Coalescence

The Inner Gardens at this hour were so full of light that even the shadows seemed sunlit. Liesa had found a bench beside the long pond, where the water ran thin and quick and the dragonflies hovered in clouds above the reeds. She sat in profile to the water, knees pressed close, sketchbook propped against her thigh, her pencil moving with the lazy intention of someone who had nothing left to prove.

She’d been sitting here for nearly an hour, working loose studies of the irises and the finches that picked seeds from the gravel, and her only interruptions were the mild breeze and the occasional, fleeting awareness that she was being observed. It happened in pulses—sometimes she would catch the edge of a glance from a Mildred tending the hedges, or from a woman passing down one of the hidden paths—but she let it slide off her, content to be still.

She’d worn a simple white dress, and she felt good in it, her own skin no longer an embarrassment or a billboard for someone else’s desire. It was enough to keep the Paint Me Like One of Your French Girls transformation manageable, but today she didn’t mind the extra self-awareness. The world felt quieter than it had in months, and she liked the way her pencil traced each line, how every arc and smudge was hers and only hers.

She was blocking in the rough shape of a bird—maybe a sparrow, maybe just a suggestion of one—when a soft click of shoe on stone made her look up. Emily stood at the entrance to the glade, one foot poised mid-step, a sketchbook pressed awkwardly to her chest, the sunlight catching her in a way that made her seem both exposed and impossibly innocent.

Emily saw Liesa looking, hesitated, then smiled—small, apologetic, and almost turned to leave.

Liesa smiled back, and raised her hand in a gentle hello. “Come,” she said, voice soft as the hush in the grass. “There is space here.”

Emily approached with a kind of embarrassed grace. She hovered beside the bench, then perched at the far end, folding her legs under herself and arranging her hair so that the ends just barely covered her lap.

“Hi,” Emily said, voice as bright as the day. She set her sketchbook down on her lap, fingers twitching on the spine, and glanced sidelong at Liesa’s page before she could lose her nerve. “I didn’t know if you’d want company,” she said, and then, in a rush, “I can go. If you’d rather—”

Liesa interrupted her with a gentle shake of the head. “I like company,” she said, with a smile. Emily relaxed, shoulders settling, her bare skin goosepimpling as the breeze tickled up her side.

Emily opened her sketchbook, but didn’t draw immediately. She looked at what Liesa had been working on—a scatter of finch studies, half-finished, a pondscape broken into strips, a single iris, over-detailed at the core and dissolving at the edges—and then smiled, a little in awe. “You’re really good,” she said, which sounded dumb to her ears, but she meant it.

Liesa made a face, but not out of false modesty; it was the face of someone who’d heard praise before, but didn’t find it embarrassing, only somehow beside the point. “It’s just hands,” she said. “Hands and time. And not being afraid to make a mess.”

She turned the page, showing Emily a cluster of rough, messy bird silhouettes. “See? I don’t even know what these are. I just make the marks and let them decide.” She laughed, then set her sketchbook down between them. “That’s the trick I wish I’d learned ten years ago. Sometimes it doesn’t matter if it’s right. Sometimes it just matters that it exists.”

Emily stared at the page for a long moment. She ran her finger down the paper, tracing the loops and lines, then looked up. “I used to be so bad about that,” she said. “I thought every drawing had to be the best thing I’d ever done, or else… I don’t know. It didn’t count.”

Liesa looked at her with the direct, open curiosity she reserved for friends, not clients. “And now?”

Emily shrugged, a loose, rolling motion that made her look softer than usual. “Now I just do it. Or I’m learning to. But I still think about whether I should show people or not.” She looked down at her own blank page, then at her knees, which were drawn up close enough that her hair could barely keep up with the job of modesty. “You seem different today,” she said.

Liesa blinked. “I do?”

“Yeah.” Emily fiddled with a lock of hair, then added, “Not in a bad way. In a… I don’t know. A you way. You seem happier.” She colored at her own stupidity, but Liesa only smiled.

“I am happier,” Liesa said, and let the words hang there, real and unadorned. “I didn’t think I would be, after yesterday. I thought it would be hard, going back.” She hesitated, then, realizing she’d have to explain, picked up a new page and started sketching, her pencil moving as if to narrate. “We went to Antwerp. Andy and I. For the date.”

Emily’s eyes went wide. “Was it weird?”

“At first, yes.” Liesa sketched out the long spire of a cathedral, then the curve of the river. “I thought it would be a… what is the word? Not a punishment. A…” She searched for it, frowning.

“A penance?” Emily offered.

“Yes, penance. That’s what it felt like. All those years, I told myself I ruined that city. That by doing what I did, I made every good memory in Antwerp ugly, or shameful, or fake.” She drew two little stick figures on the bridge, side by side, then darkened one’s hair. “But it wasn’t like that, not when I went back.”

She looked at Emily, letting her see the weight behind the words. “It was still mine. The city. It remembered me, and it forgave me. I could walk those streets and feel like I belonged, even though I thought I’d made myself unworthy of it.” She smiled, a smile so sincere, open and unguarded that it felt like sunshine. Not at all the way Liesa used to smile, Emily realized with a start. “It let me show it to Andy, the way I wanted to, all those years ago. As if I was finally keeping a promise I’d made the universe.”

Emily listened, head tilted, hair falling like a curtain. She didn’t know what to say to that, not really, but Liesa didn’t seem to require an answer. She just watched the birds by the pond, pencil idling over the page.

After a moment, Liesa went on. “And I saw my father. I was so afraid it would make everything worse, but I realized… I’ve run from things long enough. And it didn’t make things worse. He’s still himself—sad, and stubborn, and sometimes very old-fashioned—but he loves me, and I still love him.” She gave a little laugh, almost a scoff. “It sounds stupid when I say it out loud, but I think I’m finally done running. I don’t have to feel dirty, ashamed, or lost, or broken anymore. I have Andy, and Sam, and a family who has seen the worst of me and still loves me. The HH gave me a new beginning, and I’m not wasting it.” She met Emily’s gaze, direct. “I think you should have that, too. If you want it.”

Emily bit her lip, feeling the heat of the compliment. She looked down, then up, then out at the water. “I think I do. I just don’t know what it looks like yet.”

Liesa turned a page in her book, then nudged Emily with her elbow. “Show me yours?” she said, and when Emily hesitated, “I won’t judge. I promise.”

Emily surrendered, opening her sketchbook to a half-finished self-portrait. It was barely more than shapes—just the outline of her face, the suggestion of arms and legs, hair falling over everything in a deliberate tangle. Liesa examined it, then nodded, as if satisfied.

“It’s good,” Liesa said, then added, “but I think you want to draw something else. I think you want to draw yourself the way Andy sees you.”

Emily flushed to the roots. “That’s—no, it’s not—maybe, I don’t know.”

Liesa grinned. “It’s not bad. It just means you want two things, and you’re afraid they’re opposites.”

Emily looked at her, eyes wide and searching. “Is that how it works?” she said, voice small.

Liesa considered, then shrugged. “Sometimes. Sometimes not. I used to think I had to be one thing or the other. Good or bad, strong or soft, worthy or ruined. But maybe we just get to choose which is the real us, and the rest is just decoration.”

Emily let out a long, slow breath. “So if I want to be… both? If I want to be his partner and his toy, does that make me broken?”

Liesa laughed, a soft, affectionate sound. “No. It just means you want to be everything. There’s nothing wrong with that.” She held up her own hand, fingers splayed. “Look. You see my fingers? All different lengths, all attached to the same hand. They don’t argue about which is better, they just do their jobs.” She smiled, then gestured with her pencil. “Maybe the question is which one you want him to notice first.”

Emily stared at her for a moment, then looked away, chewing on the thought as if it was made of something real and resistant. Her fingers drummed an awkward rhythm on the sketchbook’s cardboard cover. The sunlight made her hair shine like spun glass, and the little pink streaks glowed at the edges.

“That’s not what I was taught,” Emily said, after a bit. She was blushing, but not out of embarrassment; more like she was unused to being told she could have more than one thing at a time. “I always thought… it had to be one or the other. Like, you pick a thing, and that’s what you are, and the rest just kind of gets erased.”

Liesa considered this. “I don’t think that’s the case.” She smiled. “If I can be a mess and still belong to Andy and Sam both, then you can be whatever you want.” She said it in the tone of someone who was absolutely certain, who had made a study of uncertainty and found it overrated.

Emily nodded, but didn’t seem quite convinced. “What if I don’t know which one I want to be?” she asked, quietly. “Or what if I want to be both at the same time, but that’s impossible?”

Liesa’s pencil hesitated, then she set it down and folded her hands, elbows on her knees. “It isn’t impossible, but it’s not easy,” she said. “I think maybe you just decide which is the real you, and you let the other thing be part of it, instead of a fight.” She wiggled her fingers, as if limbering up for a piano piece. “Like—” and here she held up her hand, palm out. “I am all of this, right? But if I want to touch Andy’s face, it’s the fingers that do it. The rest just helps.” She wiggled the pointer finger. “Today I’m this. Tomorrow maybe I’m something else. But I am always a hand.” She grinned, a little sheepish. “It sounds weird in English. Does it make sense?”

Emily’s mouth twitched. “Yeah. It does.”

They sat for a minute, the silence made up of birdsong and the distant susurrus of water. Liesa picked up her pencil again, flipping to a new page.

“You know,” Emily said, “I think Arabella doesn’t see it that way. She tried to give me a transformation last round, but it didn’t get picked. If it had, I’d… every time Andy kissed me, I’d be stuck in a kind of sex mode until he kissed me again to swap it.” She paused, looking off across the pond, as if seeing it there. “I think maybe that’s what the show is telling me. I can be either one, or the other. But not both. You can be a partner, but not a toy. Or, you can be a toy, but not a partner.”

Liesa mulled that over. “Is that what you want?”

Emily was very quiet for a long moment. “I don’t know. I like the idea of it. I like the feeling of being owned. It makes me happy, even if it’s embarrassing. But…” She trailed off, searching for the word. “It feels empty if that’s all it is. I want to be his. But I want it to mean something. Like, not just that I’m a thing for him, but that I’m real to him. That he’d miss me if I was gone.”

Liesa didn’t respond right away, and Emily hated the way her own words seemed to hang in the air, unanswerable. She looked down at her hands and pretended to brush an invisible bit of grit from her sketchbook.

Finally, Liesa set her pencil down and turned, so she was facing Emily full-on. “You know, in Antwerp, I told Andy that the hardest part of growing up was learning which parts of myself I was allowed to keep. The ones I wanted to keep.” She gave a rueful little laugh. “I was so scared, at first, that I had ruined my whole life. That what I had become was so obvious, even my own father would see it. But when I saw him, he didn’t look at me like I was ruined. He looked at me and saw his daughter. He was proud of me. And even though I did many things I am not proud of, I still get to be loved, and I still get to be happy.”

She hesitated, then reached over and gave Emily’s hand a gentle squeeze. “I think you are allowed to be two things. Maybe even three or four things. Or a million things, if you want.”

Emily swallowed, hard, and then nodded, not trusting herself to talk just yet.

Liesa pressed her advantage, soft but relentless. “You say you want to be his toy. But you also want to be his partner. That doesn’t mean you are broken, or lost, or—what’s the word?—‘fake’. It just means you are big enough inside for both. Maybe more.”

Emily shook her head, but not in disagreement—more as if she were trying to clear a fog from her mind. “But what if I never figure out which one is the real me?” she asked. “What if I always want to be both, or switch back and forth, and it just makes everyone around me confused or tired? It’s making me confused and tired, and I’ve been wrestling with it for a month.”

Liesa set her own book aside, considering. “You know, for a long time, I thought I would have to change myself so that I could be what my clients wanted. And maybe, just maybe, so that they would love me, a little. And for a while, it worked—every new thing, every new client, it was like a costume. But after a while, I lost track of what I really was.”

She smirked, then tugged at the hem of her dress as if remembering the old shame. “I was very good at being what people wanted. That’s why I never knew what to do when someone just wanted me.” Her accent had thickened as she spoke, the way it always did when her emotions got involved.

Emily peeked out from behind her hair. “Andy just wants you,” she said, half a question.

Liesa smiled, but her eyes shone. “He does. So does Sam. And you know, for the first time, I believe it.” She hugged her knees, mimicking Emily. “Maybe the real thing is not choosing between toys and partners. Maybe it is just being honest about what you want that minute, that day. And maybe that is enough.”

Emily thought about it. “I guess so. It’s just… Andy’s so good at knowing what he wants, even if he’s bad at admitting it. When I’m with him, I want to do anything he tells me, but I also want to be someone he… someone he could really need. Not just have.”

Liesa nodded. “I understand. The best toys are the ones you can never throw away. Because you love them too much. You know?” She picked up her pencil and began sketching a loose, quick version of the pond, letting the lines chase each other.

Emily gave a crooked smile. “It’s just, sometimes, I’m scared if I don’t choose, the show will choose for me. Like the transformations—it always wants you to be one thing. The most. The best. Or the worst.”

She closed her eyes, shivering a little in the warmth. “Sometimes I think if I say I want to be his toy, I’ll lose him, or he’ll think I can’t be serious. And if I say I want to be his partner, maybe that’s a lie, because what I really want is to belong to him so much that the rest doesn’t matter.” Her voice was small, but honest, the kind that wouldn’t exist anywhere but this bench, in this pocket of the world.

Liesa let the silence go for a bit, working the sketch. “It’s not a lie,” she said, finally. “It is just a wish. Wishes are not always the same as truth, but they are still important.” She blew a stray hair from her eyes. “Let me ask you something, Emily. You can say no. But I think it may help you to know what you want, when you think about after.”

Emily hesitated, then nodded. “Okay.”

Liesa turned to her, full attention. “It’s not easy to choose between ‘partner’ and ‘toy’ because they are labels, and labels only carry the meanings we give them. But answer me honestly, without thinking if you can: if you could have anything—anything you want, with Andy, in the real world, after The HH—what would it be? What would your life look like?”

Emily frowned, thinking hard. Her cheeks glowed pink. “I haven’t really let myself think about it, I guess. Like… I used to want to be an artist. Maybe have a little apartment, or a place with a studio, and just… paint, or draw, or whatever, and not have to work stupid jobs. Maybe a cat.” She blushed. “And Andy, if he wanted. But I’m not sure what that would even look like, with all the things we are now.”

She risked a look at Liesa. “Would he still want me, if I’m not a toy? Or if I’m not special, or if I’m just…” She trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence.

Liesa grinned, wide and open. “He would,” she said, certain as stone. “He already does. But if you want him to see you as more, or as different, you just have to show him. We cannot expect him to guess.” She reached over, tapped Emily’s sketchbook. “Draw it. The life you want. The way you want to be seen. Even if it’s just a dream. That’s where everything starts.”

Emily stared down at the blank page, then, after a second, opened to a fresh sheet. Her hands shook a little, but she set her pencil to it, drawing without thinking too much, letting the marks come however they wanted. At first it was just lines, then shapes—a window, a tangle of hair, the hint of a figure beside her. Liesa watched, approving.

After a minute, Emily said, “Do you ever think it’s weird, that we all love him, and none of us really hates each other?”

Liesa shrugged. “It’s not weird. Maybe we are all just lonely, and want someone to keep us safe, or seen. Maybe it’s easier to love someone when you know they see the worst parts, and want you anyway. Or maybe that’s just me.” She softened, a rueful edge to her smile. “Sometimes, I think I am less afraid of losing Andy than I am of losing this. All of us, together. The way we are now.” Her voice, so gentle, was almost lost to the garden.

Emily considered that. “I think I’d miss everyone, too. Even Arabella.” She gave a nervous giggle. “Is that crazy?”

Liesa shook her head. “She is like the mother who makes you eat your vegetables. You hate it, but you do it because you love her, and you get strong anyway. I think that is why she is the way she is.”

They sat, drawing, for a long while. Liesa started a new page, working in loose, colored pencil, sketching the shapes of the irises along the water. Emily, emboldened, followed suit, first sketching what she saw, then what she felt—a cat curled on a radiator, a couch with sunlight spilling across it, a tangle of limbs that looked like love more than lust.

At one point, Emily said, “Tomorrow is my date. I think I should figure this out before then.”

Liesa smiled. “You will. Or maybe you won’t, but that’s fine, too. Sometimes the world is not waiting for you to decide. It just happens, and you find out what you wanted all along.”

Emily nodded, a little less nervous. “Thank you,” she said, voice soft.

“Geen probleem,” Liesa replied, then switched to English: “You’re welcome.”

A breeze came through, carrying the sharp, almost peppery scent of some flower Liesa didn’t recognize. She breathed it in, letting her heart settle. Perhaps it was not just her imagination that the garden seemed suddenly more vivid, every color crisper, every bird louder, every shape more itself.

They drew, companionable and at ease, until the sun began to fade from the water and the birds fell silent. Emily’s drawing was finished, or as finished as she wanted.

The archery range was exactly as Dawn remembered it: a narrow clearing at the far end of the grounds, the air sharp with grass and scorched ozone, the targets set up along a berm built by hand in the fourth round’s scramble to distract Andy from the party preparation. She hadn’t been back since her date with him, and now, with the sun hot and the sky clear, she felt both nostalgia and a tingle of impending doom. Her new breasts—firm and, in motion, nearly sentient—bounced with every step, and she tried not to think about how ridiculous she would soon look.

Marissa accompanied her, bow in hand. Dawn wasn’t sure why she had invited her, and even less sure why Marissa had accepted. But the blonde therapist had a way of getting roped into other people’s activities with a smile that looked **** but wasn’t, not really.

Dawn dropped her gear at the line, gave Marissa a quick side-eye, and said, “You ever shot a bow before?”

Marissa shook her head, the smile just a tick upward at the corner. “First time for everything.”

Dawn grinned, shouldered her own bow, and pulled an arrow from the battered quiver. She was halfway through the setup—nocking, drawing, sighting—when she realized just how much her posture had changed. The string cut awkwardly into her chest; she had to lean back to make room for the draw, and her shoulder muscles screamed protest at the unfamiliar angle. The first arrow wobbled, barely made the target, and stuck at a lopsided angle in the outermost ring.

Dawn stared at it, then at her chest, then at Marissa. “I used to be good at this,” she said, “before… all of this.” She made a vague circular gesture that encompassed not just her bust, but all of it: the bunny ears, the cottontail, the general state of surreal existence. “Now I feel like I’m wrestling an octopus in a tube top.”

Marissa huffed, not quite a laugh, but didn’t disagree. She took her stance, watched Dawn, and then imitated the posture. Her own chest presented its own obstacle, but Marissa’s movements were precise, adjusted in tiny increments, as if she’d already calculated the optimal angle for every possible distraction.

She drew, loosed, and the arrow thudded into the white, a ring and a half outside the bullseye.

Dawn blinked. “What. No. Absolutely not.” She reached for another arrow, gripped it tight. “You’re not allowed to be better than me. I refuse.”

Marissa’s face was a study in deadpan. “I’m not better,” she said. “It’s just beginner’s luck. Also, I have more experience than you do with the girls.”

“Then try again,” Dawn shot back, nocking her own arrow and lining up. This time, she bent her back more, angled the string above her breasts, and loosed with a flick of the wrist. The arrow clipped the edge of the second ring, a significant improvement. “Yes!” She pumped her fist, and her chest did a celebratory bounce of its own. “Take that, physics!”

Marissa drew again. The second arrow landed closer to the center. She seemed unbothered by the score, but Dawn could see the tightening in her jaw, the way her fingers flexed after the release. The competitive streak was real, and it had teeth.

They fell into a rhythm: draw, aim, loose, critique. Marissa took her time, silent between volleys; Dawn talked through every shot, running commentary, sometimes narrating Marissa’s as well. “You need to loosen your grip. No, not like that—think of it as a handshake, not a **** sentence.” Or: “You’re squinting. Don’t squint. Let your eyes relax and trust the aim.” Most of it was nonsense, but Dawn liked the sound of her own coaching, and Marissa tolerated it with a patience bordering on saintly.

After the third round, Dawn’s hands were chalked with sweat, and Marissa had taken off her jacket, exposing a tank top that managed to both support and flaunt her chest in ways that seemed to mock the laws of textile engineering. Dawn shot an arrow, missed high, and set the bow down.

She caught her breath, then said, “If you win, what’ll you wish for?”

Marissa didn’t answer right away. She turned the bow over in her hand, thumb tracing the wood, as if there might be an answer in the grain. When she finally spoke, her voice was quiet. “I haven’t let myself think about it, not seriously. It always felt so far, before.”

Dawn let the silence roll for a minute, then broke it with, “I want my mom back. That’s my wish.”

Marissa looked at her, sharp and sudden. “I thought she passed years ago.”

Dawn nodded, a tiny jerk. “She did. But sometimes I dream that she comes back, and everything is how it’s supposed to be. Not just for me, but for my brothers, and my dad. I know it’s impossible, and maybe a little selfish, but that’s the first thing I’d want.” She flexed her fingers, picking at the cuticle. “I used to think maybe I’d wish for Abuela instead. She was my favorite, but… she had her life. I would want Mom to have hers. It wouldn’t be as perfect as I imagine it, but Seb and Luis miss her as much as I do, even if they don’t say it as often, and she would be so proud to see how the men they’ve grown up into.” She said it like a fact, not a plea.

Marissa nodded, slowly. “That’s a good wish,” she said.

Dawn shrugged. “You can have it if you want. I probably won’t win.”

Marissa smiled, the real one, small and rare. “You don’t know that.”

They picked up their bows again. Dawn noticed the change in Marissa’s posture—her stance was more certain now, the way people stand when they’ve made a decision. She loosed another arrow, watched it land just shy of the center. “You never answered,” Dawn said. “What would you wish for?”

Marissa let her breath out slow. “For my sister. For Sarah to have a good life, and a safe one, and to not be… afraid, all the time.” She drew another arrow, set it. “And maybe—” She hesitated, then finished. “Maybe for myself, to stop finding it so hard to want something again. To want anything that isn’t just survival.”

Dawn considered this, then said, “That sounds like two wishes.”

Marissa shrugged, but the set of her jaw softened. “Maybe Arabella would let it slide.”

Dawn nodded. “She seems like a sucker for happy endings, anyway.” She watched Marissa draw, focus, and let fly. The arrow hit a clean bullseye.

Marissa’s smile flashed. It wasn’t triumphant, exactly, but it was real and unguarded. “You know, you’re right,” she said, “about the beginner’s luck. It’s mostly your coaching.” She kept her eyes on the target, but the next words were softer: “Thank you. For asking.”

Dawn grinned, wide and proud. “Anytime. We’re in it together, right?”

“Right,” Marissa agreed.

They sat down for a while, letting the sun and the tiredness settle over them. After a while, Dawn rolled to her feet, bounced once, and said, “Rematch next week?”

Marissa stood up, dusted herself off, and gave a little salute. “If I can lift my arms by then.”

Dawn laughed. “You can. Or I’ll carry you.”

They walked back together, Dawn’s arm looped through Marissa’s, just for balance, but Marissa didn’t let go until they reached the shade.

At the edge of the archery field, Dawn stopped, looking at the painted rings of the targets, each arrow still vibrating with the energy of its flight. “You know,” she said, “I think you’ll figure out how to want things again. You just have to give yourself the same patience you give everyone else.”

Marissa looked at her, then at the targets, and nodded. “Maybe I will,” she said.

The wind off the volcano made the terrace one of the most comfortable places in the world after two in the afternoon. Sam set up the board game with the flair of a stage magician, laying out the Ticket to Ride map, fanning the colored train cards in a perfect arc, and calling the gathering to order with a slap of the rulebook against the table.

“It’s chill,” she said, as Riley and Emi joined her. “We just claim routes and build trains. Lowest stress board game on the planet.”

Riley slid into the chair opposite Sam, propped her boots up on the crossbar, and surveyed the board. “If you say so. Looks like Monopoly for people with commitment issues.”

Sam snorted, then beckoned Emi over. “You played before?”

Emi shook her head, but looked at the box with curiosity. “I watched a video once,” she said. “I think it was in Russian.”

“That’ll help,” Riley muttered, then took her cards and started arranging them into color-coded fans. “Do we get to sabotage each other, or is it all vibes?”

Sam grinned. “It’s mostly vibes. But you can block other people’s routes, if you want to play dirty.”

Riley’s eyes lit up. “So, it’s competitive Tetris for control freaks.”

“Exactly,” said Sam, “but you get to pretend you’re going on vacation.”

Emi smiled at that, took her seat, and started stacking her plastic train pieces into tiny towers. Her concentration was absolute. Sam watched with some admiration as Emi managed to create a stable, six-car tall tower before it collapsed with a satisfying clatter.

The last to arrive was Myra. She moved with the preternatural grace her Kitsune Step transformation, coupled with her Emotion’s Map transformation, granted her. Her twin fox tails swished behind her, the breeze catching them so that they fluttered like standards. She wore a short dress, pale green, and white canvas shoes. She traced the table’s edge with her hand, out of habit more than necessity, found her seat, and slid in with quiet assurance.

“Can I help with the board?” Emi asked, softly.

Myra nodded. “Please.” Her emotional sight was superior to eyesight in many ways, but recognizing colors on a board game was not, alas, one of them.

Emi explained the map—United States and southern Canada, cities linked by colored routes. She touched each line and city as she named them, her finger feather-light on the cardboard. Myra followed along, the geography assembling in her mind like a 3D puzzle, each segment of track a faint, glowing line.

They played a practice hand, with Sam talking everyone through the logic. “The point is to complete the routes on your cards,” she said, “and to finish them before anyone else blocks you. But also, if you have more trains at the end, that’s good. And if you finish the longest continuous line, you get extra points. Simple.”

Riley glanced at her cards, then at Sam. “So you memorize the best routes in advance, is that it?”

Sam did not deny it. “Maybe.”

Riley grinned, then immediately started eyeing Sam’s side of the board, as if plotting her opening ****.

The game proper started fast. Sam played her first three moves with the confidence of someone who had a flow chart in her head for every possible configuration. Riley objected, loudly, to Sam’s second move. “That’s aggressive. You’re cutting me off from Chicago to St. Louis before I even started.”

Sam shrugged. “First come, first serve.”

Emi, meanwhile, played with a reckless, delighted energy. She grabbed the longest, weirdest routes first, and didn’t seem to mind if she had to make bizarre detours around the others. “It’s fun to see what happens,” she said, as she laid out a line from Vancouver to Atlanta that involved no fewer than seven color changes and a cross-border skip through Calgary. “Like travel improv.”

Riley switched strategies immediately, devoting half her turns to blocking Emi’s more direct paths. “I see you, Kim,” she said, as she dropped a line of blue trains across Nebraska, effectively doubling the length of Emi’s trip.

Emi clapped her hands. “That’s so mean. I love it.”

Myra played slow and steady, each move considered, her hands gentle on the trains. She never reached for a card unless she was sure, and she counted her turns in a soft whisper, under her breath. The others forgot about her for a while, until Sam realized that Myra had quietly built a massive network running from Los Angeles to New York, with three side routes already finished. “Wait,” Sam said, “are you about to claim the Transcontinental?”

Myra shrugged, an elegant lift of the shoulders. “It just seemed like a good path,” she said.

Riley squinted. “Did you memorize the routes, too?”

Myra smiled, small and sly. “No. But I think I like the way the lines look.”

Sam realized, a beat too late, that her own longest line was about to be overtaken. She redoubled her efforts, grabbing every color she could and slamming down trains like it was a speed round. “If you block me from Seattle, I swear—”

Emi, who had not been paying much attention to the other players, blinked in surprise. “Oh! Sorry.” She immediately claimed the Seattle-to-Portland route, sealing it off with a flourish.

Sam dropped her cards dramatically. “Unbelievable,” she said. “I was two trains away.”

Riley snickered. “Maybe you should’ve tried blocking her instead of me.”

Sam grumbled, but the look on her face was pure joy. She loved a game that fought back.

About halfway through, the conversation drifted. Riley brought up the standings—“Did you know Claire’s first by one point? That’s all it is. A single point.” Emi said she wasn’t surprised, and wondered what kind of wish Claire would make, if she got the choice.

Sam, already plotting her next turn, said, “I bet she has a list. Or three.”

Myra, still building her network, said, “I think she just wants to be safe. To have a place.” There was something gentle in the way she said it, as if she understood more than she let on.

Emi nodded. “That’s nice. I think I’d wish for more time. More days like this.”

Riley, shuffling her cards, said, “You’d waste a wish on game night?”

Emi shrugged. “If the world ends and you only get one more thing, wouldn’t you want it to be a good day?”

The words landed harder than expected. Sam looked at Emi, at the way she smiled without regret, and decided Emi probably would wish for that, even if it was her only shot. Sam liked that.

As the game neared its end, Sam found herself boxed in, the last of her trains only able to finish minor side-routes. She sighed, “Okay, I admit it. I was outplayed. Well done, all of you.”

Riley, who had spent half the game blocking and the other half trash-talking, ended up with the shortest line but the most completed destinations. She raised a fist. “That’s right. I’m the queen of creative inefficiency.”

Myra counted her trains, then double-checked with Emi’s help. “Did I win?” she asked, uncertain.

Emi did the math, then laughed. “You did! By eighteen points.”

Myra beamed, a little stunned herself. “I never win anything.”

Sam, who always preferred the learning to the victory, grinned wide and stretched her arms overhead. “It’s not about winning,” she said, “it’s about crushing your enemies and hearing the lamentations of their trains.” But she meant it in the nicest way possible, and everyone knew it.

They reset the board, played another round, and this time Emi and Myra teamed up to block Riley at every possible junction. The laughter was louder, the trash talk more pointed, but nobody cared who won. They just played, and let the wind and the warmth and the trains moving across the country fill up the time.

When the sun finally dipped behind the volcano, they packed up the game, gathered their empty glasses, and left the terrace together.

As they went, Riley bumped shoulders with Sam and said, “Next time, we’re playing poker. No more games where you can cheat with a spreadsheet.”

Sam shot back, “You’re just mad because your bluff game is weak.”

Riley grinned, a challenge in her eyes. “We’ll see about that.”

They went inside, still arguing, and already planning the next game.

The bamboo groves were always brightest in late afternoon, when the sunlight filtered through in wide, flat columns that painted the world in gold and green. The stalks made their own sort of order—vertical, insistent, endlessly repeating—yet inside, the world was all motion and undertone, soft breezes brushing the leaves and the quiet, rhythmic click of the canes knocking together in the wind.

Myra liked the grove best at this time of day. Her emotional sight colored everything, but here, the ambient mood was so clear and simple that she could let go of the constant work of filtering it out. In the late light, her twin fox tails moved in slow tandem, balancing her as she walked the winding, pearl-chip path, every step a little more certain than the last. Her body had grown used to its own boundaries again. She could see the colored outlines of the stalks, the pale blue of their simple plant contentment, the pink hover of the wildflowers near the stream. The only other color was the faint, far-off yellow of a Mildred in the distance—a quiet satisfaction, content to be pruning a stand of dwarf maple.

There was, just ahead, another color—something she recognized as Laura, even before a word was spoken. Myra paused to test the air. Laura’s presence was a tangle: the color of it was so complex that Myra couldn’t pull the strands apart without effort. There was confusion, fear, guilt, sorrow, but also a steady undercurrent of affection and a kind of raw need for connection, all of it interwoven with that strange silver aura only Laura and Andy ever gave off. Myra’s tails flicked, interpreting the feeling. She waited in the bend of the grove, letting Laura catch up, knowing she’d come.

She did. Laura’s footsteps were easy to pick out—a little too light, like she didn’t trust the ground not to vanish under her. Both bodies came around the curve at the same time, in perfect step, faces wearing matching masks of wary neutrality.

“Hey,” said Laura, both voices together. She stopped a few feet away, arms folded, fingers twitching.

Myra smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her mouth. “Hey,” she replied.

They stood for a moment in the hush, the wind pushing Myra’s tails sideways. Laura’s two bodies mirrored the movement, shifting weight as if waiting for the other to speak.

Laura broke the quiet first. “I was looking for you,” she said. “I needed… well, you’re not hard to find.” There was a faint, embarrassed laugh, but it evaporated almost instantly.

Myra shrugged, feeling the tension in Laura more than hearing it. “You radiate,” she said, then quickly amended: “It’s not a bad thing. I can sense you from anywhere in the garden.” She almost added, “It’s comforting,” but didn’t.

Laura let her arms drop. One body picked at a loose strand on her shirt; the other crossed its arms tighter. “You want to walk?” she asked. The request landed heavy, and Myra nodded, glad for the forward motion.

They walked, neither in a hurry nor slowing for the other, and the bamboo made a hush that seemed designed for confessions. Myra let her hands drift at her sides; the leaves that brushed her wrists were cool and slick, and she focused on the textures, the scent of green, anything but the churning at the center of Laura’s aura.

For a while they didn’t talk. The only noises were the shush of shoes, the weird, regular rattle of fox tails in the air, and the distant clack of a Mildred’s pruning shears on a metal bucket. Myra’s tails swished in easy rhythm, the second one flicking every time the other did, as if they had an agenda of their own.

They reached a wider spot, where the ground rose in a low mound and the path circled a ring of bamboo so dense it made a tiny amphitheater. Laura paused, then nodded at the benches that ringed the little clearing.

Myra sat. Both of Laura sat with her, close but not quite touching. Myra waited. She had learned, through experience and caution, that Laura only got quiet when the next thing was going to be hard.

Laura stared at the backs of her own hands, then glanced up at Myra, then away. “I have to say something,” she said, both voices perfectly matched and perfectly exhausted.

Myra felt a shudder in her own field, something like a cold front moving through a warm day. “Go on,” she said, keeping it even.

Laura took a breath. One body picked at the edge of the bench; the other curled its hands tight on a knee. “It’s not about Andy. Or the game. Or anything with the harem.” There was a pause, as if calibrating for the right level of honesty. “It’s about you. And me. And your mother.” She paused. “Your birth mother, I mean.”

The words did something to Myra’s balance, the echo of them ringing in her chest like a struck glass. Her tails both went still. “What about her?” she asked, as if asking about a stranger.

Laura pressed on, voice steady but so thin it sounded like it could tear. “I know what you believe she was. And that you lived in that shack outside Willow Run for the first few years, with her and several other women.” She glanced at Myra, both faces reflecting something beyond simple sympathy. “But you never knew why, did you? Not for sure.”

Myra made herself shrug. “I put it together. Eventually. I used to make up stories for myself about it—sometimes she was a spy, or in hiding, or she owed someone something big, so she had to do whatever they said. I was a kid. I thought if I could just figure out the riddle, I could fix her, or save her. It took until I was almost in high school to realize she didn’t need saving, that it was just how things were.” She stopped, noticing her voice had gotten sharper than intended.

Laura shook her head, slow. “She did need saving,” she said. “You both did. But it wasn’t her fault.” Her eyes tracked the lines of the bamboo, then locked on Myra, as if asking permission to keep going.

Myra gave a nod. “Fine,” she said, though a part of her really wanted this conversation to end now. “Tell me.”

Laura started, but this time, the left voice spoke a beat behind the right, as if the words were hard to synchronize. “Your mother’s name is Marie Williams.” The pause was surgical, opening space for reaction. “Thirty-one years ago, she was a Contestant, in a previous season of The HH. Arabella was the Host there, too.”

Laura took a deep breath. “And your father was her Master.” There was no drama in the delivery, just a tired, dry cadence.

Myra stared, jaw working, and for a moment she was so far inside her own skin that she forgot to breathe. The world rippled with the aftershock: the color field around Laura doubled, then split, then reknit itself. In the background, her own body felt as light as static. “That’s not—” she started, but it was more a sound than a word.

Laura pressed on. “He made her. He made her and the other women live in the shack. He did things… that Arabella says nobody is supposed to do, not even here.” Her voice cracked, then regrouped. “It wasn’t a job. It was a prison. For all of them.”

Myra felt something move in her gut. One of her tails lashed involuntarily, and the other curled up to press against her thigh, seeking comfort. She tried to process, but all she could think was how her earliest memories—the ones she trusted least—were full of strange women, all of them scared or sad or angry, none of them ever looking her in the eye for more than a second. All of them always deferring to her mother.

Myra sat with her hands braced on her knees, both tails coiled up behind her, the words echoing in her chest. For a moment, her own memories threatened to overtake her—the dark room, the voices that belonged to women but never quite to mothers, the confusion of being loved so fiercely by one woman that she sometimes felt more like an anchor than a child. She tried to chase the thought away, but Laura’s presence—bright, urgent, almost ****—kept her rooted in place.

She found her voice. “Why are you telling me this?”

One of Laura’s bodies shifted to Myra’s other side, not crowding, but bracketing her in a way that felt almost like a shield. Laura didn’t hesitate. “Because you need to know. Because you deserve to know.” Her hands balled into fists, both bodies showing the same tension. “Your mom… she never stopped thinking about you. She never stopped wanting to find you.” A beat. “And she’s still alive. Marie is here. In the Hollow Garden. Andy and I met her yesterday.”

Myra felt the color field inside her pulse, a tremor that threatened to unmake her. “You—” The words caught, and she tried again. “You met her?”

Both of Laura’s faces went soft with regret. “She asked us to tell you she loves you, and that she never, ever wanted to leave you. That she did what she did to protect you from him. From Greg.” Her voices, already so gentle, grew quieter. “She’s been in the Hollow Garden a long time, and she’s safe now. She just wants to see you again, if you’ll let her.”

The air in the grove turned syrup-thick. Myra clamped her hands together, staring at the ground, fighting back something primal. Her tails curled so tightly they pressed against the bench, and she felt a pressure behind her eyes as her entire body tensed.

She swallowed. “She thought I hated her.”

Laura nodded, expression open and raw. “She’s scared of it. She’s scared you think she’s a monster.” A breath. “But she never wanted to give you up. She thought it was the only way you could be free of all the… damage.” Laura’s hands flexed on her knees. “She spent every day since then wishing she could see you again.”

Myra found herself laughing, but the sound came out as a gasp, sharp and pained. “That’s so fucking stupid,” she said, and only when it was out did she realize she meant it about herself, not Marie. “I spent years making myself believe she had ****, that she did what she did out of love. I even convinced myself. But there’s always a part that doesn’t believe it. The part that’s still six years old and waiting by the window for her to come back.” She pressed her palms to her eyes, hard, and when she spoke again her voice shook. “I never hated her. But that six-year-old hated that she wasn’t good enough to make her mother keep her.”

The emotion in the air was so dense it made Myra’s ears ring. The field around Laura glimmered with a color Myra had no name for: a mix of hope, regret, longing, a blue so deep it was almost black. It was honest. It was real.

Laura was silent for a few moments, but Myra could see the sorrow emanating from her. “You were more than good enough for her. She never wanted to give you up, Myra. She did it because she loved you, and because she knew Greg would never allow her to give you a good life. And because of the power he had over all of them, she could not refuse.”

Myra closed her eyes, feeling a little stab of pain in her heart at Laura’s words. Myra drew a breath, then another, until her lungs hurt. She looked up, met both pairs of Laura’s eyes, and said, “What now?”

Laura didn’t answer right away. She reached over—both bodies, at once—and took Myra’s hand. The sensation was doubled, strange and electric; the pressure was perfect, neither too tight nor too gentle, as if Laura had learned from years of practice exactly what people needed. “Now you meet her. If you want.” She squeezed. “She’s waiting for you. Andy and I can take you, if you’re ready. Tomorrow morning, after breakfast.”

Myra nodded, tiny and slow, as if afraid of breaking the moment.

They sat like that, hands linked, for a time that stretched and contracted in the slanted afternoon light. The wind set the bamboo to whispering, and the world seemed to hush, as if to leave room for whatever Myra needed to feel.

She let herself sit with it. The first thing she felt was relief, raw and absolute, so sharp it hurt. It came in a wave, and her tails thumped the bench in perfect counterpoint. Then, underneath, a sadness so deep it made her want to shrink into nothing. She realized that, for the first time in years, she didn’t have to be strong about it, didn’t have to shape it into something useful or pretty for anyone else. She could just let herself be as lost as she felt.

She wiped her face. “Is she really… okay?” Myra asked, unable to hide the old, hungry hope.

Laura nodded. “She’s not perfect, but she’s better than she’s ever been.” She hesitated, then said, “She has friends there. People who care about her. It’s not a punishment, it’s just… a place where she can rest.” Both voices softened further. “She didn’t know you were here until Andy and I told her. She thought she would never see you again.”

The words didn’t heal Myra, not exactly, but they took a weight off her chest she hadn’t even noticed she was carrying. She sucked in a breath, almost laughing at how lightheaded she felt.

“Thank you,” Myra said, voice thin and uneven. “For telling me. For not making it into a performance.” Her hands trembled, but she didn’t let go of Laura’s.

Laura’s faces twitched into twin winces. “I don’t know how to do it any other way,” she said. “I’m not good at the other stuff.”

They stayed in the clearing, letting the light creep lower, tails and hair and bamboo all moving in slow, lazy rhythm.

They stayed like that for a while, not talking, the grove doing what it did in the late afternoon, the light moving through in long columns, the bamboo clicking in the wind. Myra let her tails uncurl slowly. She breathed. Laura waited, both of her present and patient, the silver aura steady and unhurried. When Myra finally spoke, her voice was still rough at the edges but more solid than before. “How did you find all this out?”

Laura took a moment, as if organizing her thoughts. “Marie told us some, but there was more. We got the whole story from Arabella. And…” She hesitated, the color field around her pulsing with dread. “There’s one more thing I need to tell you.”

She let go of Myra’s hand, pulled both knees up to her chest, and rocked back a little. “Marie’s sister is Sarah.” She paused, and took a deep breath. “Sarah is my mother. And Greg, the Master of that season, your father… he is also my father.” Both Lauras looked at Myra, bracing for a reaction. “We’re… half-sisters, Myra. And cousins, somehow. I’m not sure what to do with it, but it’s true.”

For a beat, Myra didn’t react. Then the world bent: the colors in the bamboo doubled, the light inside her chest went to white, and her tails jerked up so sharply she nearly overbalanced. “What,” she said. “You’re serious?”

Both of Laura nodded, nothing in her faces or in her aura but exhausted sincerity.

For the first time since the transformations began, Myra wished she could see with her old eyes, just to confirm it wasn’t some elaborate joke. But the color field never lied. She scanned Laura, searching for the telltale jitter of deception or confusion, but all she saw was what she heard in the voices: sorrow, pain, worry, affection. No malice. No trick.

She laughed, a hollow, amazed sound. “I always wanted a real family,” Myra said, voice so small it might have belonged to a child. “Now you’re telling me I always had one, and it included you.”

Laura smiled, the kind of smile that was built for grief, not joy. “I know,” she said. “I always wanted sisters. I found a lot here, and all the women here are sisters by now, but this is… different. I keep telling myself I have two half-sisters by blood, and… it’s still hard to believe.” She wrapped her arms around her knees, looking at the bamboo. “I don't know what to do with any of it yet," she said. "I keep thinking about it and it keeps being true.”

Myra nodded. “Makes sense. In a fucked-up way.”

Neither spoke for a while. The air thickened with all the things they weren’t ready to say. When Myra felt her chest loosen, she asked, “What happened to Greg?”

Laura’s face closed up a little. “I don’t know, exactly, only that Arabella intervened after… after I died. It was complicated, but she found a way, because she could argue he was the root cause of my ****. The women from that season are safe now. If you want the full story, Arabella will tell you. She said it’s your right.”

Myra picked at the edge of the bench. “I don’t know if I do. Maybe later.”

They let the quiet return, the only sound the wind and the slow click of fox tails hitting the bench.

When Myra finally cried, it wasn’t dramatic. It was quiet, and quick, and over before she could hate herself for it. Laura didn’t say anything, just sat close, both bodies holding the space open for whatever Myra needed.

After, Myra asked, “When you said you had two half-sisters… what did you mean?”

Laura looked at the ground. “There’s something else, but it’s not for me to say. Not yet. I promised I wouldn’t. But soon.”

Myra let her tails curl up into her lap, the ends brushing her wrists like little creatures seeking comfort. “You’re not a liar,” she said. “I’ll wait.”

They sat together until the light shifted, both a little less alone than they’d been at the start of the day.