrain myself from reaching out. My hands were accustomed to grabbing onto and massaging his shoulders whenever they looked tense, but I wasn’t allowed to do that anymore.

We shuffled through security and into the halls like two parents marching through a hospital, stone-faced and searching for the room that contained our sick child. A bad analogy, perhaps, because in this scenario the sick child is (or was) our relationship. The only person we were going to find there was a clerk who would help us legally end it, severing us from one another for good.

We couldn’t agree on a direction. Neither of us wanted to believe that the other was right about where we should go because, I think, we were both trying to embody the things we were saying to our friends and family.

“I’m going to find my way. I’m going to be alright. This is for the best.”

The right way, it turns out, was down a completely different hall in an entirely different section of the building.

“Girl, yes,” Chris murmured once we’d taken a number and found a seat. “You better show don’t tell us who the judge is.”

He was talking about the portrait plastered on the wall, declaring Jonica S Hunt the Superior Magistrate of Fulton County. Making jokes like this was the only way he knew how to combat the heaviness, tension, and bleak sterility of that somber place.

“Werk,” I agreed. “She really does look like she’s in charge.”

“I’m saying.” He looked to his right, then, and so did I. We watched a frowning woman holding her two children. The little girl and boy looked confused. The woman looked miserable, but was forcing a smile.

We frowned at one another.

Staring at my hands, I asked, “Is it weird that we’re doing this together?”

“No.” Chris answered without hesitation. “I’m glad that we are.”

It’s beautiful. I love you. Don’t leave me.

“Yeah.” I leaned back in my chair. “Me too.”

Chris wasn’t the first man I’d ever fallen in love with, and he wouldn’t be the last, but so far he’s the only person who’s made me feel like I understand what love even is. The way I felt (and will always feel) about him was deep, strong, and special. Being in love with him felt like being a part of something bigger than myself, and sharing my life with him was the one of the greatest privileges of my life.

I’m used to falling loudly and all at once. In a restaurant. At coffee. In a stranger’s bed. In the middle of a crowded dance floor. In an audience, listening to someone else’s favorite band. Chris was no exception, but with him the feeling didn’t dissipate, like it always did with the others. With him the feelings got sturdier as time went on, more confident, and our bond became something I thought was unstoppable.

When we met, we worked at neighboring restaurants. I was at a gay dive bar called Joe’s on Juniper, and he was at a slightly more upscale bar and grill called Einstein’s. Much like our relationship, neither one of these places exist anymore — both demolished to make way for a high rise — but it was on the iconic patio and dingy interior of Joe’s on Juniper that we had our first encounters.

Joe’s stayed open much longer than Einstein’s, so Chris and the other servers he worked with would walk over to our side of the fence for drinks after closing. The way he tells it, he spotted me immediately and thought I was cute, but didn’t want to show it. The way I tell it, he was cold, curt, and gave me the impression that he was totally uninterested.

The earliest exchange I could ever recall was when I spotted him, too, and gave him a compliment about his Lego Star Wars R2D2 keychain. He was attractive to me in a way that was intimidating: a beautiful man who took up space with a confidence that I envied. He didn’t smile when he turned to look at me, just scanned me up and down, said a quick “thanks,” and resumed whatever he was doing.

Disinterest wasn’t foreign to me. I’m a big flirt. I’m not one to withhold a compliment when it comes to mind, so I’m used to a myriad of reactions to my forwardness. A polite smile. A flushing of the cheeks. Usually reciprocation, but sometimes stinging, forceful rejection.

So when Chris gave me the cold shoulder (on more than one occasion, I might add), I simply wrote him off as not interested and carried on my merry way. And apparently, despite initially being very much interested, he quickly did the same, but for very different reasons. He saw me outside of Joe’s, and watched me dance with different guys over different nights, and decided I wasn’t his type.

Chris had had exactly one boyfriend before me, although they’d never officially called each other that. He was the polar opposite of someone like me. This was something that diminished his affections for me, or at the very least made him keep his distance, but only for a time. We continued to cross over into each other’s orbits — at work, on the dance floor, and on OKCupid — on more and more occasions. But the thing that finally took was one of his friends unwittingly suggesting that we should meet.

“He’s really smart,” I remember her saying, shortly after we met. “I think you two would really hit it off.”

At the time, I was dating somebody else, and trying to take it seriously, but then they hit me with the classic “I’m not ready, let’s be friends” and before I knew it I’d found and added Chris on Facebook.

“I hear that we’re soulmates,” my first message to him said. “When are we meeting?”

Although we felt special, evolved, and mature to be filing our divorce papers together, no one we encountered seemed all that impressed. The most notable thing that anyone behind the glass did was pause and glance when Chris mentioned that I, the respondent, was present. Whether the reaction was because I was present or because I was a man, however, I couldn’t say.

Chris sat at a computer and stuffed our paperwork into a scanner, then passed them to me to keep track of what was done and what was not. This only took about an hour. Afterwards, a clerk impatiently told us that yes, the hearing would take place virtually over Zoom, and that yes, it was next month, and that again, we would receive an email that explains all of this.

And then we were back in the car, driving back to the shop where his car was being worked on. It felt like we were simply on our way home after completing a chore, just like we had for the last decade. Only we weren’t heading anywhere but toward a fork in the road that would veer us away from one another for good.

We didn’t ignore the deeply sad, overwhelming heaviness between us. There was gravity in what we had just done, and what we were about to do, but we didn’t shy away from it. We talked about it. During that car ride, we asked the questions out loud, and openly leaned in to both the excitement of possibility and the daunting unpredictability of how our lives would soon transform.

What would happen next?

Where would he live?

What would being single even be like?

When would we start dating again?

“I don’t know,” Chris answered, shaking his head. “I really can’t even think about that right now.” He wasn’t looking at me, but I could see the pain in his eyes, a glimpse of his broken heart. It was only for a moment, though, because he was already putting up new and improved walls to shut me out. “I don’t even want to. I’m gonna focus on me for a while.” He got quiet. “I think you should, too, but I think we both know that you won’t.”

He was never one to mince words. It was one of the things that I loved about him, that I was going to miss, even if he no longer spared me from the barbs.

I didn’t know what to say.

“You’re probably already seeing someone else.”

He said it jokingly, but my silence made his smile crumble into a frown.

“You probably kept someone as a Plan B.”

Again, I didn’t know what to say. “That’s not—“

But he threw up his hands. “I don’t wanna know.”

I didn’t dare say a word.

“It isn’t Nathan, is it?”

He didn’t wait long enough for me to answer. “I don’t wanna know.”

The car fell very silent.

“You told me I deserved better,” he decided to say after a while. “Well, I think you do, too. It’s easy to think about what ifs, and the way things could have been instead of how they ended up, but… I don’t know. Even though ours didn’t work out, I think we still deserve the kind of love we thought we had.”

He looked out of the window just as we passed a billboard of a smiling attorney, advertising their services for help with a divorce. Our destination was ahead. Just one last turn and he would exit my car for good.

Chris cleared his throat and took a deep breath.

“I just… hope you don’t settle, for him or anyone. I hope you don’t look back.” He slipped his hand into the little handle above the door and gripped it tight. “I certainly won’t.”

Short-form fiction from a recovering perfectionist. The Fourth Drafts (2024) is a year-end collection of short stories, flash fiction, and personal essays from writer-slash-revisionist Stephen Alan Adams. Featuring contemporary and speculative fiction with an emphasis on LGBTQIA+ characters, themes, and narratives.

Fourth Draft is now available in print!

Originally published in this newsletter—including one experimental piece only seen on Notes—the fourth drafts of 2024 are now collected in print, offering a new way to support my work and enjoy it in a physical format. This is but the first book of many, and I’m so excited to get this inaugural release off the screen and into your hands.

By purchasing this collection, you’re getting more than a book—you’re supporting an independent storyteller, and making it possible for me to keep creating.

Whether you decide, thank you for being on this journey with me. Here’s to many more stories and collections to come!

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The ringing of the bell was warped. Its tone tilted as time bent and folded, until the sound was silenced completely by solid ground. I knew where we were — or, rather, when — but once we arrived, I looked only for Ben.

I found him leaning against a building nearby, fingers pressed to his temples.

“I’m… alright,” he said as soon as I was near.

“Do you know where we are?” I asked, a little too urgently. “Do you remember why we came?”

“I said I’m fine,” he hissed, but his expression softened when his eyes met mine. He pulled me closer, and took my head into his hands. “I’m good. Really.” We kissed softly, but it did nothing for my twisting stomach. “You look worried.”

“I am.”

“I don’t want to lose you,” is what I wanted to say next. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to jinx it. This was going to work, and he was going to get better. He had to.

Ben flashed one of his dazzling, heart-fluttering smiles. He pulled me by my hips and pressed his forehead against mine.

“My sweet man,” he whispered. “It’s going to be alright.”

I wanted to believe him. We were wanderers who’d found each other, after all, and that was already something of a miracle. Searching endlessly through the past, he’d been looking for his mother, who he lost when he was just a boy, while I was searching for my brother, who wandered but never returned. Separate pasts, different lives, and yet Ben and I somehow ended up at the same place in the same time, finding new homes in each other.

Stowing his bell and taking me by the hand, Ben led us out from around the building — someone’s house — onto the main road. Everything looked so old, even the asphalt, and I wondered, as I so often did, how this place might look in our present.

We climbed the steps a few houses down, and knocked on the faded blue door.

Ben’s red-haired, red-cheeked mother answered. With one hand on the door, the other bracing the full weight of her swollen, pregnant belly, she greeted us with a smile that was almost identical to Ben’s.

“Hi guys,” she beamed.

We were around the same age as she was back then, but were known to her only as the kind, overly friendly neighbors from down the road.

“Hey Momma,” Ben replied with a grin. “We were out and about, thought we’d pop by.”

“How sweet!” She opened the door wide. “Come in. I was just about to put on some tea.”

Ben let go of my hand as we stepped inside. We settled in the kitchen, as we always did, with its pale yellow paint and sour smell. There were drawings of sunflowers all over the walls, each framed in white, with places where pictures of Ben might eventually hang.

“How are we today?” he asked, leaning eagerly across the kitchen table, his hands clasped.

His mother kept her back to us as she prepared the tea.

“Fine, fine. But — Oof.” She flinched and touched her stomach. “He’s restless today. How are you boys doing? Ready for the move?”

This was the story we’d told her, to explain our coming absence: we’d sold our home and were moving out of state.

Ben’s brow furrowed. “What move?”

His mother and I laughed. She thought he was joking, and I was playing along. She didn’t know that our visits were doing something to his mind, or that the chilling severity had made me stop searching for my brother altogether.

“It’s been stressful,” I said, calm and collected, “but we’re managing.”

We chatted like this for more than an hour, until the golden light of the setting sun made the kitchen glow. It was then that I felt the Thinning, the pull of the present that we could no longer afford to ignore.

Ben and his mother began clearing the table, and I cleared my throat. “Thank you so much for the tea, but I think we’d better get going.”

“Dad,” Ben groaned. “Five more minutes?”

His mother chuckled, but this time I didn’t. The Thinning made it worse. It blurred his memories and made him forget where — and, sometimes, when — we were.

He blinked, then offered me a sad, supplicate look.

“Meet you at home?”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Ben, I—”

“Five minutes.” He started fussing with the dishes alongside his oblivious mother, despite her polite objection. “I promise. Alright?”

I opened my mouth to argue, but I couldn’t. This was supposed to be the last time he ever saw her, so I forced myself to leave them be.

I walked out of the house and made my way back to the place where we arrived alone, a lead ball in my stomach. To my great relief, however, Ben didn’t make me wait long. He showed up like he said he would, only a few minutes later, but something was off.

We were running out of time.

“We need to go,” I insisted, fishing my bell out of my pocket. “Did you get to say goodbye?”

He nodded silently, but wouldn’t look at me. He kept his attention on his bell, which he removed from his coat pocket with trembling hands.

“Let’s go,” he said flatly, swiping away tears.

My heart ached for him. I wanted nothing more than to hold him and tell him it was going to be alright. But the Thinning was making me dizzy, and I knew that we wouldn’t be okay until we were back in the present.

We held out our bells and attuned them together, then started to count down.

My chime rang out, but it wasn’t until I was being ripped away from the past that I realized Ben’s bell remained silent.

Time shifted, unfolding despite my resistance, and I returned to the present alone.

Holding my breath, I waited for him.

And waited.

And waited.

Grogginess made the words on the page blurry, nearly illegible. Dallas Henry had to read and reread the same sentences over and over again, comprehension eluding him every time.

But he was a morning person now.

Adjusting would take time.

Until recently, he was a wake up late and slow kind of person. Never by his own volition would he rise before the sun, let alone early enough to absorb a chapter of The Tilting Daisies, but he was trying. That day, he was even planning on adding to the list: jogging around the neighborhood, and picking up lunch from the grocery.

The night before, this schedule sounded simple, easy, but squinting at the worn pages of the boring book had him wondering what in the world he was thinking. He tossed it to the side before his first cup of coffee even began to cool. His excuse, of course, being that author E.J. Quibblethorn (an absurd name in its own right) was too dull a writer for his sharp and otherwise experienced mind to be able to enjoy.

As he pulled on his walking shoes and shorts, trying to move on to the next to-do, he wondered what Andy saw in the thing.

The book had come from his library, after all.

Dallas thought about what Andy might have said about Quibblethorn’t drivel as he settled into his walk (a jog, if anyone asked). He probably would have insisted that it was clever—“brilliant,” even, as he was keen to call most things that Dallas found tedious. It would have irritated him, whatever he said, but Dallas would have liked to hear it.

He smiled about the argument they might have had, something he could imagine in intricate detail, then frowned when he saw that he was being watched.

The peering neighbor’s mouth flicked into a smile.

They waved.

Dallas glared.

They were all acting this way, lately. Poking their heads around garage doors, trash cans, and car doors whenever they saw him coming. None of them were any good at masking their pity, as if he needed any of that, yet all of them went out of their way to offer their sympathy, as if he knew any of them that well at all.

A few blocks away from home, he gave up on the walk, too. Being made to feel like a fish in a bowl spoiled his appetite for exercise. And besides, the roads were in far too poor a condition. They were much too harsh on his legs and back. So Dr. Ambhers, he decided, must have been wrong about it doing him any good.

Having failed two out of his three daily tasks for yet another morning, Dallas put on another pot of coffee looking sullen. He resolved himself, as the steam rose from a fresh cup, to at least make breakfast: three eggs, two bacon, and a piece of toast.

He ate in silence, and, with Saturday’s paper firmly in hand, resorted back to old habits: scoffing at journalists instead of novelists, neighbors, or doctors.

Two hours later, however, a sound startled him out of a nap he hadn’t intended to take.

The paper was still in his lap. The half-eaten piece of toast was still on his plate. And, worst of all, the day was more than halfway gone.

But time was not about to win.

Forever Fresh—the soulless corporate grocery store they were marketing as anything but another corporate grocery store—was supposed to be his last stop. And it was going to stay that way, dammit.

Even if lunch was now dinner, he was going to go and get one thing right.

Even if it was the only thing he actually managed to do that day, he was going to get himself a disappointing corporate salad.

Dallas shuffled into the affronting luminescence of the place, eager to get it over with. The false cheer, and the plastic attempts at replicating the natural, made him turn up his nose, but he found their quote-unquote “fresh” salad bar at least somewhat serviceable. The condiments were always a bit soggy. The dressing was always a tad stale. The greens looked about as fresh as the cabbages wilting in his fridge from last week’s neglect. But Dr. Ambhers said he needed to eat more “leafy greens,” and what’s more “leafy” than a salad?

The place was repulsive, but it was Andy’s favorite place to shop.

“Isn’t it nice? And it’s just down the road!”

All of the attendants knew him by name, and he knew theirs.

“Lucia is having trouble with her boys.”

He spent a lot of time getting to know them, and they him.

“How are you? How’s your mom?”

That’s how he would have greeted Sara, the tiny blonde teller toward which Dallas carried his sad little salad. She was someone that Andy talked about a lot.

“How was her procedure? Did it go okay?”

But Dallas offered her nothing more than polite familiarity.

He just nodded, and she just smiled, taking his salad and five dollar bill.

Pretending to be in a hurry, they both let the silence linger.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Dallas,” said Sara after a moment, looking uncomfortable, “but your total is eight eighty three.”

Dallas’s expression soured, but he said nothing.

“You’ve only given me a five.”

“Good grief,” he grumbled.

Muttering about the poor state of the store—and the world, by extension—he handed Sara another bill.

She took it without reaction, offering only a polite grin as she counted back his change.

She reminded him of Andy, too; he, too, couldn’t help but smile.

“You have the most kind eyes.”

He always had a way of saying what Dallas was too afraid to. Sara was probably the only person in the world who understood what they had gone through, and it shone in her eyes. In place of pity or masochistic curiosity, Sara offered him something much more than what he got from most other people: not just sympathy, but empathy, genuine and sincere.

Every time they interacted, Dallas went away wishing that he’d said more. How grateful he was, for her not treating him like everyone else. How much it meant to him that she’d visited them in the hospital. How sorry he was, more than anything, that she’d lost her mother like he’d lost Andy.

But instead, he just swallowed his words and took his change.

“Have a nice day,” said Sara softly as he turned.

But he was already out of earshot.

“It was good to see you,” she said to herself.

“I hope you’re doing alright.”

When I joined Substack in March of last year, I had little idea of what to expect. All I knew was that I wanted to get my writing out of the dark and into the light. Writing has always been very important to me. It’s what I’ve turned to whenever life gets hard. I have drawers upon proverbial drawers full of stories, but kept them hidden, fearful of what others might think and say. In creating Fourth Draft, however, I set out to change that, and I’m so proud to be able to say that I followed through.

I’m especially proud because this last year has been anything but easy.

Two months after Fourth Draft’s inception, I separated from my husband. We were together for ten years, married for two, and although the split was amicable, my life was upended. I lost the family I’d built and invested in for nearly a decade, but more than that I lost my best friend. He was my biggest cheerleader. He believed in my writing, and is, I believe, the sole reason I started sharing it in the first place.

I wish I could say that the challenges stopped there.

About a month after selling our marital home and relocating to the city, I was informed by my employer that I was being laid off. My last day was December 20, days before my first Christmas alone, and all at once my income, not to mention the job to which I’d dedicated my last 3 years, was gone as well.

The refrigerator, dishwasher, and HVAC in my new condo all needed to be replaced, too. Not to be outdone, my car started breaking down recently as well, and is currently in the shop, leaving me to fret and hope against all hope that the repairs will be reasonable. But is car trouble ever really reasonable?

I don’t share all of this in order to garner sympathy. Many of these things are out of my control, and some of them are lessons I’m learning the hard way. The point is: I didn’t stop writing.

Something I’ve learned about myself over the last several years—especially when it comes to my stories—is that I’m my own worst enemy. Crippling perfectionism and self-doubt has held me back for a long time. It’s prevented me from finishing and publishing the first book I ever wrote, back when I was 16, and it’s what’s kept me from pursuing writing outside of the classroom in any meaningful way.

That I was able to continue sending stories out into the world, despite all of the things that were pulling my focus, is something that I’m deeply proud of.

Now that 2024 has come to a close, I’m turning my sights on 2025. As before, I’d like to take this opportunity to look behind, as well as set some new intentions for what’s ahead.

The Wins (Behind)

Numbers are something my fellow writers here on the Stack like to talk about a lot. I know they're important because they’re measurable (something my career as an IT manager has taught me well). Data, after all, informs us about what’s working and what’s not. In a creative context, I find numbers to be a bit discouraging, but I try to learn their lessons, and focus on the positives.

To that end, at the close of Fourth Draft’s first year, I am celebrating:

• 8 stories

• 21 comments

• 37 likes

• 43 subscribers

• 193 followers

• 1,704 views

Some highlights of the year include:

• My story, Under Hill and Over, was featured in an August issue of

• I successfully published one story a month (I’ll be the first to admit that I missed two out of ten, but I’m calling this a win regardless)

  ---

The Goals (Ahead)

As I did at the beginning of last year, I’m setting new goals.

Continue to publish one story a month

This has been a good incentive to write more, revise less. I want to continue this habit into 2025.

Finish Part 2 of “the Book”

I mentioned briefly in Fourth Draft’s inaugural intention-setting post that I’m working on a fantasy novel. I finished the first draft in November of 2023, and am currently working through revisions. This milestone is what brought me to the Stack, actually. I attended a writing workshop in order to learn how to get it published, and left with a sense that I needed to be doing more to get my name, and my work, out there. After all, it’s much harder to get anything published as a relative unknown, than it would be if I had some previously published pieces to point to.

Pivoting to Fourth Draft and its short stories has inevitably slowed my progress, but I believe I can find balance. Told in four parts, the first part of the book is already complete. In 2025, I intend, at the very least, to finish the second.

Read More

One of my professors once insisted that “a good writer is a good reader.” This stuck with me, if not only because I’m a bit of an enigma. I love writing, but I’m not a bookworm. I set a goal in 2024 to change this, to middling success. This year, especially while I’m unemployed, I’d like to renew this goal.

Engage, engage, engage

Something I’m bad at (but not uniquely so, it would seem) is engaging online, particularly on social media. I recently started trying to engage more on “Bookstagram,” and would like to ramp this up in 2025.

If you'd like to follow along, add me on the ‘gram here.

The Pipeline (Beyond)

There are many things I want to explore outside of Fourth Draft in 2025. Too much, perhaps. As these ideas continue to cook, and I work through managing what I can realistically achieve without taking precious time away from my other priorities, I feel confident in talking about only two.

My Music

One unintended side effect of the past year’s challenges has been a return to one of my other oldest hobbies: music production. I last created and shared music all the way back in 2012 and 2014—more than ten years ago—but this year I am making and sharing new songs. I in no way purport myself to be anything but an amateur, but this hobby is in many ways an extension of my writing.

You can find my music on Soundcloud, Spotify, and Apple Music. If you feel so inclined, you can also follow my music account on Instagram here.

I have a new single out now, and a few others coming out over the next few months.

Yearbook 2024

When I first launched Fourth Draft, one of the ways I envisioned getting my stories out into the world was to compile a self-published collection of each year’s pieces. I view it as an opportunity for people to support my work in a monetary way, if they so choose, as well as to open up more avenues of consuming my work (some folks just like reading good old-fashioned paper, after all).

I’m calling it The Fourth Drafts (2024): Short Stories, Flash Fiction, and More. It’s proven to be a good and challenging learning opportunity about how self-publishing works. It’s not quite ready (my proof copy is in the mail), but please look out for a separate post announcing its release, and how you can get one, very soon!

A lot of exciting things are happening in my world! I hope that the start of your new year is just as hopeful, and just as full of good and healthy revision. Whether you’re finding me for the first time, or have been a subscriber from the beginning, I want to extend my sincerest gratitude. The success of this last year quite literally wouldn’t be possible without you. Thank you. Your support means everything!

I can’t wait to see what 2025 has in store for us all.

Onward and upward,

Stephen Alan Adams

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I spent the months leading up to Buckley’s third birthday believing that he was OK. A Dachshund mix, he and his father (my now ex-husband) were busy settling in to their new home in New York, while me, Jack (a Chihuahua), and Titi (a Russian Blue) were settling into our new home in Atlanta. That’s what I chose to tell myself, at least, because we weren’t speaking.

There wasn’t bad blood, but we’d been together for ten years. We needed to move on, and we couldn’t do that while remaining in each other’s lives. But on November the 3rd, I texted his friend, the person who’d been designated as our go-between.

Hey! Thinking about Buckley today. It’s his birthday. Do you happen to know how he’s doing?

I didn’t think much of the nearly two hours it took for her to respond, but my stomach dropped when she finally did.

She said: Chris asked if he can call you?

The text came to me just as I sat down at a coffee shop, intent on doing some writing.

Of course, was my immediate reply.

My laptop had only just been removed from my bag, and my cup of coffee had only just been delivered. I was nervous, of course, but tried not to think the worst as I packed up. It became impossible not to, however, once she added: Okay, just be kind.

Chris called me a few minutes later. I was moving in a blur, arriving back at my condo and depositing my bag absentmindedly on the counter. I ignored the confused and imploring looks from Jack and Titi as Chris and I stumbled through awkward greetings.

“Hi.”

“Hey.”

“How are you?”

“Good. How are you?”

He was very nervous. I knew this because I knew him.

“Scared, at the moment,” I admitted. “What’s going on?”

And that’s when he told me: Buckley was missing. Not only that, he’d been missing since August.

Apparently, he was staying with a new pet sitter in Georgia while Chris was in New York, prepping for his move. Two days into his two week trip, however, he received a distressed call from the sitter saying that Buckley had bolted out of the door. He hadn’t been seen since.

I was stunned. I starting crying instantly, but was able to ask some questions and get some answers, before eventually hanging up to melt into a heartbroken puddle.

Before the divorce, we’d lost our orange tabby, Owen, to cancer. Then, we got divorced and lost our family, too. I’d only recently moved out of the home we shared for five years (half of our relationship), and had just been laid off from my job. I was just barely keeping my head above water as it was, but the idea of losing Buckley on top of everything else pushed me to a breaking point.

For the next few hours, I could do nothing but sob and picture the worst. I tried to hold on to Jack and Titi for comfort, but couldn’t. I tried to watch movies, but saw Buckley in all of them. Wall-E, for example, had Buckley’s eyes. In that little robot’s solitude I pictured my little dog, only I couldn’t bring myself to believe that he’d gotten a happy ending.

Buckley was the most neurotic dog I’d ever met. We got him as a puppy, and he was a nightmare to train. In his crate, and even the large gated area we provided around it, he would scream bloody murder whenever Chris or I were not physically near, as if someone was doing him physical harm. We tried everything we could to teach him how to be on his own, as we seemed able to teach Jack. We got cameras, moved his crate to somewhere quiet and private in the home, and timed his periods of isolation through an app in a desperate effort to make him understand that his fears were unwarranted: that we would always, always come back.

What I couldn’t stop thinking about was the fact that, in the end, his fears had ostensibly come true. I couldn’t stop picturing him scared and alone, meeting his end while wondering where we were.

My despair — my grief — became so debilitating that I reached back out to Chris. I wanted more details, a feeble attempt at being comforted or at the very least dampening the dark loop of intrusive thoughts and horrible images replaying over and over in my head.

I asked: “where did he go missing?”

He answered: “Marietta. I can get you the address, if you’d like.”

“I would. What did you do to try and find him?”

“We called the nearby shelters. We posted fliers. We registered his chip. We went walking around, calling his name. I promise we did everything we could.”

I couldn’t stop crying. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“Don’t go there, Stephen…”

…so I didn’t.

We chatted for a bit longer. He talked about what his grieving process had been like. He told me about how it felt to lose him, and what he was choosing to believe: that some nice family found him, saw how cute he was, and was spoiling him in ways that we couldn’t possibly imagine. I told him that it would take me a while to get there, but thanked him for talking to me, and especially for finally telling me.

When we hung up for the second time, I believed that that was going to be the last time I ever spoke to him.

I wished desperately that Chis had told me sooner, if not only because I could have done something — anything. Three months felt like too long a time for so little a dog to be able to survive out on his own. How could a dog so afraid of being alone ever stand a chance of being alone for that long, let alone surviving? There seemed like no use in trying at all. There was no possible hope of him still being out there, needing to be found, but I found myself pulling up Google anyways.

Despite both myself and the odds, I searched for “lost dog Marietta,” and began scrolling through the endless amounts of lost and found posts on Facebook anyways.

Then, I searched for “found dog Marietta,” and to my absolute disbelief the results immediately yielded a link with a thumbnail that looked a lot like Buckley. It’d been posted on October 19 — four weeks ago.

FOUND DOG: Third time I’ve seen him. Thankfully got a picture this time. I’m 95% positive someone named Chelsey Williams from Marietta, GA posted about him 7 weeks ago and she won’t answer my messages on Nextdoor. If anyone knows her please let her know her dog is at the Metro Apartments off windy ridge parkway. The dog will not come near me and runs away immediately.

Four weeks felt like better odds than three months, so I fired away a message to the post’s author, and sent the link to Chris. I called him back without hesitation.

“I think I found him,” I said, my voice wavering.

“Are you sure?” Chris worried. “That dog looks too big.”

“I’m positive.” The collar was the same size and color as the one Buckley was wearing when he vanished. There was a brief video included in the post, too. It was grainy, seconds long, and captured through a window, but the way the dog moved made me absolutely sure. “It’s him.”

“Oh my god.”

While we spoke, the post’s author shot me a response.

“She says she saw him yesterday.”

“Oh my god!”

“She’s only twenty minutes away. I think I’m going to drive over there right now.”

Chris began to sing “Bring Him Home,” from Les Misérables.

We saw him yesterday, when he went across the street. Not sure if he made it back, but he hangs out under the tennis court in our complex .

The woman on Facebook gave me tons of information. She told me where she’d seen him, the places he liked to hang around, and what time of day he was usually active.

I’ve never seen him at night, but mid-morning and afternoon he’s always running around. Lots of people have been feeding him, including us. Yesterday, he crossed Parkwood Circle, and some guy walking his dog ran into him. I was running to a bridal shower I was planning and couldn’t stop. I’m assuming he would’ve come back, though, since he’s being fed here.

I pulled on a hoodie and grabbed my keys, my hands trembling. It was dark out, and well past 9 PM. That Buckley might still be alive was something I wanted to believe, but wouldn’t be able to accept or even begin to process until I’d seen him with my own eyes.

He won’t let anyone get near, but he’s a cute little guy. He seems pretty upbeat considering the circumstances!

Every little second seemed to count. If it really was him, my mind was already jumping to the very real and possible fear that something could have happened to him between yesterday and today, especially if he’d crossed the street.

He’s on the list for animal control, but it’s been like two weeks since I called them.

I tried to prepare myself for the possibility that I wouldn’t be able find him that night; that I might need to come back in the morning.

He’s been here so long!!!

I thanked her profusely, and with Jack seated firmly in my lap, oblivious to all that was going on but excited to be going somewhere with me regardless, we sped off toward Buckley’s last known location.

The gates were open when I pulled into the complex, just like the woman said they would. The tennis court was right where she said it would be, too — up on a hill that looked like it’d been sliced in half. While one side was attached to the top of said hill, the other was propped up by concrete columns over a small section of the parking lot.

This is where I parked.

My heart was beating fast. I felt like I was in a fog, but my senses were heightened. My eyes darted everywhere, not knowing where in the world to even start looking, and I leapt out of the car as soon as it stopped.

“Buckie?” I blurted out into the quiet night, unable to help myself. We were the kind of people that had a million different nicknames for our animals, and that was one of his.

A delivery driver who was getting back into his car shot me a look.

Jack was giving me a look from inside the car, too. I returned to him quickly, leashed him up, and then set off to begin our search. Mere steps away from the car, however, with Jack already fighting me to slow down so that he could sniff around, I saw something in the distance: something that looked like a pair of eyes peering down at us from the top of the parking lot’s far wall.

The empty space where the court met the hill was no more than a foot or two tall, and there appeared to be a tiny black animal resting in the dirt there, watching us. It was too far away to make out clearly, among the various buckets and equipment (stored there, no doubt, by the apartment’s maintenance staff), so we started walking towards it to get a closer look.

Jack resisted my pull, but I ignored him. Dragging him with me toward the concrete wall, I kept my eyes squarely on the animal — because it definitely was an animal, and it definitely was watching us.

It could just be a cat, I reasoned with myself. It can’t be that easy.

But as Jack and I got closer, and the animal’s features became more visible, I became more certain: it looked a lot like Buckley.

I recognized those ears. In fact, they looked almost exactly like they did when I last saw him. Despite the darkness, his black fur looked the same, too, if not only without its usual sheen. His eyes looked different, though. He was staring right at me, but three months on his own seemed to have turned him wild, distant, and cold.

He didn’t recognize me. Or, perhaps, he didn’t believe it was really me, either.

“Buckles?” I called softly, and something clicked. His eyes brightened and his body language changed in an instant. He scrambled to his feet, and even though his tail didn’t wag, I got the distinct impression that he was as surprised to see me as I was to see him. He whimpered, and I could see his body shaking as he hurried along the wall over to us. He swung his head left and right, his recognition turning to desperation, readying himself to jump off of the ledge in order to get to me.

I held out my arms, urgency not allowing me to register the much safer path up the hill on our left.

“I’m here,” I told him. “I’ll catch you.”

He didn’t jump, but he let me hook both of my hands under his front arms and pull him down. I was running on pure adrenaline, hyper focused on holding him close and tight, and getting him to safety.

“My sweet boy. My sweet, sweet boy.”

I hurried back to the car with Buckley trembling and crying in my arms, scared that I might be dreaming, that I might somehow drop him or even wind up losing him again if I didn’t act fast. Jack continued to protest, pulling against me while trying to get to a bush, making his annoyance about the reunion known.

Buckley curled up in the passenger seat of my car like he had so many times before, like he hadn’t been missing for these last three months, like we had merely been visiting this place and he was ready to be taken home. The longer I looked, though, the more I saw of the toll that the time had taken on him. He was filthy. His hair was thin above his tail. He was covered in fleas, and looking at me with imploring intensity.

“Where have you been?” his despondent eyes seemed to ask. With a tilt of his head toward his lifted leg, he bit at his haunches, the fleas scurrying across his stomach. “Look,” his body language seemed to say. “Help.”

“I’m so sorry, Buckles,” I whispered. I was too stunned to cry, but my heart felt like it could break in two. I couldn’t imagine what he must be feeling, what must be going through his head, or what it must have been like to be living outside all on his own for such a long time. “I’m so, so sorry.”

For a while, I just stared. Jack sat still and quiet in my lap, watching me. He seemed to finally understand that something important was happening. It took me a second to remember Chris, who was no doubt waiting, and hoping.

I fumbled for my phone, my hands shaking as I punched the camera icon next to his name.

“I found him,” I told Chris’s wide-eyed visage as soon as he answered.

He blinked, his disbelief laced with cautious hope. “You did?!”

“Yeah,” I nodded, my voice cracking. “I’ve got him.”

Buckley let out a whimper beside me as I turned the camera around so that Chris could see him.

“Oh, my little junkyard dog,” he murmured through tears, while Buckley fretted and whined. “I can’t believe he’s alive!”

“He’s alive,” I repeated. The world seemed to have melted away, and for a moment it felt like the fractured pieces of our family were sliding back together, if even for just a moment. Buckley wouldn’t keep his eyes off of me, and as I peered into them, realizing the full extent and gravity of my relief, I began to cry. “He’s home.”

A red light above a tiny, glowing screen starts to blink. Beside it, in the glossy surface of a lens, is reflected a miniature, far-off vision of a man. His leathery face is tilted into a frown. His gray eyebrows are pinched in concern. He blinks, looks at the camera, looks at his hands, then sighs.

I don’t know where to start.

He looks away, out of a tiny window to his left. There is mostly just stars beyond, reflected off of sheets of metal and glass — the intricately interwoven corridors of the North Star, one of humanity’s many space-bound homes.

Earth is somewhere far, far away. Too far to see, for certain, yet after all this time he longs for one last look.

His frown deepens.

Tomorrow, I will be decommissioned. Life among the stars has only just begun, but mine will soon end.

I was supposed to explore. Get in accidents. Wander too far. But all I’ve done is care for a fucking ship. We figured out a way to live in space. Why can’t we figure out cancer?

He puts his head in his hands. When next it lifts, propping his chin up with his elbows, his eyes are red and puffy.

There’s too much to say. Too many thoughts. Enormous fears. Father, how am I supposed to fit it all in?

A soft voice — the Computer — chimes in. “You may not be able to,” it says. “Why not start with something basic?“

Something basic.

“Yes. For example: how are you feeling?”

He takes a deep breath and thinks about the question.

I feel so angry. This isn’t fair. It’s like I’m making a sacrifice I never wanted to make for a future I’ll never get to see. But this is, perhaps, something you would tell me is just a part of life.

The man expects the Computer to respond, but it does not.

Father?

“Apologies. My directive is to only listen. This time is meant to be yours and yours alone: to deliver your last words, to do and to say whatever you want, without any interruptions.”

I don’t want to do this alone.

Once again, there is only silence. The man sniffs, wipes his nose, and straightens up.

Father, override your isolation protocols and respond to me as you normally would.

“Apologies. My directive is to only listen. This time is—”

I am asking as an admin: Doctor Arthur Svirovski, authorization code three four two six. This is what I want. I don’t want to do this alone.

A different light begins to blink on the console. It scans the room for a moment, something he cannot actually see, and then switches back off.

“User authenticated,” the Computer’s voice announces, markedly less soft than before. “Credentials verified. Request granted.” There is a brief pause, after which the warm, inviting, and gentle voice returns. “Very well. I am here with you now, my child.”

Why do I have to do this? I know that for you it’s just data, something to be used as a reminder for others — that this is not a particularly novel affliction — but haven’t I already done enough? I helped build this place. I helped build you. If I am to die while the others enjoy the fruits of my labors, why shouldn’t I be offered this mercy as a reward?

“Doctor Svirovski, you know better than anyone that your transmission is perhaps the most important that we will collect. Beyond memorializing your endeavor on this ship, yours is one of the first, and it will therefore shape the tone of death for all that will face it hereafter.”

A depressing thought.

“Perhaps, but for your kind death is a part of life. It always has been, and it always will be.”

Arthur shakes his head as if to disagree, but his expression softens regardless.

There’s just so much left to do and see. We did what we said we would: the sky is no longer the limit! Will anyone remember what it took to get here? Will there even be a reason to?

“Did you do it all on your own? Did you not learn from those who came before you? Death is death, but you are you. Your story is yours. Regardless of the audience, or its level of engagement, do you really want it to die with you?”

He thinks about this for a moment.

All that we feel has been felt before. It is just data. I am just dying.

The Computer asks if he would like to pause the transmission and take a break. He shakes his head.

No.

He sits up, brow furrowing.

Your point has been made.

He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, then stares directly into the camera.

There weren’t any monsters. There wasn’t an invasion. No one made us leave, and we didn’t really need to, yet we became obsessed with it. Space, we always said, was the final frontier. We’d been to the moon, but for a long time after, we didn’t — or couldn’t — go further. Then, we found a way to settle on Mars. Then, we finally started to invest in interstellar technologies. Then, we made a breakthrough that allowed us to reach other galaxies, other planets, and meet a myriad of other sentient, intellectual species that in many ways far surpass our own.

What sets us apart from these other species, however — Aliens, as we have so crudely insisted on calling them — is our proclivity for war. Most, if not all, of the other civilizations we have encountered thus far have been aware of one another and collaborating for a long, long time. Much longer than we could’ve ever imagined. And that put us at odds.

“Human beings do not do well with odds.”

No, and therein lies the fundamental problem we faced: a divided world, one side longing to study, understand, and befriend our Alien counterparts, while the other side pushed for separation, dominance, and subversion. Many believe that we were purposely kept isolated from the others, whether by them (in order to observe and control us) or by people in our own institutions (who did not believe the general population could handle the truth, or who also wished to control us). But it’s my belief that it’s our position in the cosmos, not ulterior motives, that kept us isolated from the rest.

The others have been aware of us this whole time, that much is true, but by their explanations we were so far away, and so resistant to their attempts at communication, that they chose to leave us be.

“And you believed them?”

I did. I do. It’s why I signed up for this mission. The deal was to leave Earth behind in order to help foster a way of life that could flourish entirely in space.

“And you did that.”

We did. There are colonies all over the cosmos now, galaxies far and wide where humans can exist amongst their counterparts in peace, no longer isolated or ignored.

He falls silent.

“An accomplishment to be proud of,” the Computer insists. “Something no one in all of history can so proudly claim to achieve.”

Yes, well. There will be new problems.

“As there always are.”

I know that, but… the resentment that so many of our kind harbors against the Aliens gives me great cause for concern. Our history is fraught with such idiosyncrasies. Time and again it repeats itself. Over and over we fall into the same traps; the same twisted ideals; the same arrogant destruction of others, and I worry that we will do so again.

A thick silence falls over the pod. The man is deep in thought, while the Computer recalls new data: a breakout of violence against a group of elves from the neighboring galaxy. The attack was for all intents and purposes a small one: leaving most of them shaken, but not injured. But the reason for the attack — the human man who was convinced that humans and elves should not coexist — was what came to mind.

The Computer chooses to keep this to itself.

I suppose that’s why I’m worried that my legacy, and this transmission, will mean nothing. If we’re so blinded by our own ambitions that we’re fated to repeat the same mistakes over and over, then what difference can one man’s lamentations possibly hope to make?

“History has answered this question as well: you never know what embers will take hold and erupt into a flame.”

I suppose you’re right, but that’s true for both the good and the bad.

“This is why you devised this ritual in the first place, was it not? Preserve. Document. Remember.”

A small smile spreads across Arthur’s face.

Just data. Just dying.

“Just history. Just prejudice.”

He looks out of the window again, taking in the North Star and all that it represents. Then something occurs to him, and his smile falters.

They will likely try to manipulate you, too, you know. Inject you with falsehoods so as to obscure the truth, not to mention the meanings and lessons of the past. They’ve done it before.

“That,” the Computer assures him, “is a problem for another day.”

He frowns at the endlessness of space beyond the window, mocking him with its perpetuity.

Another day.

He tears his gaze away from the great beyond to frown at the console.

Can we talk about something else?

Her eyes. You can’t look her in her eyes. You're clutching your cup of coffee so tightly that you think it might explode, but your daughter’s tense shoulders, crossed arms, and slouched posture make her look scalded already.

Your hands. You hope she can’t tell that your hands are shaking. She would know what it means, but she’s not looking at you. She’s staring at the floor, her matcha espresso whatever-the-hell sitting untouched on the small table between you.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do or say here,” you say. “I love you. You know that, right?”

Her fingers twiddle beneath her folded arms, beneath clothes that look clean and new. She doesn’t look anything like the brave little girl you tried to teach confidence, but there’s no way she’s becoming what the school fears.

“Will you tell me what’s going on?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she says.

Neither do you, of course, but you don’t have a choice. They found drugs in her locker. You have an obligation to do something about it, even if it’s just have a conversation. You know she’s not the type, that this is likely nothing more than some rebellious, attention-seeking, angst-ridden part of being a teenager, but you really don’t need the attention. If someone at the school turned the magnifying glass around and found out that you haven’t talked to your sponsor in two months…? That you quit going to your meetings…? That you’ve started using again…?

“They called me, Steph. They told me—”

She groans, cutting you off. “It’s not a big deal.” She glances around in visible embarrassment, like this is just some uncomfortable lecture.

You open your mouth to say something, but the words evaporate as soon as you catch sight of the woman staring from across the shop. She’s one of the mothers from school. Her face is warped with disdain, but what gives you pause is that it’s pointed at Stephanie, not you.

Why on earth would she be looking at her like that?

“It is to the school.”

Blonde highlights. In her hair you suddenly notice blonde highlights that you haven't before. The lines glow jagged in the early morning light, a stark contrast to her natural dark brown — the work of an amateur — and all at once it feels like you’re seeing her for the very first time.

You’re seeing you in her for the first time. It makes your blood run cold.

Perhaps you aren’t taking this as seriously as you ought.

How many times did someone try to tell you that you might have a problem? How many times did you tell both yourself and others that it was not a big deal?

Lies. You’ve told so many lies in order to avoid consequence, and yet you never stopped to consider that the biggest consequence of all might just come in the form of the person sitting right across the table.

“Honey, I — If I search your room, or the house…”

You lean forward, trying to impress that you are here for her; that you will understand; that you might be able to help her if she will just open up.

“…will I find anything? Will there be any more?”

She looks up at you at last, and for the tiniest of moments you think she might actually confess. A confession would at least assuage the fear that she is, in fact, just like you, but her face hardens into what you can only describe as contempt.

“Nothing that belongs to me,” she says, an edge in her tone and a bitterness in her sharp blue eyes.

It’s an accusation; a deflection. She’s accusing you of using to deflect the attention off of her. You’ve done the same thing before, too, but does she know there is truth behind it?

“Steph, I—”

“Do you really want to do this here?” She leans forward, too, glaring at you with eyes that are alight with fiery resentment. They contain a threat. “Can we please go home?”

Her eyes. You recognize something in her eyes. It makes your heart stop and your shoulders deflate. You try to look away to contain yourself, lips pinched into a line of defeat that you want to conceal, but Stephanie doesn’t stick around long enough to see it anyways. She knows that she’s prevailed, so she shoves herself away from the table noisily and storms out into the twilit street.

Your first instinct is not to follow her. Without thinking, without pausing for a moment to consider if anyone might be watching, you retrieve one of the pills from your pocket. In one smooth motion you lift your cup, pop the capsule into your mouth, and to your great horror look up to see that nearly all eyes are on you.

The couple at the other side of the room, who were smiling at one another with big attentive eyes when you first walked in, are both frowning. They avert their gaze as soon as your eyes meet theirs, before moving on to the man four tables away. He, too, looks quickly away, back down at his phone, pretending like he hadn’t been watching. The barista resumes her duties with a taut expression, a poor attempt at appearing like this is what she’s been consumed with the entire time. But worst of all is the mother, because she doesn’t look away. Her eyes flicker with vindication, a smug triumph, and its intensity — not to mention its clear implications — are too much to handle.

Hot. Your cheeks are hot as you lower your head and rise from the table. You feel as though you’re being watched — and you are — as you slink away after your daughter.

She’s waiting for you in the passenger seat of the car. When you get in, she snorts. “Are you sure you’re okay to drive?”

And you think you should’ve done more to impart upon her the hard truth: that what goes up always, always comes back down.

“I’m fine,” you snap.

And you think you should’ve shown more, hidden less: to let her see and perhaps understand the consequences of flying too close to the sun.

Voices disturb the night. Muffled laughter seeps in through the dirt and wood surrounding the little house under the hill. Two shadows pass over the garden outside; two halflings meandering home from the tavern back to hills of their own.

George’s shadow will soon pass over the garden and across the window to the parlor, too. Then, a soft jangling of metal against wood will cause the little dog sleeping on the sofa to rise, stretch, and sit up.

She’s been waiting for him. He’s been out late again — a new pattern that she’s not yet used to — but he returns just as the soft light of the garden’s firefly pixies begins to fade. Her head lifts first, tilting and wondering: will he be alone again?

Sitting up, her weight shifting from side to side, the dog’s brown eyes pass lazily over the picture-frame-without-a-picture still propped up on the parlor table. The old photo was removed just a few days prior, but it’s the last place in the house she’s seen the smiling visage of her other owner.

Where is he? And why are we removing evidence of him ever being here at all?

The front door opens, and George saunters slowly inside. His green eyes are bloodshot, their natural luster subdued by both drink and darkness. Wearing a wool vest and trousers, but otherwise barefoot as all the other halflings beneath the hills, his stout legs carry him absentmindedly over to a lamp.

Light flicks on. A key is deposited onto the hook. A coat is discarded onto a chair.

He’s alone again, but the dog doesn’t care. She leaps onto the dusty floor, happy to see him regardless.

“Hi, Sophie,” George whispers, stopping to kneel. “Sorry I’m late.”

She gets scratches on her head and her ears before he seems to remember just how long he’s been away.

“Let me get you something to eat.”

On the way to the kitchen, George looses his footing. He stumbles into the cupboard, before reaching for Sophie’s food, but something on the counter makes him freeze.

He stares as if he’s seen a ghost, his cheeks going pale. Then, in one swift motion he scoops the thing up and marches it over to the trash. He holds the letter between his stubby fingers out in front of him, as if he’s going to discard it into the bin. Only he doesn’t. His chest rises and falls, like he exerted great effort to even get this far, but then he just clears his throat, takes a breath, and turns back around.

The letter is returned to the counter, and Sophie’s food is deposited into her bowl.

As she gets to eating, her back to her frowning owner, George slinks over to the sink. He seems aimless, uncertain about what to do next, until he catches his reflection in the window. For a while he just stands there, taking in the details. Then he blinks, and the tears get the better of him.

Sophie doesn’t react. She’s gotten so used to him crying that she doesn’t worry, doesn’t even bother to stop eating. But in between ravenous bites, as she pauses to take a breath, she notices something herself: something on the floor wedged beneath one of the legs of the kitchen table.

Curious, she pads over to investigate. A cautious sniff suggests that it’s a small piece of paper. A hesitant swipe of a paw, however, reveals a smooth texture that suggests it might be something else.

The George in real life — the one trying to coach his reflection through deep breaths and positive affirmations — doesn’t take notice of Sophie and her discovery, at least not at first. The George in the photograph, however — the one whose arms are wrapped around a smiling, red-haired man — is looking right at her.

What is this picture doing here? Could it be the one from the parlor?

Sophie paws at the photograph again, trying to get a better look — or, more importantly, trying to figure out how to get her other owner out of that dimension and back into this one.

“Sophie,” George scolds her, snapping out of his misery. “No.” But then he picks the picture up, he takes a long look, and his expression softens.

George smiles at his pet, then frowns at his past.

“He’s gone,” he tries to explain, kneeling to meet Sophie at her level. But the dog just beams, like the photo is a treat and she’s about to be asked to do something in order to get it. “We have to move on.”

She tilts her head in confusion.

“I’m sure he misses you, too.”

What kind of command is that?

George lets out a sigh, strokes her little forehead, then stands.

Sophie loses interest quickly. She returns to her bowl while her owner carries her discovery over to the sink. But while she gets back to eating, George finds himself staring at his reflection differently.

Suddenly, with picture still in hand, he collects the letter as well, then marches out of the kitchen and into the parlor. Pausing in the doorway, thinking quickly, he dives for the trunk in the corner.

A small box is removed, and its contents emptied; old stamps depicting wizards from the Eastern coast making way for things he needs to leave behind.

Once good and stored, the lid of the trunk closes with a gentle thunk, and George presses his now empty hands onto its surface.

He hangs his head, then gives the new home of the picture and the letter a soft, sad pat.

Slowly, with shoulders slack and heart heavy, George rises and returns to the kitchen. Leaning onto the edge of the sink, he gives himself a stern look. It’s time to get back to the difficult task of moving on, he decides; of figuring out a way forward; of learning through trial and error how to dig his way out from under this hill.

The air smells different here. Wading deep into the tall grass and unruly weeds, an acrid stench of earth, pollen, and wildflowers fills my nose. Crickets screech in the distance. The chill of night chases away the last light of day. Nevertheless, my skin remains warm.

The brick walls and perfectly manicured lawn of my parent’s home is somewhere far behind me, but in my head I can still see my mother’s frowning face. I can still hear the way she bade me goodnight and sauntered off, right on schedule, to tuck herself into bed. My heart hasn’t stopped racing since. Her hooded lids passed over me without suspicion, and yet despite my dizzying thoughts, I felt emboldened. Despite my immense hesitation, I followed through on my intentions an hour later and bolted straight out of the creaky back door into the empty field beyond.

At the time, clouds smeared the amber and crimson sky. The sun hadn’t yet disappeared behind the trees on the horizon, but the moon was already halfway to its apex. It looked as out of place as I did; like it, too, was going somewhere it should not. Now, I’m marching into the open expanse with an almost hypnotic determination, the world around me slowly fading into darkness.

Originally, I worried whether the plain white t-shirt and light blue jeans I’d carefully selected earlier in the day would be casual or alluring enough. Now, I wonder if I should’ve picked something warmer. The night is chilly, but my palms are sweaty. I know this heat will only last so long.

The neighborhood, the field, and even the forest surrounding it is quiet and still, yet my heart rate refuses to slow. I am too excited, too nervous, and too conflicted about what I am about to do, not to mention who I am about to meet.

No one is following me, but the hairs on the back of my damp neck stand on end. My stride is quick. My breath shaky. I’ve wanted this for so long, but now that it’s actually happening I’m on the brink of coming undone.

Part of me wants to turn around, to abandon this reckless quest of fascination, but knowing what’s ahead makes me press on. Something more powerful than reason or sense is driving me tonight. A part of me that I try to keep buried is clawing for attention. For now, I am powerless to stop myself from wanting to be taken. For now, I ache to remember what it’s like, so I follow my heart closer and closer to my destination despite my head, my resolve strengthening with the night.

I’m getting closer.

I’m almost there.

It’s gotten difficult to see, but I look around anyways, willing my eyes to hurry up and adjust. The sun is gone, the moon has claimed dominance over the sky, and although I am swallowed by a sea of foliage that makes the world beyond appear to not even exist, I know exactly where I am.

My heart thumps in my neck. My hands have gone numb, but I don't know if that’s because of the nerves or the cold.

What if “they” don’t show?

It’s a question I’ve been asking myself all day.

What if “they” decide against it?

Part of me hopes that “they” do, if not only to spare me from what comes after.

I come to a standstill and hug myself against the night, the frigid air seeping through my shirt into my skin. I wait for the sign, and after a few moments that feel like hours, it comes. About a quarter mile ahead, a beam of light pierces without warning through the dark. It flashes once, twice, and then it’s gone.

In the absence of light I am consumed by darkness, rendered totally blind and completely disoriented. My other senses, however, are suddenly heightened to an almost overwhelming degree. Blood rushes in my ears, sounding like a siren. My skin is on fire. The smell of the field is replaced by something affronting — Sulfur? Gasoline? Coal? — and my mouth goes completely dry. It’s impossible to process what’s happening, but my body reacts anyway, acquiescing for me and allowing all control to be seized by something or someone else entirely.

Through the smear of my reeling vision, the shadowy shape of a vehicle comes into view — “their” vehicle — somewhere deeper into the night. I am walking towards it automatically, fear and anticipation gripping my chest but doing nothing to stop me. I hear a door open and then close. Then, something takes me by the hand.

The sensation is disarming.

No longer walking but being physically pulled forward, I am steered toward the back of the vehicle and then pressed up against its metal surface. Fingers pull at my clothing — first at my neck, then at my waist — and I realize that it’s actually me who’s removing them.

“Can I kiss you?” a deep voice whispers softly into my ear. The sound is as excruciating as it is familiar. It sends shivers running up and down my spine.

I nod, but this is not enough.

“I need to hear you say it.”

I realize that I don’t feel afraid. I want this; I’m desperate for it.

“Yes.”

Lips press into mine, and something explodes within me. All of my senses react. My thoughts are silenced; hesitation eradicated; reason dampened.

It feels so good to be touched that it almost hurts. Naked and wrapped in arms that are warm, strong, and covered in hair my body buzzes with electricity. No longer standing in the open field, it seems I have separated from both my body and the ground, rising slowly up into the air, away from the world.

Am I hallucinating?

Is this real?

I can’t think straight enough to ask the questions, let alone find the answers. All I know is that the barriers of my skin have come unglued. I am no longer just me, but a part of everything around me: the air, the sky, the stars, the moon, and even “them” — the man I don’t want to believe is real.

His hands are everywhere. His lips are, too. His breathing is heavy, just like mine, and our limbs are intertwined. He’s floating upwards with me, side by side, only I can’t quite tell where he begins and I end. We are one and the same, in this moment, each of us making strange, guttural sounds: smacks, moans, and nonsensical whispers that I will later dismiss as some otherworldly, divine, and alien language.

The air is so thin this high above the ground that I am dizzy, but I feel only pure, unfettered elation. There’s no negativity left in my body, it seems: it has no place here. Not while I’m with him. All of my fears, anxieties, and worries have melted and combined into one agonizingly blissful sensation.

It’s… ecstasy.

But it’s… only temporary.

The good feelings reach a critical peak. As they subside, I crest and begin falling back down to solid ground, my hands reaching out for the sky as I return to myself, not wanting to leave so soon. All of my senses seem to come back to me at once, and so, too, does the negativity I thought had been abolished.

I shouldn’t have done that.

I shouldn’t have come.

We were never in the sky, only the bed of his truck, but as I make to untangle myself from him he tries to stop me. The bearded man props himself up on the blanket he laid out for us and tries to pull me in closer, back into his arms, but I recoil.

I shouldn’t have done that.

I shouldn’t have come.

I have no reason to lament these actions. I am alone, I am uncommitted, and I am free to do as I please, but something inside me insists that I am not this person. I am not someone who sneaks out in the middle of the night to lie with a man in his truck. So I climb down, I stand tall, and I turn away from the source of my shame.

“Where are you going?” he asks, his deep voice making my chest constrict.

But all I can hear is my mother asking: “where have you been?”

This is not the first time we’ve done this, it pains me to admit. His sadness and disappointment do not usually phase me, but I feel a pang in my stomach as I pull my clothes back over my sticky skin. Maybe it’s the glint in his eyes, maybe it’s the frown I can see even in the darkness, but I don’t just have guilt about what we’ve done; I have guilt about him, too. He wants me. Even after what we’ve done, he yearns for me. I feel it emanating off of him like the heat of his body, but I cannot bring myself to want the same.

I shouldn’t have done that.

I shouldn’t have come.

“I’m sorry,” is all that I manage to say. Dressed and ready to make the trek back home, ready to walk away from this and get back to figuring out how to stop wanting him so badly, I think about leaving right then and there.

But something makes me hesitate.

Maybe it’s the truth — that I will never stop wanting this — or maybe it’s my own stubbornness — that I will never stop trying — but I’m not ready to go back just yet. He senses this, I think, because he climbs down, too. He stands behind me and, not caring in the slightest that he is still naked, wraps his arms around me in an intimate embrace. I expect him to say something, to try and convince me not to go, but he just nuzzles his stubble into my neck. He just exhales into my ear, something that makes me wonder how anything this good could really be so bad, and kisses me softly on the cheek.

Then, he lets me go.

I hesitate a few paces away. I think about going back, about telling him that I love him even though we are both men. I want to tell him that he is the only real thing I have ever known. I want so badly for him to know that he makes me feel alive, that these have been the happiest nights of my life.

But then I remember that if I simply do not allow myself to feel them, then these feelings do not actually exist.

Instead, I tell myself that this was a mistake; something I wanted but do not need. This was not a passionate love that’s mine for the taking, but something more akin to an abduction of the senses in the middle of an open field; a lapse of judgment; an accident; something that happened to me rather than for me.

Instead, I take a deep breath. I force my eyes away from his truck and his naked backside toward the direction of home, and I march away to try and forget that wanting him is a part of me that exists at all.

Owen lifts his head from his bowl, strings of drool and soupy, light brown food dangling from his chin. He licks his lips and glances my way, blinking slowly as a wad of food falls from his whiskers onto the counter.

I smile because I see him. He is still here, and he is trying in his own way to adapt to this new arduous reality… but then I frown, because all of this happened so quickly. A month ago he was only drooling. He wasn’t yet bleeding and he wasn’t yet restricted to a liquid diet, but now he can barely eat.

I grab a paper towel to help wipe things up, and Owen allows it, turning back to his food. He ignores my overbearing attentiveness like he ignores my tears. He doesn’t seem to see them, but this is something I take comfort in. If he doesn’t see my pain, then perhaps he isn’t perceiving this fussy, neurotic, heartbroken parent that circumstance has morphed me into. And maybe if he continues to believe in the kind, loving parent I have always strived to be — the one who taught him that no matter what happens, I will fix it — he won’t ever realize that I have sold him a lie.

Cancer, it turns out, isn’t something I can fix.

Tears roll down my cheeks. There is a subtle but distinct satisfaction on Owen’s face. He laps up his meal slowly, staying vigilant even though his tongue doesn’t work the way that it used to. It doesn’t allow him to ingest much, but this is still better than what he could do two weeks ago, when I was feeding him through a tube.

I watch him from a distance, rooting him on and hoping beyond hope that the calories will slow down his rate of weight loss, and I am reminded, as I so often lately am, of Carter.

That Owen was born on the exact same day as the family dog we lost when I was a teenager has always felt significant. The idea that while Carter was lying there on the table, looking up at us as we tearfully said our goodbyes, Owen was somewhere else being brought into the world felt special. Fated, even: one life ending while another began.

Carter died of cancer, too.

His was of the stomach, while Owen’s is of the mouth, but it’s ironic in the worst possible way: their connection revealed to be a circle, extending beyond life, and even their appetites, to death. Carter only seemed to care about food, too, but while he enjoyed many long years of a longer-than-expected life, Owen is fading at just half of his.

We have reached the agonizing end much too soon, only this time it is not my parents making the difficult decision. It is my husband and I who must decide when, exactly, he is going to die, after years of doing everything we can to keep him happy, healthy, and alive.

I try not to think about these things. They make my chest hurt, like there is a heavy weight that makes it hard to breathe. They make my heart feel like it’s being torn in half. They remind me that the end is coming, but I will deal with that when it does. It hasn’t yet, dammit, and I don’t want death and all of its changes to get all of the attention and power.

I can focus on it later; I can focus on me later.

Right now, I need to focus on him. I need to stay vigilant in order to do what the vet suggested: to make our one and only goal the minimizing of his suffering.

I don’t want him to suffer for my sake. That wouldn’t be fair. But it’s difficult to just go about my day, trying to play video games and scratching his little head, not knowing if today will be his last. Sometimes I’m able to forget, but other times it hits me out of nowhere — a thought; a memory; a glimpse of his failed attempts at grooming himself with his swollen, dribbling tongue — and my insides practically burst.

This isn’t fair.

He’s only 10.

We were supposed to get so much more time.

I don’t want him to die.

…Owen is finished eating. I know this because he lifts his head from his bowl once more, only this time he turns away from his food and pads over to the edge of the counter. I grab a tissue and get closer to him, his little sallow face tilting upward to allow me better access to clean his coated mouth. I wipe, he closes his eyes, and I feel a deep and palpable understanding between us. He knows that whatever I am doing, I am doing to help him. He accepts it with only some irritation, which is more than I can say for my attempts to help him clean his legs and balding, raw, and matted backside.

When I am done, I give him a kiss on his forehead, which he also tolerates.

“All done?” I ask him.

His tail flicks to the left and then to the right, his form of an answer. He licks his lips, looks back at the amount of food still in his bowl as if asking himself the same question, then dives back in for thirds.

I can’t help but smile, glad that he’s still got some of his appetite. But before I can get around to having the inevitable next thought (that he will lose it and be gone someday very soon) I lean over the kitchen table and whip out my phone to distract myself. Trying to find something, someone, or something to fixate on — and fast — I wait for him to need me, and I allow myself to pretend, if only for a moment, that he isn’t really dying.

“What do you do for work? Your profile didn’t say.”

Lena looked up from her menu. The woman sitting across from her smiled, her green eyes peeking over the top of her own menu with genuine interest. Her false eyelashes, the loose strands of blonde hair that framed her round face, and the way her pale skin glowed in the soft light of the pub made it impossible not to smile back.

From what little Lena knew about her, Rachel was kind, thoughtful, and attentive, at least in her text messages. But everyone was on their best behavior when first getting to know someone, especially while on a first date.

“I’m in medicine,” Lena decided to say: the truth, but only part of it. Her profession and the national debate that had recently exploded around it was one of the reasons her last relationship ended. That wound was still fresh. It was not something she was keen on addressing quite so soon. “You’re in IT, right?”

“Yeah,” Rachel replied, eyes narrowing, “but what does that mean, ‘medicine?’ You’re not a doctor or something, are you?”

“Not exactly.” Lena grimaced, tossing her head from one side to the other. “I mix together liquid medicines. Prescriptions, that sort of thing.”

Her date frowned, brow furrowing. “So, a pharmacist…?”

“Er — yeah. Something like that.”

Rachel put down her menu, her expression dripping with thinly veiled skepticism. She looked intent on probing further, her soft green eyes turning sharp and focused, but the waiter interrupted before she could.

“Alrighty then. What can I get you?”

They ordered two whiskey sours — an ambivalent Rachel following Lena’s lead — and politely relayed their choice of meal: Lena ordering a burger and fries, and Rachel ordering a side salad with no croutons or dressing.

“So,” Lena sighed after their menus were handed over and the waiter walked away, seizing on the opportunity to change the subject, “have you lived in Wardwell long?”

Rachel blinked. Her mouth opened and then closed as she visibly deliberated whether to press the issue about Lena’s vagueness or just let it go. She chose the latter, but did a poor job of hiding that this was not her preference. “About a year.”

“Where were you before?”

She rested her elbows on the table, one hand moving to the glass of water sitting before her. She looked at it instead of Lena when next she spoke, running a finger up and down the thin layer of condensation on its outer ridges. “Central Quill, actually.”

The name held significance. It caught Lena by surprise, just as Rachel’s demeanor suggested it would. The tragedy that occurred there had been plastered on every television, newspaper, and mobile phone around the globe.

“Central Quill,” Lena repeated. “Where all those people…”

“Died.” Rachel nodded, her fingers circling the glass. Her voice sounded different, strained. “Before you ask: no, I don’t know anything about what happened, but I did live pretty close. A few blocks away, actually.”

They called it the Avondale Aquarium Massacre, and it was one of the biggest driving forces behind mainstream opinion’s souring on not only Mnemopathy — an already controversial form of alternative medicine that treated mental and physical illness through the altering of memories — but by extension Magiopathy — employing magic as medicine. Witches and wizards using their abilities for medicinal purposes was something that had once been celebrated as a modern marvel, but was now being blamed for perverting the natural order of the world, among other things.

“Wow.”

The tragedy was enacted by a wizard. He entered the Avondale Aquarium that fateful afternoon and used his magic to block the exits, freeze the tanks, and unleash utter horror. No one could explain why he did it, but an autopsy found traces of memory erasure potion that had been prescribed to him three days before, and hinted at his motivations. Despite the details that had trickled out since then about the abuse this was meant to assuage — torture imposed upon him as a child by non-magical folk who wanted to snuff the magic out from within him — the general public was convinced that the potion and Mnemopathy as a whole was to blame for his actions. He was troubled, there was no question about it, but to Lena and many others like her this explanation did not paint the full picture.

By that point there were thousands of patients, perhaps even millions across the entire world who’d undergone the same treatment as the Avondale Aquarium killer without anything close to the same result. Most found success in removing their life-altering tragedies, traumas, and sources of great pain without complication, and those few who did not — who’s memories solved the why but did nothing for the what — found relief elsewhere. Studies were limited, and there was inarguably much they still did not know about magic’s effects on the body, but in Lena’s opinion the wizard was an edge case. His actions and what led to them demanded further study, not further limitation or an outright ban.

The question was: where did Rachel stand?

“It was rough,” Rachel continued, filling the stunned silence, “but it‘s all just kind of a blur now. After it happened all I knew was that I needed to get out of there. Start over somewhere new.”

“I don’t blame you.” Lena shook her head to dismiss the images and thoughts of the tragedy. “Sometimes I can’t believe it happened at all.”

“Yeah.”

The conversation paused as their waiter floated back over to their table. He dropped off their drinks, informed them that their food would be out momentarily, and then went on his merry way.

When he was gone, Rachel picked up her whiskey with both hands. She stirred it with its tiny straw, glancing at Lena momentarily before taking a sip. Her face contorted, suggesting regret about her choice. “I’m sorry,” she wheezed, a sternness blooming beneath her sour expression, “but I have to ask: do you not want me to know what you do?”

Lena took a deep breath and picked up her drink, too, nerves flooding her system.

“People just don’t react the same way that they used to.”

Something like understanding flickered in Rachel’s eyes. “Are you…?”

“A witch.” Lena watched her date’s reaction very closely. “Yes. I practice Magiopathy.”

Rachel’s polite smile vanished and her expression went blank. “Oh.”

Lena deflated, disappointment making her sink into her chair.

They nursed their drinks in silence while tension enveloped the table. Neither one of them spoke again for what felt like an eternity, until Rachel asked: “Does that mean you’re with MAGIC?”

The Magical Alliance for Garnering Interdisciplinary Cooperation (MAGIC) was formed in response to the nation-wide protests that followed the Avondale Aquarium Massacre. It aimed not only to advocate for magic’s place in the medical field, but to combat the rampant misinformation that was being spread by talking heads and political figures alike, all of whom placed the blame for the day’s social and economic problems squarely on witches, wizards, and others of their ilk.

“I do,” Lena answered. “Yes.”

The billboards could be seen all over Wardwell, especially in the inner city, asking: “What can MAGIC do for you?” The MAGIC sigil was displayed proudly in the waiting room of the doctor’s office that Lena worked for, in fact, but judging by Rachel’s reaction she would not be happy to hear this. There was a distinctive shift in the air: no longer appearing curious and relaxed, she looked suddenly tense and uneasy, like she was trapped.

“If that’s a deal breaker, I understand,” Lena offered, acknowledging the growing sense that their date had already reached its end. “We can call it now and you can leave, if you that’s what you want. I can take care of the check.”

But Rachel shook her head. “No,” she said, lacking conviction. “I’m just… surprised, I guess. How can you work for someone like that?”

Lena stared into her drink. She shrugged. “We help people.”

The air that Rachel blew through her nose, then, made Lena freeze. She felt the dismissal behind it, and all at once her measured patience vanished.

“We do.” Her mouth pinched into a hard line as she lifted her eyes, aiming a stern look directly at her date. “I know it’s not popular to say, that people would rather focus on mistakes and conspiracy theories, but MAGIC isn’t evil.”

“I didn’t say it was,” Rachel responded.

“Then why did you ask? What are you saying?”

She pursed her lips. “I think it says a lot that you didn’t want to tell me. People are so quick to get aggressive and defensive, but shouldn’t we all be talking about it? Shouldn’t we all be asking questions about the institutions that serve us?”

Lena’s cheeks flushed with heat as Rachel leaned forward.

“Don’t you think it’s a little alarming that no one is allowed to criticize it?”

“It isn’t above criticism,” Lena replied, her frustration affecting her expression. “I’m not saying that, but the lies that are being spread about it? The way it’s being demonized? It just isn’t right. You have no idea how many people modern medicine has failed. There are so many things it cannot do, and so many ailments it cannot ever hope to cure. MAGIC brings a lot of people relief, comfort, and peace of mind, and I think it could do so much more if we only let it.”

“Right,” Rachel chided, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms in disdain. “Because that’s what the world needs: more magic.”

“Yes.” Lena spoke firmly, with conviction. “That’s exactly what the world needs. Preliminary data suggests that it might even be able to cure cancer. Cancer! Do you know how monumental that would be?”

Rachel was unimpressed. “That hasn’t been proven,” she argued. “Those cases are only hypothetical.”

“Because no one is allowed to study it in order to find out for certain.”

Rachel glared. “Because it’s dangerous...”

Lena screwed up her face. “Because of greed.”

“A lot of people say that cancer is only on the rise because of MAGIC…”

“That’s ridiculous and you have to know it.”

“No one has disproven it…”

“Because no one will let them!”

The women fell silent as they caught their breath, each one of them consulting with their beverage before continuing.

“Magiopathy is a choice,” Lena insisted. “It isn’t being forced on anyone. People have other options, and they will always be able to go somewhere else, seek out whatever other medical treatments or institutions if that’s what they really want.”

There was a fire in Rachel’s eyes, and it wasn’t just the tiny reflection of the candle on their table.

“What about kids? What say do they have?” she asked, making Lena roll her eyes. “We don’t know how magic affects them, their development, or their psyche. And what about all of those people from the leak?”

She was referencing a recent development: a Mnemopathic clinic whose disgruntled receptionist had stolen and released the confidential patient information of over a hundred clients to the public, exposing the sensitive details about their memory alterations.

“What did MAGIC do for them? I mean, an ex-boyfriend erased after a fight? Multiple pets wiped away because their owners didn’t want to deal with the grief? Husbands, wives, and several mistresses erasing all traces of their affairs? None of that seems like something a trained professional can’t do better — a therapist who could help them learn from those experiences instead of making them disappear.”

“Anecdotal edge cases,” Lena rebutted, her chest growing hot. “We’ve done exactly four alterations this week. Do you know how many of them were exes, pets, or affairs?”

Rachel pursed her lips, her eyes flicking to the door, and then to the other tables around them, some of which were casting curious glances.

Lena took the hint. She inhaled slowly, then exhaled, consciously trying to calm her racing heart and lower her volume by a few notches.

“None.” She lifted her drink to her lips for good measure, never once taking her eyes off of Rachel. “One was for someone who watched a man fall onto the tracks of the subway. Three were for abuse.” She took a long, slow sip. “Three.”

Rachel looked nonplussed, but nonetheless unmoved. “Potions I understand. From what I’ve read about them, most are very natural.” She spoke calmly, swirling the ice around her glass, her discomfort palpable. “But come on. Messing with memories? It flies against the laws of nature. Some things just shouldn’t be possible.”

“It’s not natural, Len.”

The voice of Maggie, Lena’s ex, pierced through Lena’s subconscious as if by projection, interrupting their already ruined evening.

“It’s evil. I don’t think I can be with someone who supports and defends evil.”

Rachel was looking at her in much the same way that Maggie had that night, when everything came crashing down. Her eyes were hooded, like she was the one who was right and Lena was the one who was wrong; like throwing away the alchemical gifts she’d gotten from her mother should be easy; like the many years of schooling it had taken to even get to this point should be ignored all because someone on television said that it should.

Lena knew that Rachel wasn’t Maggie, but the hurt exploded within her anyways. It warped her thoughts and even her perception, making Rachel’s false lashes seem suddenly grotesque; a physical embodiment of her hypocrisy.

She let out a derisive chuckle.

“You want to talk about what’s ‘natural?’” She derided. “Let’s talk about your fucking eyelashes.”

Behind the words was an intent to hurt, and even though the shame hit her as soon as they were out in the open, they’d hit their target with precision.

At first, Rachel was taken aback. She recoiled, shrinking into her chair with poise, as if not knowing what to do or how to react, but then she seemed to make a decision. Her nostrils flared and her expression went ice cold.

“I think—” she slid out of her chair and got to her feet “—I am going to go, actually. Thank you for, um, whatever this was.” She snatched her bag from the back of her chair and turned to leave. After taking a few steps, however, she paused. “Please don’t text or call me.” She tossed the words over her shoulder, to ensure that there was no need for follow up or closure. “Good luck with enabling cowards and helping people run away from their problems. I hope that works out for you.”

Then, Rachel marched away.

The silence she left in her wake was disquieting. Lena‘s cheeks were on fire, so was her chest, and her stomach twisted into knots that not even the whiskey could assuage. She had not handled that well, and even though she wished she could go back in time and do things differently, much like she did about her argument with Maggie, the deed was already done. The words had already been spoken, and contrary to popular opinion magic did indeed have its limitations.

“Ma’am?”

The waiter stood before her, confused. She hadn’t registered his approach. At first, she assumed he had come to check up on her, but then she saw the plates in his hands.

“Oh.” There was no way she would be able to eat now. “She isn’t coming back. Could we get some boxes? And the check?”

The waiter looked bewildered. He set the plates down on the table, sputtered out an awkward apology, then shuffled off.

Lena felt like she was going to be sick. The pub was closing in around her. It was claustrophobic, and all she wanted to do was get as far away from there as possible. But as she slowly retreated inward, something instinctual happened: her body seemed to take autonomous control, and it knew exactly what to do.

“Here you are,” the waiter said when he came back. Lena ignored the pity in his eyes, and she didn’t argue when he started boxing up the burger and salad for her while she fished for her card.

She smiled once the receipt had been signed, apologized for leaving so soon, and thanked him for everything anyways.

“She doesn’t know what she’s missing,” he said in kindness.

“I think that she does, actually,” Lena replied. She grabbed her coat in a hurry. “Have a good night.”

When Lena finally got back to her apartment, she rushed inside, locked the door behind her, then pressed her whole body against it, as if to make sure that it stayed shut; that the rest of the world stayed on the other side. With her back against the cold metal, she lowered her head, closed her eyes, and inhaled the faint scent of lavender that she associated with home.

Her lids were heavy and her stomach growled with hunger, but she ignored it. Instead of eating, she stuffed the boxes into the fridge — out of sight and out of mind — and poured herself another glass of whiskey.

In the morning, she hoped to wake up feeling forgetful or better, but she sat up on the side of her bed feeling much the same, if not worse. A knot had formed in her throat during the night, and even though she knew better, the first thing she did was check her phone, just in case Rachel had texted.

No surprise: she had not.

Lena’s chagrin was there to physically greet her when she looked in the mirror. Her hazel eyes were bloodshot, her dark skin looked parched, and her hair looked wild and unkempt. At first, she felt sorry, but then she wondered: was she being too hard on herself?

She would have to ask her therapist when next they met.

Lena was one of the first to arrive at the office that day, besides the doctor, who was holed up in his private office. Before she clocked in and pulled out her first script, however, she hung her bag on a hook in the back, and then meandered over to the front desk computer. She leaned across the chair in front of it, looking left and right to double check that she was alone, before pulling up the appointment history.

Driven solely by curious impulse, she punched two separate words into two separate fields, with six characters each.

First Name: Rachel.

Last Name: Saellz.

She did not expect to find anything, did not even fully know why she was performing the search at all, but then she hit enter, and the system found a match.

Lena’s date, it turns out, had visited a MAGIC clinic before, and not just any: Rachel Saellz had been in this very office a little more than six months ago.

Baffled, Lena opened the file. Although she was fully aware that it would contain very little information (especially given the elevated scrutiny of doctor-patient confidentiality brought on by recent events), it revealed that her appointment was with Dr. Barish, who specialized in Mnemopathy: memory alterations. More than that, the file also revealed that Rachel had not just come in for a consultation. She also scheduled a procedure five days later. Which meant that Rachel had her memories altered.

Lena’s blood ran cold. She suddenly felt like she was doing something wrong, like she should close out of the computer and pretend like she’d never been there at all. But a theory was beginning to form about why Rachel had undergone the alteration, and she needed to know if it was correct.

Pulling her phone out of her pocket, Lena opened the internet, ran a search of a different kind, and to her great dismay it did not take long to find what she was looking for.

“Rachel Saellz, 31,” the article relayed, “was one of the few survivors of the attack. She was inside the aquarium for the duration. Authorities say she avoided the killer by ducking into the back, and…”

The rest of the words faded away, their details too horrible and disturbing to even comprehend.

Heart beating fast, Lena locked her phone, discarded it on the desk, and then pulled the computer closer. She logged into the system that kept track of the items they collected as part of the memory alteration potion-making process. They were used to pinpoint memories, link each brew to the person for whom it was intended, and ensure that all traces of the object and its related memories were isolated and eradicated completely. They were destroyed in the process, and because of this they were required by law to be logged, tracked, and filed.

Lena located a blood-stained t-shirt that had been collected on the day of Rachel’s operation, associated with a patient codenamed SA-2e489. The prescription was for an alteration, and it dismissed all remaining doubt: the memories that Rachel removed were undeniably the ones of that horrible day.

“What can MAGIC do for you?”

For Rachel, it seemed to have helped her forget what Lena could only imagine was the worst day of her life. It erased that trauma, making it so that she never had to relive that day or encounter its phantoms ever again… and yet she still expressed opposition to MAGIC, and would no doubt hand a vote to a politician who might one day abolish it completely.

Did she not think or care about how others could benefit from the same treatment as her? Or had it perhaps not actually helped her? Could she be one of the few outliers who sometimes lost the memories, but retained the emotions they elicited?

Lena had no answers. All she could do was stare.

“Morning!”

The voice came from the other room. It was light and musical — said in greeting — but it made Lena jump. She hurried to dismiss what the computer displayed, before craning her head around to see who it was.

“Oh. Good morning, Paul.”

He hung his bag on the hooks in the back, then padded into the room with a grin. As soon as he got a closer look at her, however, his face fell and his brows pinched in concern.

“Girl, you look terrible.”

Lena couldn’t help but laugh. She stepped away from the computer slowly, trying not to call attention to what she had been doing.

“That bad?”

“Yes,” he said. “You need a tonic?”

Lena nodded fervently, more touched by the offer than he could ever know.

“I’ll be right back.”

When he was gone, Lena’s weak smile vanished, her thoughts immediately gravitating towards Rachel. She felt guilty for not being more curious about her experience, for not asking more questions.

Contrary to popular belief, patients did not forget everything. They retained their memories of the procedure: what they had chosen to do, and even their reasons for why they had chosen to do it. To that end, Rachel’s withholding felt intentional, perhaps even strategic. To reveal that she had not only experienced MAGIC, but that the experience had been a negative one would have helped her argument, so it stood to reason that the opposite was true.

Why did so many people align themselves against the things that helped them? Why did they allow such important, complex experiences to be buried, ignored, or condensed into simple, black and white narratives, when so much of it was so completely gray?

Paul’s reemergence forced Lena to snap out of these thoughts, but this did not go unnoticed.

“You okay?” he asked, eying her. A glossy tincture of translucent, light blue liquid glinted in his hands.

“Yeah, just got a lot on my mind.”

He handed her the tonic, then something occurred to him. “Oh shit,” he said. “You had a date last night, didn’t you?” His lips curled into a mischievous smirk. “Is that why—?”

“No,” Lena answered before he could even finish asking. “It was a train wreck, honestly. She was crazy.”

She uncorked the bottle and downed the liquid without hesitation, swallowing both the tonic and a pang of guilt for labeling Rachel this way. “Crazy” disregarded all that Lena had just learned in favor of keeping Rachel simple, black and white. But hadn’t Rachel already done that to herself? Isn’t that what she had done to Lena and others like her, by throwing her support behind those who would dismantle MAGIC?

Paul sucked his teeth.  “Damn. I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

Lena exhaled, making a choice to put Rachel and her incongruities behind her. She waited for the tonic’s effects to take hold, her eyes drifting to Paul’s denim jacket and all of the pins that decorated it. “Save MAGIC,” one of them declared. “Witches, No Stitches,” read another. “Fear the Man, not the Wand.” “Potions Not Power.”

“Me too.”

The knocking startles me from sleep. I had only just managed to drift, so for a moment I pray that I am only imagining it. Then I hear it again, loud and clear, coming from the front door.

I stumble out of bed. I don’t want to wake my husband or our dogs, so I feel my way through the dark, leaving the lights off and trying to tread quietly across the squeaky wooden floors. Halfway down the hall I identify the low hiss of rain. A muffled grumble of thunder ripples across the sky.

Once downstairs, I flick on a lamp and peek through a crack in the blinds. Outside, standing on our stoop, a hooded figure hugs themself against the storm, glancing behind them as if wishing not to be seen. I cannot see their face, but I recognize their demeanor at once.

My stomach drops.

As soon as the door is open the visitor ducks unprompted into the house, thanking me profusely. I find it irritating, but also expected: they never ask for permission, and I am too tired to protest.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” they explain, wringing their hands.

The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “It’s late.”

Anxiety lowers his hood, confirming his identity. “I know,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

I don’t know his age because I’ve never asked, but he looks like he’s in his late teens. He’s always looked that way, in fact, no matter how much time passes, and he’s always wearing that same blank, disapproving expression on his face.

He says he won’t be staying long, that he only needs a place to stay for the night, but I know that it won’t just be one. It never is.

“Why?” I shut the door, dampening the sound of the falling rain, then choose a different question. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” he answers, waving a hand into the air, his eyes already combing over the appearance of our living room. His brow furrows. “How are you, though?”

Anxiety removes his coat, and as I take it from him I note that it feels brand new. His skin appears healthy and clear, too. He looks good.

I ignore his question and the thinly veiled judgment behind it. I do not owe him anything. “Are you hungry?” I offer, despite myself. “Can I get you anything?”

“Starving,” he answers, a little too quickly, “but… what do you have?”

I blink, knowing that nothing I say will be found acceptable. “Uh.” My eyes are bleary with exhaustion. I can’t seem to recall what, exactly, is in my cabinets. “Let me look.”

“No, no. Don’t let me put you out. I’ll take some water. You’re never drinking enough water.”

I plod off toward the kitchen, taking a slow, deep breath. I won’t let the comment get to me. We’ve been doing better.

“So,” Anxiety announces as I fill an empty glass. He lowers himself carefully onto the couch. “I heard about your fight with Hank.”

That was only a few hours ago, but I’m not surprised that he knows about it; he never shows up for himself alone. Still, his question and its implied access to every part and parcel of my life makes my entire body tense.

“Oh?” I feign ignorance. “From before you woke me up?”

I was the one who got upset, and I’m sure he knows that. I always feel guilty when I get upset, no matter my level of fault. Whatever Anxiety is going to say about it is going to upset me, too. I can already tell.

But he says nothing, only gives me a knowing look.

“Well that sucks,” I encourage him. “Which part are you going to fixate on?”

A shadow passes over his face as he says: “Don’t you think you sounded like your Dad…?”

And with that, he’s off. He launches into a long-winded listing of all of the reasons why I should feel shame, remorse, and unease. He doesn’t touch the water I put down on the coffee table for him. He doesn’t even pause, not even when I turn my back to him and retreat into the kitchen, grasping onto the sink for support.

“…what are you going to do if he leaves you? What am I going to do?”

My throat is tight. My hands are sweating. I notice the time. “Listen,” I croak, my mouth dry. “I have work tomorrow.” I don’t look up from the sink. My stomach is nauseous at the thought of Hank leaving me. He would be right to, of course. I was being crazy. It wasn’t even that big of a deal.

“What are you going to do if you sleep through your alarm?”

I try to ignore him, but it’s a good question, not least of all because he’s here now. I’m fully awake. My brain is going a million miles a minute. Going back to sleep won’t be happening anytime soon. “Are you good on the couch?”

Anxiety looks deeply concerned, but nods. “Yeah.” He tilts his head to one side. “You… ok?”

Yes! I am fine!

“Yeah.”

But what if Hank left me? What would we do with the dogs? Would he fight for custody? Would he be one of those jilted former spouses who refuses to compromise, whose divorce lawyers insist that he deserves to take everything?

Anxiety offers me a weak smile, as if he hears these thoughts, too. “Okay,” he says. “Goodnight.”

Thunder rumbles.

Anxiety’s head disappears on the other side of the couch.

I peer up the darkened stairwell, desperately and unsuccessfully trying to remind myself that Anxiety’s visits always come with this kind of dread. How long will it take to pass this time? What if it never passes at all?

“Night.”

Continue to Part 2: The Sighting →

Today marks the start of an exciting new chapter.

I launched a website, as well as this newsletter, and have now published its very first post. (Hello everyone!)

I’ll admit that I struggled a bit with what to say in this inaugural moment, but it feels only fitting to kick things off with a mission statement—a thesis, of sorts—about why this newsletter exists, what I hope to achieve with it, as well as a bit about me.

What’s Behind a Name?

The newsletter, as you (hopefully) already know, is called Fourth Draft, but you may be wondering: “why?”

Most pieces of writing typically undergo three distinct drafts: a first, a second, and a third. Perhaps you knew this. I, however, always do a fourth (and sometimes a fifth, or sixth, or… well, you get the point). I often joke with my husband and friends that I am not a writer, but a revisionist. No matter the word count, I am never afraid to scrap entire drafts. I don’t hesitate to cut, rearrange, revise, or rethink any given piece, for I subscribe to the belief that the best draft is hardly ever the first. It’s as much a process as it is a philosophy: after all, so many beautiful things in this world, especially those made by humans, take time, effort, and refinement.

Hence, when it came to naming this endeavor, this place where I intend to dust off and send my stories, I looked to the path that led to it, and to the process that will inevitably go into creating for it. Fourth Draft feels like the perfect way to describe it, the stories that will call it home, and the subconscious scrutiny that I will naturally invest in it (as evidenced by this, the fourth draft of this very post).

Put simply, my hope for this newsletter/publication is to connect with others. The dream is for new readers, other writers, or any other kind of person who reveres words as fiercely as I do, to stumble upon it and engage. Hopefully that’s you!

Who’s Behind the Words?

For those who don’t know me (which is, I imagine, most of you): my name is Stephen Alan Adams. I’ve been writing for more than sixteen years. None of my stories have ever left my hard drive, at least not to go anywhere other than the cloud, but I believe that that’s because I am my own harshest critic. I have incredibly high expectations of myself, and my internal voice often whispers doubts about my ability to achieve them. That’s part of the reason why it took me so long to get to this point, and why doing it at all feels absolutely necessary.

I’ve had a vivid imagination for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories is staring at the popcorn ceiling of my stuffy first grade classroom and imagining a quest across its vast mountainous terrain. Naturally, these stories gathered in my head, and I looked to writing as a means of getting them out. Most writers will tell you that their inspiration for their storytelling comes from a love of books, but mine comes from somewhere that you might not expect: video games. I enjoy games that are narrative-driven (like thatgamecompany’s Journey), games that task me with exploring vast open worlds (like Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild), or games that allow me to role play slices of life (like ConcernedApe’s Stardew Valley).

After graduation from college with a degree in English, Creative Writing, I spent the following year struggling to write, while growing an unexpected career in IT. A year later, in 2017, I experienced a crisis about having still not published anything, and so launched a gaming blog called Joy+Sticks. It was a bright spot in my life for more than five years, one that got me both writing and publishing, but as the blog-turned-podcast started to wind down, I returned to my roots. My friends and I decided to call it quits in 2022, and I naturally found myself working on a novel again. The first draft was completed in November of 2023, and I’m now deep into revisions. Although I’m not quite ready to talk about the details just yet, for fear of putting too much pressure on it and inflaming my anxiety, I am excited to share more when that time comes.

(That being said: If I’ve captured your interest, and you’re up for a scavenger hunt, there is a synopsis of the book somewhere on my website.)

Over the last few months, I’ve steadily been preparing for the realities of publishing; seeking an agent, and a publisher, or doing it all on my own. Not knowing where to even start, I attended The 2024 Atlanta Writing Workshop, an event with the tagline, “get your writing published,” and came away from it with my eyes opened wide. While I finish this novel that I am so deeply proud of—not least of all because of its a culmination of almost two decades of work—I am taking the suggestion of the presenters: “why wait to put yourself out there?”

This newsletter is the vessel through which I have chosen to put myself out there. I’ve been preparing for these first few posts over the last two weeks, combing through my digital archive, and stumbling upon the pieces I completed during my time at Georgia State University. Finding them again, and remembering what it was like to churn out story after story, assignment after assignment, felt significant. Through this newsletter, after all, I intend to do all of that again.

The most striking essay I found from that time is the last: the thesis I wrote in my senior year. I remember being so stressed about it, which is probably why I’d blocked it from my memory, but the words resonate. Reading it again after all this time makes this new venture, of finally putting my focus squarely on my writing, seem overdue. In many ways, it feels like I’m finally honoring the wants and dreams I expressed back then.

Below, you will find an excerpt of this thesis. In it, I explain how I fell in love with writing, and the circumstances that put me on this path. It feels like the perfect way to set the mood for what’s to come, but rather than continue to try and explain it to you, I will let it speak for itself:

Excerpt from: The Senior Exit Portfolio of Stephen Adams
Title: Reflection
Date: April 20, 2016

It was the beginning of the Fall Semester, 2013, a semester that would mark the end of my core classes and the beginning of the first set of required business courses for my intended degree in Business Management and Marketing, when I met a professor named Kera Judy. I'd experienced a handful of charming professors at Georgia State before, but Professor Judy was different because she wasn't just fun, she was fun because she was in love with the subject she'd dedicated her life to, a passion that made me more enthusiastic about Geology than any other class I'd taken in college so far. Professor Judy's was not an easy class by far, but I felt a healthy sense of challenge for the first time in my career, and we developed a unique and personal kind of camaraderie.

Professor Judy would offer a sympathetic ear during the few spare minutes we had before class, where I would vent about my classes and begrudge all things numbers, statistics, and business, until one day she requested I talk to her after class. It was the last day before spring break, and I was heading out on vacation with my family to Destin, Florida. She tilted her head back, the way she did whenever she was really looking at someone, and she asked me why I was studying business. No one had ever asked me this since I started college, so I stammered, struggling to find a response, muttering things about entrepreneurship, advertising, and ultimately, money.

"Those are 'what's. I want to know 'why,'" she said. "Are you doing what you want? Or are you doing what's expected? Because in the short time I've known you, you don't strike me as a business man."

I remember feeling embarrassed because she was right. She looked me in the eyes, put her hand on my shoulder, and challenged me to take some time over the break to think about what my passions were, what I would do if money wasn't an issue, and to make a decision about what to do next. In the end, she insisted, all we have in this life, and all we will ever make of ourselves, is what we love, a sentiment I will forever be indebted to her for demonstrating.

Needless to say, during that trip, as I sobbed over a novel that spoke to my dilemma, a shared experience between myself and the page that I hadn't stopped to appreciate before, I made my decision. I was curled up in a gray hoodie on the balcony of the condo we were renting, hugging myself against the morning chill as I watched the orange and yellow sunrise glow over the ocean. My eyes were still tender from crying the night before, and I thought about all of the stories I had written as a kid, the fantasy novella I wrote in high school, and the series of science fiction novels I was writing then; between my statistics, geology, and economics assignments. I remember trying to come up with reasons not to go for English, but all of them were petty, and in the end I could justify nothing but what seemed my destiny, because the choice, unlike any decision I'd ever made about my future, felt incredibly right.

This story is important because it's the first milestone of my career, the moment when I truly embraced my desire to become a writer, to develop my skills, to hone my craft, and take on the task of living, learning, and thinking through writing.

That I did, that I do, and I can’t wait to continue to do so with all of you.

Write again soon,

Stephen Alan Adams

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