Packing and Preparations

Dawn had been awake since before the sun, nerves prickling her skin like static. She’d gone for an early run, showered, and still found herself with five hours to kill before the date with Andy. She was standing in the Banquet Hall, staring at a pyramid of bagels on the buffet like if she could arrange them just right, she could keep the rest of her day from falling apart.

She’d already packed a tote with snacks—gourmet trail mix, tiny sandwiches, a box of his favorite cookies, plus a Tupperware of sliced fruit for “freshness.” She’d cycled through three different outfits, finally settling on a sundress with a pink and white print and a lightweight denim jacket. The sleeves were rolled up exactly three times.

She’d spent the last half hour debating whether or not to bring a board game, in case Andy wanted to sit and play at a picnic table instead of doing something physical, and had settled on Uno, which she now shuffled and unshuffled at the buffet line.

Emily found her there. The sight was so ridiculous, she nearly lost her composure: Dawn, in a panic, prepping for a date that was supposed to be about her, not a boardroom retreat.

Emily wore nothing but her sneakers, as always. She padded in, a mug of iced coffee in one hand, and squinted at Dawn over the rim.

“You look like you’re about to propose,” Emily said, voice full of friendly mischief.

Dawn startled, then flushed so fast the color hit her cheeks before she could manage a reply. “I—no. I’m just, um, getting ready.”

Emily’s gaze landed on the tote bag. “Is all of that for Andy? Or is some of it for you?”

Dawn shifted the bag behind her leg, mortified. “It’s just snacks. I didn’t want him to get hungry.”

Emily smiled, soft and genuine. “You know it’s your date, right? You could eat the snacks. You could even make him bring snacks for you.”

Dawn set the bag down and exhaled, her shoulders slumping an inch. “I know. I’m just… not used to this. The others all planned these elaborate things, and I don’t even know what I want to do. I can’t delegate it, I have to decide. It’s paralyzing.”

Emily perched on a barstool, her hair rearranging itself with the motion, and motioned for Dawn to sit. Dawn hesitated, then obeyed.

“Start simple,” Emily said. “What’s the one thing you know you want to do today?”

Dawn twisted her hands in her lap. “See my family. It’s stupid, but I keep thinking about my dad and my brothers, and I just want to know they’re okay. I…” She hesitated, then added, “If Claire is right, I… I want to see them one more time."

Emily nodded, then prodded gently: “And if you could have anything after that?”

Dawn chewed her lip. “I’d like to show Andy where I grew up. I’d like him to see my school, maybe. But I also want it to be… fun. For him. I keep trying to imagine what he’d like, not just what I’d like.”

Emily leaned in. “It’s okay to want things for yourself, Dawn. That’s the whole point of this.”

Dawn looked stricken, as if the thought had never been allowed before. “Is it?”

Emily grinned. “One hundred percent. The snacks are cute, but I want you to try something. Name three things that would make today amazing, for you, and don’t worry if they sound silly or selfish.”

Dawn hesitated so long it was almost a minute before she answered. She flicked the tip of her tongue across her lips, then peered at the table, as if the plates and fruit bowl and lonely box of Uno would give her permission.

“I guess—” She tried to say it quick, but the words bunched up. “I want to hug my dad and my brothers again.” A pause. “That’s one.”

Emily waited, not filling the space with a joke or a tease. Just nodded, as if to say: Good, that’s the easy one.

Dawn chewed her lower lip, kept going. “I want to tell Andy something I’ve never told anyone.” Her ears were cherry-red now, and she fiddled with the loose edge of her jacket. “And I want to—” She broke off, the last one not wanting to be said. “I want to spend the whole day not worrying if I’m enough for him. Or for anyone.”

Emily grinned, and for a second, Dawn was sure she was about to get roasted. But instead, Emily took it perfectly in stride, even matter-of-fact: “Those are great. Perfect. Not even a little bit selfish.” Then she made a show of counting on her fingers. “You want to see your family, you want to let Andy see the real you, and you want to stop—just for a day—measuring yourself by how useful you are to other people. That’s a date, Dawn, not a job interview.”

Dawn made a pained noise, but it was softened by the obvious relief. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Emily scooped up a grape and popped it in her mouth. “Do you want help turning that into an itinerary? Or do you want to wing it and just make Andy keep up with whatever you pick on the fly?”

Dawn let herself laugh, just a little. “You make it sound so easy.”

“It is. Or it can be. Maybe you start at your old house, walk him around the block, show off the playground you broke your wrist on as a kid. Then you get coffee at your favorite place, or drag him to your high school and force him to admit he was a band kid. No prep required.” Emily gestured at the tote bag. “You don’t need to pack a survival kit. Just—let him see you being yourself.”

Dawn looked at the tote like it might combust. “I think I need the snacks for ballast.”

Emily reached out, palm up. “May I see?” Dawn hesitated, then handed the bag over. Emily fished around and produced a neatly labeled bento box, complete with color-coded sticky notes: “Andy’s favorite,” “Eat before 2 pm,” “For sharing.” There was also a backup Tupperware labeled “emergency cookies.”

Emily’s face went soft, then even softer. “You’re incredible, you know that?”

Dawn snorted. “I’m a walking after-school special. I can’t help it.”

“No,” Emily corrected, “you can. And you are. You just… haven’t tried yet.” She set the bag down, folded her hands, and leaned in. “Is it that you’re afraid he won’t like the real you, if you’re not in charge? Or is it that you don’t know what the real you even likes, when you’re not in charge?”

Dawn blinked. “Is this a therapy session?”

Emily shrugged. “If you want. I was a barista for three years. I can play therapist.”

Dawn didn’t answer, just pulled her knees up on the barstool and hugged them. “I think it’s both.”

Emily made a pensive sound, then smiled. “You know what would be wild? If you asked Andy to make the day about you, and he actually did it. No resistance, no sabotage. Wouldn’t that be crazy?”

Dawn tried to imagine it, and the exercise was so foreign her brain almost short-circuited. “He’d… he’d probably like it, wouldn’t he?”

Emily nodded. “He’d love it. He likes to make us happy, even if he’s bad at showing it sometimes.”

Dawn exhaled. “It’s just—if I’m not making myself useful, what am I?”

“You’re lovable,” Emily said, deadpan. “You’re funny, and good, and people want to be around you even if you don’t bring snacks.”

Dawn made a face at that, but let it stand. “You make it sound like I don’t have to do anything at all.”

Emily smirked. “You don’t. But you can. And you will. Because you’re Dawn, and you’d die of boredom otherwise.”

There was a silence, not a bad one. Dawn rested her chin on her knees and thought it through, hard. “What if I picked something totally dumb? Like, I don’t know, a weird tourist thing, or… or a trampoline park, or a cat cafe?”

“Then he’d do it,” Emily said, “and he’d love watching you have fun. I promise.”

Dawn fidgeted with the edge of her sock. “You sure?”

Emily leaned over and poked Dawn’s ankle, a gesture light as a breeze. “Positive.”

Another quiet settled between them. Dawn reached for the bag, drew it close, and just… held onto it. She didn’t open it again. She just let it sit in her lap, like a comfort animal.

Emily drained the rest of her coffee. “You want me to walk you to the Suite? Or do you want a minute to psych yourself up?”

Dawn thought about it. “Will you come with, but pretend we’re just friends running into each other?”

Emily’s laugh was a happy, birdlike thing. “Dawn, I’m literally naked. I don’t think we can pull off ‘stealth mode’ anymore.”

Dawn giggled, her nerves dissolving by degrees. “Point taken.”

They walked together down the hallway, Dawn’s steps getting less bouncy as she realized the world wasn’t going to swallow her for having preferences. At the elevator, Emily gave her a little nudge. “You’re going to have an amazing date. Just… let yourself have it.”

Dawn smiled, and this time, it reached her eyes. “Thanks, Em.”

Emily hugged her, arms light and warm around Dawn’s shoulders. “You deserve it. And if you ever need a backup plan, you know where to find me.”

Dawn hugged back, and let herself mean it. “Deal.”

Emily headed off toward the gardens, hair trailing after her in a self-repairing cape, and Dawn went up the elevator, clutching her bag and her three wishes like the first draft of a life she was finally allowed to want.

She was still nervous. But the nervousness, now, felt less like a trap and more like a ticket: the thing you carried to prove you were on your way somewhere worth going.

---

Erin’s morning routine had gotten progressively stranger since the Fourth Challenge, but she liked it that way. She’d stopped “weeding” the old-fashioned way—crawling around the beds with a trowel, uprooting anything that didn’t belong. She used the trowel for potting, now, but nothing else. Instead, she just sat on her haunches at the edge of a plot and talked to the plants. Not out loud, exactly, more like a cross between meditation and narration, half inside her head and half in the world. If a clover patch started overtaking the strawberries, she’d ask them to be less ambitious, and the next day, she’d find the boundary neat as a comb part. When a vine wrapped a little too tight around its trellis, she’d murmur, “Hey, back it off,” and the leaves would relax, literally, in the sunlight.

She’d started singing to the tomatoes. She did not think she had a good singing voice, but the plants didn’t seem to mind.

Today, she was flat on her back in a bed of moss, staring up at the sky through a curtain of wisteria, her hair fanned around her like a starfish. The light was perfect: filtered and soft, no harsh edges. The only other sound was the far-off trill of a bird and, occasionally, the laughter of one of the Contestants walking the path at the edge of the Gardens.

She didn’t bother to move when she heard Andy’s footsteps, even though she could pick them out long before he rounded the corner. The bond between them registered his eyes on her, the way his attention sharpened as he got closer. She felt wetness between her legs, nipples growing hard, a warmth spreading from between her thighs and making her feel frisky. Erin didn’t look up, just folded her arms behind her head and waited.

“Hey,” Andy said, when he finally made the turn and saw her. “You’re hard to find.”

Erin grinned, not opening her eyes. “You said that last time.”

He huffed, the sound closer now. “I meant it. I checked the arbors, the bean trellis, even your old spot by the hidden bench.”

“Rookie move,” she said, “Everyone knows I don’t really hide anymore.”

She waited for him to ask what she was doing, but he just flopped down beside her, hands behind his head, and stared at the sky. There was a long, peaceful silence.

Erin let it run until she was sure it was safe. Then: “You’re late.”

Andy smiled, eyes closed. “Didn’t realize we had a meeting time.”

“Always do,” she said, and it sounded like a compliment.

He opened his eyes, glanced at her. The sight of her still made him a little breathless: the mint-green skin, the impossible curves, the casual nakedness. It never stopped being strange, but it also never stopped feeling like her.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

She nodded. “Everything’s good. Plants are all behaving. No bug outbreaks. Also, the begonias are plotting to colonize the whole west side of the Arches, but I told them I’d snip their runners if they tried.”

He let himself laugh, and she joined him.

After a while, Andy rolled to his side, propped himself up on an elbow, and looked at her more seriously. “You wanted to talk.”

Erin didn’t answer right away. She pushed up to a seated position, legs crossed, hands in her lap, looking for all the world like a painted woodland nymph. The only thing that spoiled the effect was the battered pair of running shoes, which she refused to give up for the traction they gave her.

“Yeah,” she said, “but you look like you need it more. You want to go first?”

He considered, then shook his head. “Yours is probably less complicated.”

She made a face. “That’s a bet you’re going to lose, but okay.” She picked at a wisteria pod, rolling it between her fingers. “That word you said during your visions. ‘Overreach.’ I keep thinking about it.”

He blinked, replayed the moment of his visions, found nothing. “I believe you,” he said. “But I honestly don’t remember when I said it.”

She let out a breath, relief and frustration together. “I didn’t know if it was important, or if it was just a brain fart, but it stuck with me. I was hoping you’d have a better memory, or that it would mean something to you.”

Andy shook his head. “No memory, but… I can try to reconstruct the logic, if you want.”

“Please,” she said, and scooted closer. “If we can figure it out, maybe it’ll make the rest of the visions less scary.”

Andy closed his eyes and started the process, like a man replaying footage from a bad security camera. “First one was Sam in the plaza, fighting a bearded guy with a giant sword. Second was the ruined hotel, endless desert, me looking for someone or something. Third, the Hollow Garden, the harem women waiting. Then the green-lit room, the veiled woman talking about debts and overreach. Then the vision with four women on their knees, Laura doubled, being hurt by the bearded guy. Then the beach, everyone waiting, Arabella and Mildred, with a pale woman next to them—probably Ereshkigal. Then Sarah’s cottage, then the footbridge.”

He paused, counted off the images, tried to see which one fit best. “Did you hear the word during a specific moment, or just once at random?”

Erin shook her head. “I only heard it once. You kind of whispered it, and you sounded upset. But that was all. And from my perspective, you were under for a few minutes. So… not a lot to go on.”

He thought about it, then said, “The green-lit room is the only place the word appears, I think. The veiled woman is talking about debts and the way you can injure someone without meaning to. The hand raised answers to the law before it answers to the will that raised it. It was all about overreach—the idea of hurting more than you meant, or claiming more than you have a right to.”

Erin nodded. “That tracks.”

Andy let the silence spool out between them, his mind ticking over the word, its afterimage still ghosting the air between them. Erin, too, seemed content to let the pause stretch, her breathing slow and even, the skin at her shoulder dappled in the filtered sunlight, as if she were photosynthesizing the moment. The word sounded so clinical, so managerial—overreach, like a spreadsheet error or a botched merger—but the way it had landed in Andy’s mouth, caught somewhere between apology and warning, made it feel like the linchpin of something much larger than either of them.

He tried to explain. “The beach vision… I kept feeling like something massive was cresting, like a wave just about to break. All that weird calm, everyone waiting, even Arabella and Ereshkigal. I don’t think it’s about law at all, not the way the other vision was. It’s like… the law is already broken there, and what’s left is what you do when the rules don’t matter anymore.” He rubbed his thumb against the back of her hand, a nervous habit he’d never broken. “Overreach is the moment you stop following orders and decide which ones you’ll break.”

The idea seemed to energize Erin. “So the law is a baseline, but overreach is when someone—maybe you—pushes past the line. Breaks the symmetry. Isn’t that how you win at chess? Or at war, or… or at life?”

Andy grinned, the first real smile in hours. “I think that’s it. You can obey all the rules, play every move by the book, but the only way you ever really change the game is when you break the rules at the moment nobody expects. Overreach is the play, not the penalty.”

Erin shifted, sitting upright, her knees drawn up, a soft blanket of moss clinging to her calves. “So who’s overreaching? You, or Ereshkigal?”

He hesitated, then said, “Both of us. Maybe the whole point is that you can’t win if you don’t. But it’s dangerous, because overreach is also how you lose everything. That’s what the warning is. Overreaching got us here, and it might be the only way out.”

She considered this, the cogs turning. “But what if that’s why the Hotel keeps showing it to you? Not to scare you, but to remind you that you have agency. That you’re not just stuck in the current—you can swim, even if it fucks everything up.”

Andy looked at her, really looked, the way she glowed when she got inside a problem and started to turn it over. “That’s what you’d do, isn’t it?”

“Oh, absolutely,” she said, her eyes dancing. “But I’d take notes first, and have an escape route. I’d overreach with style.”

He laughed, then, the sound echoing off the marble and stone. It felt good, real, the kind of laugh that came from somewhere behind the old scars. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

They sat together, bodies close enough to blur the distinction between where one ended and the other began, and Andy let himself, for a minute, just be here, in this unlikely patch of peace. He’d spent most of his adulthood convinced that every happiness was a loan that would come due with interest, but Erin’s presence always made it feel like maybe some debts could be forgiven, or at least deferred.

After a while, she nudged him with her shoulder, then tipped her head to rest against his. “You’re not afraid of her, are you?” she said, her voice low.

He thought about lying, or hedging, but she’d always been able to see through that. “I am,” he admitted, “but not the way I used to be. I’m afraid of what I’ll do to the rest of you if I fuck this up. That’s what gets me.”

She made a small sound, not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh, and reached for his hand. “Then don’t fuck it up.”

He squeezed her fingers, a little too tight. “I’ll try.”

Erin seemed satisfied with that, and let the subject drop. They watched the wisteria ripple in the breeze, the blue and purple petals fluttering down like confetti. For a while, it was just the two of them and the sound of the wind, and Andy could almost believe everything was going to be simple. That this morning would last as long as they needed it to.

She leaned against his side, the skin-to-skin contact grounding both of them. “Do you think we’re just reading too much into this? Like, maybe it’s not a riddle, just a warning to duck and cover?”

Andy laughed. “No. That’s never been how the Hotel works. The fact that there’s all this… poetry around it? That means it wants us to try.”

She made a happy noise and rested her chin on his shoulder. “You’re good at this, you know that?”

He smiled, but the next thing he said was so soft she almost missed it: “I hope so. I really, really want to be good at this, given the alternative.”

She went quiet, then turned to face him, her hands on either side of his face. “You are,” she said, no room for doubt.

He let himself believe it, for just a second. “Thank you.”

They sat like that, Erin in his lap, Andy’s arms around her, the garden making its slow, lazy music all around them.

“I missed this,” she said. “You. Us. Not having to perform for everyone else.”

He nodded, and didn’t try to put a label on the feeling. Instead, he just sat with her, letting the warmth and the closeness do the work.

After a while, she said, “So, beach vision. That’s where the word fits best?”

He thought it over. “Yeah. It’s the moment everything converges. It’s the confrontation. If I overreach, or if Ereshkigal does, that’s where it will matter.”

Erin’s lips quirked. “Okay. Then let’s keep it in mind. Maybe it’s a warning, or a strategy. Or a trap. But it’s ours, now.”

He kissed her. “Ours.”

They stayed that way, not moving, until the sun got so bright it forced their eyes shut. When Andy finally opened them again, he saw the whole archway of the garden colored green, gold, and blue, and for the first time since the visions, it felt like the future might not be a punishment, but a choice.

She held his hand, and they walked the garden’s path, Erin talking softly to every plant she passed. The word echoed in his mind, but it didn’t scare him this time. It felt like a tool. Something he could use. Something they could use, together.

---

She waited until they were just past the old stone bench, the one Andy used as a lookout on his morning walks, and then Erin stopped him with a hand to his chest. He stopped without protest. She smiled, crooked and a little sad, then took his face in both hands.

“You’re not back yet,” she said, her voice as clear as the sunlight through wisteria. “You’ve been gone all morning.”

Andy started to object, some polite lie about being present, but she kissed him before the words could materialize. It wasn’t a greedy kiss, or even especially aggressive. It was just there: unhurried, solid, and so full of Erin that it felt less like a question and more like a homecoming.

He didn’t kiss back right away. His brain, out of reflex, started cataloguing all the ways he’d been careless with her: not showing up on time, taking her loyalty for granted, letting the weight of the visions crowd out what should have been simple affection. But she kept going, her lips moving over his, then to his jaw, then his throat, as if she had all the time in the world to wait for him to come to her.

Eventually he did. He let her push him, let her kneel over him in the moss and wildflowers, let her undress him (not that there was much to undo; he’d thrown on shorts and a t-shirt for the walk). The garden’s air was thick with sweet, green smell—petals and crushed clover, the sharp electric tang of grass after a watering. He tasted it on her mouth, and it shocked him a little.

“You smell like the inside of a greenhouse,” he said, when she gave him a chance to breathe.

Erin made a face. “I’ve been told.”

He tried to smile. “I mean it as a compliment.”

She grinned, eyes half-lidded. “That’s how I took it.”

She ran her hands down his arms, slow, tracing every muscle and vein like she was reacquainting herself with an old map. She was so much stronger than she used to be—she could probably bench press him, if it came to it—but she always held him as if he might break. She seemed to like that about him. He let her do it. Let her take his shirt, then roll him back onto the moss, which was cold and wet and somehow exactly what he needed.

She straddled him, knees digging into the earth on either side, her hair loose for once and wild as the flowers around them. Her skin, luminous and minty and weirdly flawless, looked like it belonged here more than it ever had in the human world. He put his hands on her hips, and she shivered under the touch, her nipples hardening visibly, her whole body lit up with a low, steady pulse. It took him a second to realize: she was already wet, and not just a little.

“Is this—” he started.

She cut him off with a nod, then leaned forward so her J-cup breasts spilled into his face, and for a second, Andy forgot how to think. She laughed at his expression, a real, honest laugh, then guided his hands up to cup them. “If you don’t like them,” she said, “you’re legally required to say so now.”

He said, “I love them,” and then, not to be outdone, “I love you.”

She made a noise like she’d swallowed her own breath, and then she stopped laughing. She slid down on him, slow, taking him inside her an inch at a time. He tried to close his eyes, but she kept hers locked on his, and every time he tried to look away she’d squeeze his hand, or roll her hips, or whisper something that made it impossible to retreat.

At first, he tried to keep pace, but she set the rhythm: slow, patient, deep. She made him feel everything. The friction, the pressure, the heat. His own heartbeat in his ears, then in his hands, then in her, somehow. When he tried to move faster, she’d put a palm to his chest and pin him to the ground.

“Stay here,” she said, and he did.

She bent down and kissed his neck, his collarbone, his mouth again. She talked to him, soft, little nothings: “You’re here,” “I want you,” “Don’t leave,” “Stay.” Each time he felt the urge to vanish into himself, she’d pull him back with a word or a squeeze or the weight of her body.

The world outside the arch vanished. The only things left were the press of her against him, the scent of her sweat, the moss biting into his back, the unsteady sound of his own breathing. For a moment, Andy wondered if the rest of the world had even survived the morning. He hoped it hadn’t.

She rode him for a long time, never hurrying. She came once, then again, her muscles squeezing and shuddering around him, and each time she did, her skin seemed to brighten, the mint green flush deepening with every pulse. When he was finally close, she pressed their foreheads together and held him, the sound of their bodies moving together louder than the bird calls, louder than the distant ocean. When she told him to let go, he did, and the orgasm came on so hard it nearly blanked him out.

He didn’t remember the moment after, only the way he clung to her, both of them shaking. They held each other, not talking, for what felt like hours. When he could think again, he realized they’d rolled together, bodies tangled and half in the sun. Erin’s hand was on his chest, fingers spread wide, as if to make sure nothing slipped out.

“You okay?” she asked, eventually.

He nodded, unsure if he could talk. After a few breaths, he said, “Thank you. I needed that.”

She kissed his shoulder. “I know.”

He watched her for a while, taking in the soft lines of her face, the way her eyelashes stuck together from dew, the scatter of moss and petals in her hair. He remembered when he’d been afraid of her, not because of her power, but because of the loyalty she expected and the intensity of her feelings. Now, it felt like the safest place in the world.

They didn’t get up right away. Erin hummed a song under her breath, something wordless and old, and Andy let it fill his ears. The dappled light painted her skin in green and gold, and he traced the lines with his finger, just to see if it was real.

For a while, there was nothing to do, and nowhere to go. No challenge, no argument, no puzzle that needed solving. There was just this: the weight of her arm across his chest, and the slow, steady pulse of two people who, for a little while, belonged nowhere but here.

When he was ready, he said, “I love you,” and meant it with every atom of himself.

She squeezed him tighter. “I know,” she said, and it wasn’t a joke this time. They lay there until the sun moved, and the shadows shifted, and the whole world felt new.

---

The Forest of Beginnings was always blue, and always a little cold, even when the world outside sweated in the peak of day. Emi wandered its pathways the way she wandered most places: quietly, dreamily, sometimes with all her arms folded behind her back, sometimes with three of them out in front as if she were feeling her way through a puzzle only she could see. The trees here were glass—tall and thin and packed so close together that even at noon, only ribbons of light filtered through. It was always quiet, except for the faint resonance of the trunks as they shifted against one another, and the whirring sound the wind made when it crossed the smallest branches.

She liked it. She liked that she could get lost here, but only on purpose. She liked that when she breathed, the world smelled faintly of ozone and nothing else. She liked that the light bent in a way that made every step feel new, even if she was retracing her own path. She liked that the undergrowth—if you could call the spiral-shaped grass and alien mosses undergrowth—was mostly patches of iridescence, never the same color twice.

This time she’d come to work. She was cradling, very carefully, a blown-glass rabbit she’d made from thin air. She had just finished the bunny: she had annealed the seam where the ears met the head, and had filled the hollow body with one of the tiny, shimmering lights she had found in the pond, one of the stars reflected in it. Now she’d brought it here, to see how it would look in the forest. It glowed from within, a warm lamp-yellow, and when she held it up to the nearest trunk, the rabbit cast concentric ovals of amber and white up and down the length of the glass tree. The effect was beautiful and also, for some reason, funny.

When she set it on the moss, it didn’t fall over. It looked at her, twitched its nose—she swore it did, even though she hadn’t given it a moving part for a nose—and then hopped away, not in a hurry, but with intent. Emi watched it for a moment, arms at her sides, and then let out a soft laugh, delighted. The bunny stopped, stood, looked at her with its ears twitching, then continued on.

“That one’s for you, I think,” said a voice from just behind her, perfectly at home in the hush, but carrying farther than most sounds ever did here.

Emi didn’t startle. Anna never announced herself, but Emi had gotten so used to her that it just felt like a feature of the place. She turned, smiling, and saw Anna standing in the shadow of the nearest trunk, hair like night, blue dress trailing over the moss as if it were made of the same impossible glass as the trees themselves.

She looked the same as always: luminous skin, mouth a perfect, amused line, eyes black enough to be pools of ink. She wore her lapis necklace, and today her scarf was the color of violets, trailing behind her as if it was just about to take flight.

“Grandma! I hoped you’d come,” Emi said. She meant it.

Anna didn’t walk so much as glide. She took three steps toward Emi, each one careful but not cautious, and stopped with exactly the right distance between them to allow for a hug, a handshake, or just a long look. Emi chose the hug, though her six arms made it less like a greeting and more like she was wrapping Anna in a weighted blanket.

Anna hugged her back, both arms, but also leaned her cheek into Emi’s hair, and for a second, Emi felt like she was thirteen again, waiting for her mother to come home from the late shift. It was the kind of hug you gave to someone who would not break, but might fly away if you let go.

“I missed you,” Emi said, after a while.

“You always do,” said Anna, voice like she was stating the weather. She smiled, stepped back, and looked Emi over from head to toe, the way people did when they wanted to know if you’d changed. Emi had. There was no denying that she was taller now than she’d been when she had arrived, her chest fuller, minor imperfections on her skin gone, like they had never existed. Her black hair was more lustrous. “But you’re more yourself than last time. You’ve been working?”

Emi nodded, feeling the six-arm shuffle that always happened when she had to explain what she’d been up to. “I made some animals. For the next time Laura comes to visit. Thought she might like a pet or two to keep her company.”

Anna grinned, more with her eyes than her mouth. “She would.”

They stood in companionable silence, which Emi had learned to appreciate more than words. There was a kind of honesty to standing in a glass forest with someone who knew every version of you and didn’t need to fill the air with advice or comfort. After a while, Anna gestured to a fallen trunk nearby, the moss thick over it. Emi sat; Anna joined her, the hem of her dress pooling elegantly on the ground.

It was Emi who broke the silence. “I wanted to say, I love these talks, Grandma. I always feel happy, when you’re here.”

Anna looked at her, head tilted, as if she’d been waiting for this. “You can talk to me about anything. I’m not like the others.”

Emi bit her lower lip, unsure how to ask what she wanted to ask, then just did it. “You’re always like this. Calm, I mean. Even when you’re angry, or sad, or… even when you’re mourning. I can’t figure out if it’s because you’re a goddess, or because you’ve already lost more than anyone could bear.”

Anna’s face changed then, not much, but enough that Emi could see it. “It’s not a trick of godhood. Or not only that. Mostly it’s because the parts of me that break have already broken, and the rest is just what’s left.”

She didn’t sound sad, but she did sound tired, the way a queen might after a very long war.

Emi nodded, then said, “Can I ask you something weird?”

Anna snorted, and it was so human it made Emi smile again. “It would be weirder if you didn’t.”

Emi steeled herself. “I know you were mortal, once. You said so. But I’ve never heard you talk about it, not even with Arabella. I always wondered—what were you like, before?”

Anna looked away, out into the blue tangle of glass trunks. “We don’t usually talk about it. The ones who ascend, I mean. I used to believe it’s because we’re supposed to let go of the lives we had. I no longer do so, however. The best moments of my life have been as a mortal, or among mortals. Sometimes I think about it, when I’m here with you.”

She let that hang for a moment, as if debating whether to keep going. Then she said, “I was a twin. My sister was named Alla. We were very close, even when we weren’t. She was always the clever one—good with words, brave, the sort who would try anything once, as long as it didn’t kill her.”

Emi nodded, but didn’t interrupt.

“I got married young,” said Anna, “to a man named Dumuzid. He was a farmer. When I first met him, I felt nothing—that was normal, then. You didn’t marry for feeling. But somewhere between the meeting and the wedding, I started to notice things. The way he was careful with animals. The way he could make anyone laugh without trying, even my sister, who didn’t want to like him. He was strong, but he never used it to frighten anyone. He had a kind of innocence about him that I knew the world would eventually take, but hadn’t yet.” She paused. “Most people in our town married for land, or for family, or because it was simply the next thing to do. I did too, at first. And then, somewhere along the way, I didn’t.” She looked at the trees, remembering. “Alla thought I was foolish. She couldn’t stand the idea of belonging to anyone. But she stood beside me anyway.”

She smiled, but it was a small, private smile, like she’d found it at the bottom of a drawer after years of forgetting it was there. “Then, just a few days after the wedding, we were both taken. Arabella—before she even called herself Geshtinanna, when she still went by her true name—showed up and brought me to the first season of Harem Hotel: Dilmun. She took Alla, too. And my life changed forever.”

Emi inhaled, slow and careful. She knew the story, at least the bones of it, but she’d never heard it from Anna’s own mouth. “Did you ever see Dumuzid again?”

Anna’s face didn’t change, but her voice went quiet. “He’s the reason I’m alive to be standing here at all.” She flexed her hand, then balled it into a fist and let it go, like she was squeezing water from a stone. “In the end, he traded himself for me. I got to go home. He didn’t.”

Finally, Emi asked, “Do you miss him?”

“Every day,” said Anna. “You would think it strange. I have lived for millennia, and I have had many lovers. But Dumuzid… he is still my husband. I still love him. I miss him. I wish we had had more time.”

Emi blinked away tears. There was something especially cruel about being rescued by someone who would never know you were saved. “Do you… do you visit him? Wherever he is now?”

Anna’s laugh was light, but it scraped at the edges. “I do. I visit him in the world below, sometimes. He never changed. He never resented me, not even for a moment. He said, ‘You’re worth the price, always.’ And every time I see him, I promise myself I’ll find a way to bring him back.”

Emi let herself imagine this: Anna, goddess or no, descending into the world below just to visit a husband she’d only been married to for a week. It was both incredibly sad and, for some reason, the most romantic thing Emi had ever heard. What it would feel like, to love someone from across an unbridgeable gulf, to see them once in a blue moon and always have to say goodbye. She wanted to say something, anything, but her throat was tight.

Anna must have sensed it. “It’s strange,” she said, “but the pain gets lighter. Not because you forget, but because you learn to carry it differently. You learn to let it change you, instead of letting it break you.”

There was a lull, a hush filled only by the faint click and hum of the forest, and Emi knew the conversation could end here, if she wanted. But Anna had always been the one who made space for others’ feelings, never her own, and Emi didn’t want to let the moment pass. She squeezed Anna’s hand with two more arms, a little clumsy, but Anna didn’t mind.

“What about your sister?” Emi asked, softer now. “Do you see her too, when you visit him?” Then she regretted it. “Sorry, you don’t have to answer—”

“I have only seen her once, after that,” Anna said, without hesitation. “Once, in all the years since. I don’t know if it’s because she feels too much shame, or because she thinks I wouldn’t forgive her, or because she thinks the bargain is closed and she won’t trespass on what she gave away. We were twins, Emi. You can’t know what that’s like, unless you are one. I miss her more than I miss being mortal. That’s the one thing I never learned how to live with.”

This time, Emi squeezed Anna’s hand tighter, then pulled her into another hug, this one even more awkward and six-armed than before. Anna let her, and her head dropped onto Emi’s shoulder as if she’d been waiting for someone to offer it for a thousand years.

“I’m sorry,” Emi said, quietly.

Anna shook her head. “Don’t be. Most days, I’m not. But some days—like today—I wish things had turned out different.”

For a long while they just sat, Emi and Anna, close together on the mossy outcrop at the center of the blue-lit woods. The sound of the glass trees filled the space between them, an endless chorus of crystalline pops and shivers, like wind chimes in a cathedral, or rain on a skylight. Even the shadows seemed to move with them: Emi’s six arms loosely tangled in front of her knees, Anna’s profile softly etched by a scrolling pattern of broken light, every movement of her head sending a ripple of blue through her silver-white hair. Even though Anna’s posture had returned to its usual composure, Emi could see the trace of what she’d given up in the story. The line between who she was and who she’d been, maybe, or just the exhaustion that came from telling a wound too old to ever truly heal.

Emi wanted to say something comforting, something wise, but all she could find in her chest was a thick, sore gratitude for having been trusted with a story like that. So she sat, and she watched the way Anna measured the world around her, and she waited for whatever came next.

Anna was the one who broke the hush, her words so soft Emi barely heard them over the woodland’s breathing. “It is strange to sit and talk so openly. Sometimes I forget how much it matters, to say things out loud. I have spent most of my long life keeping secrets, or pretending things didn’t hurt as much as they did. Even when I was ruler of the city, I never told this story. Not once.”

Emi glanced over, met Anna’s eyes for a split second, then looked away again. “Why?” she asked, honestly curious. “Wasn’t that what you needed back then?”

Anna considered the question, her face folding in on itself, then opening again. “I think I was afraid. Of what it meant to care that much for someone, to admit that love could hurt so badly and still be worth it. Back then, I told myself it was safer to be strong than to be honest. Sometimes I still do.” She looked up, a half-smile on her lips. “But you have a way of making people want to be honest, Emi. Even me.”

Emi blushed furiously. “I don’t really do anything.”

They sat like that for a while, the sound of the glass trees shifting all around them, blue light bending over their hair. Emi almost missed Anna’s shift in tone, the subtle straightening of her spine, the way her eyes seemed suddenly sharper and more awake.

“I didn’t just come here to be comforted,” Anna said, this time with the steady gravity of someone making a declaration. “I have something to tell you.”

Emi turned toward her, attention locked in. “Okay,” she replied, unsure what else to say.

Anna took a breath, then let it out slow, as if weighing whether or not to proceed. “You know I’m your many-times-great-grandmother, yes?”

Emi blushed. “I know. You told me before.”

Anna nodded, as if confirming something to herself. “It is still strange, to sit across from you and see my own line carried so far. But I think that’s why you are the way you are. Not just the six arms or the dreams—though those are not so common in the general population—but the way you’re always a little bit apart, always half here and half somewhere else. That is our legacy.”

Emi blinked, uncertain how to take this. “Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?”

Anna smiled, and this time it was the full version, soft and genuine and a little self-mocking. “It is both, like anything worth having. But it means you are exactly where you are supposed to be, Emi. The path the other women are on, the path Andy will soon tell you about… for you, Emi, it’s a path you were always going to walk.”

Emi’s throat felt thick. “I don’t know if I can do any of the things you did. I’m not like you. I get nervous around new people, I second-guess myself, I—”

Anna reached across and took one of Emi’s hands, surprising her by how warm she was, how real. “You helped Laura, in the Garden of Glass. You saw her when no one else could. You comforted her, and she remembers it. You changed her life, even if you didn’t mean to.” She squeezed Emi’s hand, then let go. “Most people go their whole lives without ever mattering like that. You already did. With Laura, and with Marissa. And you will again.”

Emi stared at the ground, unsure whether to laugh or cry. “What happens to me?” she asked, quietly. “At the end of all this?”

Anna shrugged, a little helpless. “I don’t know, sweet child. There are no scripts for this. But I do know that Andy and Laura will need you more than almost anyone, before the end. I don’t know the shape of it, but I know it’s coming.”

Emi tried to picture it, but all she found were vague impressions: Andy’s worried face, Laura’s blue eyes, the hush of the archive around her. “How will I know what to do?”

Anna shook her head, her smile returning. “You won’t, until the moment comes. But you’ll do it anyway.”

She reached out, two fingers, and touched Emi’s forehead, so lightly that Emi could barely feel it. “Remember this conversation,” Anna said. “When the choice comes, there won’t be a warning. But you’ll know what to do.”

Emi felt it—not a chill, not an electric shock, but something like the memory of a lost dream finding its old place in her mind. For a second she closed her eyes, and when she opened them Anna was standing, dusting off her hands and gathering her long hair behind her shoulders.

“Will you stay, a little longer?” Emi asked, not ready for the conversation to end.

Anna shook her head, regretful but certain. “I can’t, not now. But I’m always here, if you need me.” She smiled one last time, and her voice softened. “You were always my favorite, my sweet child. I love you.”

Emi found herself laughing, giddy and raw, as if Anna had actually reached through her chest and squeezed her heart. “I love you, too, Grandma,” she said, and she did.

Anna walked off into the woods, not looking back, her figure soon swallowed by the blue and glass and perpetual dusk of the Forest. She vanished in the way of someone who had always known how to exit a room: no fuss, no echo, just the certainty that whatever had needed to be said had been said, and nothing left but the memory of a gentle presence.

Emi sat for a long time after Anna left, the moss cold under her legs and the fractured sunlight painting everything with the unreality of a dream. The glass bunny blinked out from somewhere deeper in the forest, its pulse a steady reminder that magic—real or imaginary—had always been here for those who needed it. Emi closed her eyes for a few breaths, hugging her own arms around her knees, letting the feeling settle in.

She thought about what Anna had said. That maybe the pain didn’t leave, but you could learn to carry it differently. That maybe it was worth it, even if it never truly went away. That sometimes, just sometimes, you could save someone else the way you wished you’d been saved.

She didn’t know what the future held, or what shape her importance might take. Maybe it would be something small—a conversation in the right moment, or a hand held through a long night—or maybe it would be something enormous and terrifying that she couldn’t imagine yet. But Emi felt lighter, somehow, as if the blue forest itself had shifted to make room for her.