Shadows Cast Long, Part 3

It was afternoon, the hot kind, where every stone along the garden path radiated a secondhand warmth straight into the soles of Laura’s sneakers. She kept her pace slow. The sunlight had finally given her a little color, enough that she no longer felt like a hospital ghost next to the other women, but it also made her miss the old, drizzly Midwest, where gray could wrap you up like a second skin and no one expected you to smile about it.

The air in the inner gardens was sweet and earthy, heavy with the fragrance of the roses that never seemed to wilt, no matter how many days they spent in the sun. She could hear cicadas and the distant, steady thump of someone’s music—probably Liesa, based on the Euro-pop beat—drifting out of an open window somewhere above. Laura followed the path that wound behind the koi pond, away from the main patios and the laughter of women who didn’t have to fight for a place here. She needed the quiet.

The previous day’s events in the Tavern of Second Chances had receded to a dull ache. Emily’s intervention had worked, sort of, though the way Emily had thrown herself between the grenade and Laura’s heart, regardless of the time she was supposed to spend alone with Andy, made it obvious she’d been through the exercise more than once. It helped, but it also left Laura feeling more like a case study than a person. The knowledge that Emily liked her only made the guilt worse: if even the girl with a severe case of compulsory nudity and a literal suggestibility fetish (Laura hadn’t missed Emily’s reactions whenever someone told her something that sounded like an order) could treat Laura as a real, human being, what did that say about her own ability to do the same?

She was so lost in thought that she nearly walked straight into Marissa, who was coming the other way with a speed that suggested she was trying to outrun her own shadow.

They both stopped.

For a full five seconds, neither moved. Laura felt her two bodies tense for flight, but both sets of feet glued themselves to the flagstone under the weight of unspoken guilt. Marissa’s eyes flicked past Laura’s left body’s shoulder, searching for an escape route.

Then, with the resigned choreography of someone who’d spent half her life apologizing for other people’s feelings, Laura’s bodies both stepped to the same side at once. It looked almost comic—two mirror images sliding in unison—except for the cold steel wire of awkwardness strung between Laura’s center and Marissa.

Marissa began to sidestep, and Laura’s bodies followed perfectly in sync, drifting to the edge of the path. Marissa’s hair—pulled into a tight, flawless knot—gleamed like polished steel in the sunlight, and her blouse was so crisply ironed it could slice through tension. Laura’s shirts were rumpled on both bodies, her hair frizzed at the tips from humidity. Laura wondered if the contrast was deliberate, or Marissa’s way of refusing to yield a single inch.

They nearly passed without a word, but something in Laura snapped, and both bodies spun back as one. “I’m sorry,” came the raw apology from two lips simultaneously.

Marissa froze, one hand raised as if to push away an invisible barrier. Her back was so rigid Laura’s spines—both of them—ached in sympathetic tension.

“I’m sorry for what I said to you a few days ago,” Laura continued in perfect synchrony. “I was cruel. I knew I was being cruel as I said it. I’m still not sure why—except that I needed someone else to feel worse than I did.”

Marissa turned slowly, and Laura’s bodies held their collective breath. For a moment, it seemed Marissa might walk away, but then she whispered, “Thank you.” The single syllable was so soft that Laura’s two hearts fluttered together.

A hush fell on the path. Laura felt compelled to fill it. “I mean it, you didn’t deserve it,” she said, both bodies exhaling at once.

Marissa’s mouth twitched in a brief, sunlit smile. “I’d say I’m used to it, but that’d be me winning the Suffering Olympics.”

Laura’s twin laughter rippled out—sharp and unexpected. “You’d medal,” they said.

Marissa hesitated, then admitted in a lower voice, “Mea culpa too, you know.” She wove her fingers, thumbs tracing anxious circles. “I didn’t handle it well either. I—” She broke off. “I get clinical when I’m upset. It’s easier than being angry… or sad… or—” She let that word hang between them.

Laura felt both bodies shiver. “Or scared?” they offered as one.

Marissa’s pale blue eyes met Laura’s duplicate pair. “Or scared,” she agreed quietly. “I hate that I do it, but there it is.”

Neither moved. Laura felt tears prick at the back of her eyes, two souls wrestling for composure.

“It’s okay,” Laura said softly. “Not really okay, but… it is, I guess.”

Marissa gave a small, almost embarrassed nod. “Yeah.”

They stood, Marissa and the two Lauras, hands in pockets, shadows lengthening around them. Laura watched a pair of bees fight over the same rose, then settle side by side, each getting what it needed. She wished she could be that simple.

Both bodies leaned forward slightly. “I keep thinking about what it did to him—my dying,” Laura said, voice catching in perfect unison. “I thought after a few weeks he’d move on… forget me… hate me. He didn’t. He built a whole life from what was left, but he hurt, he always hurt, and then I came back and ruined it. And now I’m supposed to be happy? Like the prize for surviving this hell is making everyone else suffer again?”

Marissa’s face shifted, something softening behind her eyes. “That’s not what you’re doing.” She said, with a kind of flat gentleness that sounded like a confession.

Both of Laura’s bodies—standing a few measured steps apart on the flagstones—were overtaken by the same involuntary shudder, the way a single wind could ripple taut laundry lines in two backyards at once. In perfect, unplanned synchrony, she blurted, “It is,” and the rawness of it doubled the volume, echoing from one pair of lungs to the other with a mournful delay. “Every day I stand here, I see all the ways I make things harder for him. For everyone.” She felt her torsos rise at once, a matching sharp inhale, and then her hands—four of them—balled into fists, then released, then balled again, as if prepping for a fight that would never come. “I’m not mad about it. I just… I don’t know how to stop.”

Marissa said nothing for a long time. She held her posture like she’d been born a statue, the rigidness of her spine and shoulders so complete that small vibrations in her cheekbones seemed to be the only sign of life. When she finally spoke, it was a whisper, like she was embarrassed to let humidity carry the words too far: “I feel that way, too.”

Something about the admission made Laura’s double hearts twang in sympathy. She tilted both heads. “You’re not the one who died,” she whispered, then regretted it, because it sounded like a condemnation, even if it was just a fact.

“No,” Marissa said, and the wobble in her voice nearly made Laura’s knees give out. “But I’m the one who tried to patch him up with words and logic, when what he really needed was for someone to just sit with him in the dark. I couldn’t do that.” She rolled a shoulder in a gesture that was meant to look dismissive, but the clench of her jaw ruined the effect. “I thought if I could fix everyone, I’d fix myself.” A breathless, almost brittle smile cracked her face for an instant. “Turns out it doesn’t work like that.”

That vulnerability—Marissa, not the therapist or the competitor or the inscrutable genius, but Marissa the person—triggered a weird, almost ticklish pang beneath Laura’s ribs. She wanted to touch Marissa’s hand, or shoulder, or even just the cuff of her sleeve, but both bodies froze. Instead, she let her lips twitch into a smile, only half of it bitter. “So we’re both bad at this,” Laura said, the phrase echoing in the air like a failed attempt at a joke.

“World-class,” Marissa replied. The self-deprecation in her tone struck Laura as oddly comforting, like a code word between prisoners. Then Marissa paused, her tongue darting between her teeth as if she needed to test the sharpness of her next words before saying them. “Can I ask something?”

Neither Laura knew how to say yes without sounding ****, so she just nodded with both, a pair of mirrored, jerky bobs.

“What are you going to do about Andy?” Marissa asked, and from the way she phrased it—not what do you want, not what does he want, but what are you going to do—it was clear she meant the question on multiple levels.

Laura let both bodies’ shoulders fall in a single, colossal exhale. The air tasted of roses and salty, recirculated guilt. “I don’t know. I want to be with him, but I also know I can’t erase the other women. Or what he’s built with them. I keep telling myself I’ll figure it out, but I think… I’m just waiting for someone to tell me it’s okay to want what I want.” She tried to laugh, but it came out as a sigh that vibrated through both throats.

Marissa nodded, her expression a strange mixture of empathy and defeat. “It is okay, you know. Even if you have to share.” There was a brief, complicated flicker in her eyes—fear, maybe, or hope, or both.

Laura felt warmth flood both cheeks. Still, she held Marissa’s gaze with both bodies. She asked, “Does it bother you?” and felt both sets of cheeks flare with heat.

Marissa considered. “No. Not the way you’d think. I’m not afraid of losing him to you. I’m afraid of losing myself—becoming so focused on holding everyone together that I forget to be a person. That’s what you saw the last time, when I lectured you instead of listening.” She let the words dangle for a second, so fragile Laura was afraid of breathing too near them.

Marissa made a sound halfway between a laugh and a groan. “I think we’re as okay as anyone here.”

It didn’t fix anything, but it took the edge off, and for a few moments the two women just stood in the dappled sunlight, pretending to be ordinary. Marissa’s weight shifted from foot to foot, the movement nervous and almost involuntary, while both Lauras adopted identical pigeon-toed stances, knees slightly buckled, hands buried in pockets. They watched bees circle each other around the open roses, sometimes colliding, sometimes landing side by side to suck from the same bloom. Laura wondered if that was supposed to be a metaphor, or just a reminder that even the simplest creatures could make room for each other.

A sudden, weightless silence overtook them, as if the garden itself was holding its breath. Marissa glanced at her watch, then at Laura, then back at her watch, the second hand barely moving. “I should go,” she said, and the way her voice cracked at the end made it clear she wished she didn’t have to.

Laura’s two bodies pivoted together, respecting the excuse. “Me too,” she said, though neither woman knew where they had to be.

They passed without a single misstep, two presences flowing around each other in harmony, and the world kept spinning.

It wasn’t until Laura was certain Marissa had rounded the bend that both of her bodies came to a stop. She leaned against a low wall, heads tilted up toward the slanting sun. Because each sensation was shared, she felt a lightness bloom through both limbs: not fixed, not healed, but less a ghost in someone else’s life. The scent of roses was overwhelming, and for once she let it flood her lungs—both chests—in deep, real breaths.

But deep inside her, the doubt still lingered.

Emily sat in the dappled sun at the edge of the Inner Gardens, a hardback copy of Tuck Everlasting in her lap. She’d picked it for the cover, which was the color of periwinkle, not because she remembered the plot, but because the last time she read it she’d been eleven, curled up on the living room rug with her mom across the apartment. That was before her mom started working weekends, before Emily started needing to keep secrets just to stay interesting.

She kept the book open but didn’t read. The words kept swimming together, half-drowned by the noise in her head. Across the garden, orange and yellow daylilies bowed and nodded with the breeze, pretending not to listen in.

It was the kind of morning that wanted you to be happy, but Emily didn’t quite buy it. She was less than two hours removed from a mind-shattering orgasm, her nipples still a little raw, her new F-cup breasts already chafed from a morning of bare-skin friction against Andy’s kitchen counter. None of that bothered her. What bothered her was the hollow, careful feeling she had now—like she was walking through a set she used to call home, only now there were tripwires everywhere, ready to go off if she laughed too loud or let herself believe in something nice for five minutes.

She stared at the book, then up at the sky, waiting for the sadness to pass. It was like waiting out a rainstorm: you could pretend you didn’t care, but you always ended up wet anyway.

“May I join you?”

The voice was light, but there was a crispness to it—like the speaker could cut glass with a syllable if she wanted. Emily looked up, already knowing who she’d see. Arabella, dressed in a seafoam-green sundress, her hair down and loose. No gown, no perfect posture, just Arabella, as if she were another guest at the Hotel, not the woman who’d rewritten the rules of Emily’s life twice.

Emily blinked, then gestured at the bench with her book. “Sure. Plenty of room.”

Arabella sat, smoothing her skirt. For a moment, they both pretended to admire the garden.

“I like your choice of reading,” Arabella said. She didn’t smile, but her lips curved at the corners. “Reminds me of… well, nevermind. Are you immortal now, too?”

Emily grinned, weak. “Isn’t everyone here?” She tried to sound breezy, but the question hit a little too close.

“Perhaps,” Arabella said. “Close enough, at least.” Her gaze flicked to the book, then to Emily’s face, searching for something. “Are you all right?”

It was such a simple question, so impossible to answer, that Emily almost laughed. She went with honesty instead. “I don’t know. I thought I was, but then—” She gestured at the book, at the garden, at her own bare skin. “I’m not sure anymore. Sometimes it feels like I’m the only one who can’t get over herself.”

Arabella didn’t say anything right away. She folded her hands in her lap and waited.

Emily chewed her lip, then set the book aside. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” Arabella said, not missing a beat.

“When you picked my transformation path for this season—” Emily trailed off, not sure how to finish. “Why did you make it… the way you did? You didn’t have to, right? You could have set it up a dozen different ways, but you just doubled down on Free Use.”

Arabella took a long breath, as if considering how to answer. “I could have chosen many different directions, yes. But every path I design is meant to fit its wearer as closely as possible. I believed this was what you wanted. Not just to survive, but to be yourself.”

Emily let that percolate. “What I wanted.” She wanted to argue, to say Arabella had **** her into something she wasn’t. But she couldn’t quite manage the outrage. “What if I don’t know what I want? What if I don’t know who I am?” she asked, softer now.

Arabella smiled, for real this time. “Then you’re in excellent company.” She let a silence bloom, then added, “I did not choose the Free Use path to punish you, Emily. I chose it because, at the time, you could not imagine wanting anything else.”

Emily recoiled, more from the truth than the words. “You make it sound like I chose it myself.”

Arabella didn’t deny it. “In a way, you did.” She tilted her head, dark eyes kind. “You spent two years in my Hollow Garden, acclimating yourself to a transformation that made you happiest when you could surrender. It is perfectly reasonable to crave that stability after everything you endured. But—” She reached out, just once, to tap the book cover with a perfectly manicured nail. “Stability is not the same as peace.”

Emily stared at Arabella for a full ten seconds, and when she couldn’t find the words, she looked away and bit her lip instead. She wondered if it showed, the way the muscles in her jaw locked up, the way her fingers worried a spot on her thigh, her skin raw but already on its way to healed—her new body’s gift to her, fast and final.

Arabella didn’t push. She just sat, feet crossed at the ankle, hands neatly folded over her lap, and waited with the patience of a person who’d spent centuries watching people build and dismantle their own prisons.

Emily tried again. “You said I could only imagine being happy this way,” she said. “Like it was my idea. But—” She shrugged, helpless. “Why would I want that? Why would anyone?”

Arabella tilted her head, as if weighing Emily’s entire soul on a hidden scale. “Because, Emily, after what you went through, the rules and boundaries of your world stopped making sense. The only things that did were surrender and certainty. You learned that resisting just made the pain worse. And when you came to my Hollow Garden, you told me, many times, that being told what to do made you feel safe.” She smiled, gently. “I never **** you to stay, did I?”

“No,” Emily admitted. She felt the weight of it in her chest, the memory of those first weeks. The only constant had been Arabella’s unflappable kindness. And the routine. Always the routine.

Arabella’s gaze sharpened, but her voice softened even more. “You could have left any time you wanted, with previous Masters,” she said. “I only invited you here because I thought you would like this season better. I thought this Master, these women, would give you a chance to choose your place.”

Emily blinked. “Did I?” she said, not sure if it was a real question or a line she was supposed to follow.

Arabella let the silence answer for her. Then, in a voice so quiet it almost got lost in the leaves, she said: “You spent so long convincing yourself you were a toy that you couldn’t imagine wanting to be anything else. Because to think you had a choice felt like inviting disaster, after what happened to you in your first season.”

The words were a slap and a balm at once. Emily swallowed, looking down at her hands, which had started to shake, just a little. “I want to…” she said. “I want to be more. Sometimes. But then I don’t, and I think maybe I was just lying about it to make Andy feel better.”

Arabella smiled, not unkindly. “Only you know what you really want, Emily. This show rewards commitment to the Master, but the shape of that commitment is a choice you must make.”

Emily let out a laugh, surprised by the saltiness at the edge of it. “Is that really how it works? Because this morning, I told Andy that I wanted to be his girlfriend, and for the first time since I got here, I didn’t feel like I was failing at being a toy. I felt, I don’t know, seen? But then, as soon as he left, I thought: was I just saying that because it’s what I’m supposed to want, or because I actually wanted it?” She pressed her palms together, squeezing until they blanched. “I can’t tell the difference anymore. Is that weird?”

Arabella watched her, unblinking, and for a second Emily thought she was about to receive the Host’s neutral, rules-bound response: Not at all, Emily. Obedience can lead to confusion about— But instead, Arabella’s mask slipped, and she said, in a very small, very human voice: “It’s not weird at all. It’s human.”

Emily looked up, surprised to find Arabella’s eyes wet.

“I’m sorry,” Arabella said, and for a moment, she looked younger than Emily had ever seen her, the Host mask gone, just a woman in a pretty dress who maybe, for a second, wished she could swap places. “I thought this would be easier for you. I thought it would heal something.”

Emily shook her head, hard. “You made it better. You did. It’s just… I don’t know how to stop being what I am.”

Arabella didn’t flinch away from the sadness in that. “You can start by naming it,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You can be a girlfriend. Or a toy. Or both. Or something else entirely. The only thing that matters is that it’s true to you, not to me, or Andy, or the show.” She paused, letting the words settle. “But you have to pick, eventually. The story can’t move forward otherwise. And when the game ends, you will have to live with your choice.”

Emily blinked, the words ringing in her ears. “Is that why the points went down this morning?” she asked. “Is that why you dropped my VP?”

Arabella gave a watery laugh. “Yes. There’s a bonus for choosing a path with the Master, and when your commitment wavers, you lose the bonus. But if you choose again, and choose with your whole self, the points return.” She said it lightly, as if explaining a game rule, but the pain in her face was unmistakable.

Emily stared at the ground, letting the revelation sink in. “So, if I decide I want to be a girlfriend, that’s it? I just have to commit?”

Arabella nodded. “If it’s true, yes.”

Emily chewed her lip, then looked up, letting her hair fall over her shoulders like a veil. “What if I want to be both? Like, a girlfriend first, but I want him to treat me like his toy when we’re alone? What if I want what we had last night, not what I gave him in previous rounds? When I choose it?” she asked, voice thin as a thread.

Arabella shrugged, but it was the most delicate gesture Emily had ever seen. “Then you will be. If you mean it. And the system will adapt.”

The words hovered in the air, bright as dragonflies. Emily let them sit, unsure whether to reach for them or swat them away.

Arabella rose, smoothing her dress again, and smiled down at her. “You’re going to be okay, Emily. I promise.” She reached out, one hand hovering over Emily’s head, not touching, just blessing her with its warmth. “You don’t have to decide today. It’s hard to undo two years of conditioning in a few weeks. Just don’t stop being honest with yourself.”

Emily nodded, mute, and when Arabella walked away, her back straight and her hair a river of flame in the sunlight, Emily felt something inside her loosen. She sat for a while, the sun on her bare skin, the breeze teasing her hair, her body as exposed as her thoughts. The book stayed closed on her lap. She watched the lilies sway, and tried to picture herself not as a character, or a transformation, or even as a girlfriend—but as herself, whatever that might be.

She wasn’t sure she remembered that girl, before Jake, before Leah, before the show. But perhaps she could try.

Liesa never quite got used to being watched, even when she expected it. She blamed it on the transformations: the way her skin now hummed with arousal if she wore anything less than three layers, the way her body slunk and swayed without permission, even when she was late and in a rush. Most days she dressed down—boyfriend jeans, a soft tee, a light scarf at the neck—but today she’d opted for a summer dress, bright yellow and impossible to wear a bra under. The fabric clung, the lightness of it made her breasts move with every step, and she could already feel herself buzzing at the edge of control, even with three pairs of underwear to count as extra garments.

She was running late for her own open studio, not that anyone was actually waiting, but the thought of Emi standing outside the Atelier, awkward and alone, made Liesa’s stomach turn. So she half-jogged across the garden, making a show of confidence even as her body tried to seduce the air itself. It was, she thought, a particularly Belgian form of humiliation: you did your best, and still the world found new ways to make you ridiculous.

Liesa arrived at the Atelier only a few minutes behind, but found Emi already waiting for her outside the narrow, pearlescent doors, a half-dozen origami animals perched in a tidy arc on the step. Emi must have folded them during the walk—each was tiny, perfect, and still quivered from the memory of her hands.

“Sorry, sorry,” Liesa called, brushing a sweaty curl from her forehead and trying to adjust her dress so it looked less like a warning sign. “I was on time in my head, but my feet wanted to dance today.”

Emi stood, nearly knocking over the neat row of paper creatures. She wore a navy smock dress spattered with dry paint and thread, and when she grinned, it was with the urgency of someone who’d just remembered a really good secret and was about to burst.

“It’s so pretty,” Emi said, pointing not at the door but at the latticework of shadows on the paving stones. “You can see the colors in the light. Did you do that on purpose?”

Liesa squinted at the shifting pattern, unsure if Emi meant the dappled sun or the prismatic wash that shimmered across the Atelier’s facade. Maybe both. She decided to take credit. “Yes. But you can only see it if you look from here, at this time of day. Otherwise, it’s just a wall.”

Emi nodded, as if this explained the entire universe. She gathered her origami flock, then followed Liesa inside.

The Atelier was always a shock to newcomers, even ones as adaptable as Emi. It opened not into a single studio, but into a cathedral of art spaces: antechambers split by glass partitions, each room a shifting exhibit for a different medium or unfinished project. Everything was in constant, subtle motion—the lighting changed as they moved, refracting through weird angles, the air smelled of linseed, wet paper, and ozone, and the walls themselves seemed to move if you looked at them wrong.

Emi stopped cold just inside the entrance, every one of her six hands going to a different part of her dress: one smoothed the pocket, two clasped behind her back, one thumbed the hem, and two more hovered, uncertain, like fledglings. Her eyes went wide and wet, as if she might drink the whole room through her pupils.

“It’s so—” Emi started, then lost the words and just shook her head. She paced to the nearest canvas, then doubled back to a shelf of hand-bound sketchbooks, then to the wall, where hundreds of sticky notes—each with a fragment of a drawing, a quote, or a color swatch—traced a tangled map from floor to ceiling. “How do you not get lost?”

Liesa shrugged, which, thanks to her transformation, made her body arch and pose even when she was trying to be casual. “You do get lost. That’s the point.”

Emi giggled, and the sound echoed through the rafters. She spun, slow, taking it all in. She could have stood in the Atelier all day and never seen the same thing twice. The light shifted with every step, painting the walls with violet, then pearl, then a quicksilver gray that reminded her of late afternoons in her parents’ kitchen, sunlight scraping through frosted glass and making everything look softer, ****. She wandered, six arms trailing along the edge of a long worktable, trailing her fingers through shavings of pastel, kneading the handle of a brush, spinning a sticky note so its corner lined up with the seam in the wall.

Liesa watched her with a fond sort of patience, a hands-off museum guide content to let the guest invent her own tour. When Emi reached the main hall—the one with the cathedral ceiling and the weird, impossible lighting bands—she stopped, turned in a slow circle, and let out a whistle that was pure awe.

"Do you use all of it?" Emi asked, all six hands making little gestures as if to take it in, all at once.

"Not even close," Liesa said. She crossed to the far end of the room, footsteps purposeful even though she was clearly giving Emi time to absorb. "I think I will finish a project before starting another, but then something new comes." She shrugged, dress clinging and bunching in ways that looked less like physics and more like performance art. "Is a bit chaotic. But it is what I like about it."

Emi followed, her movements fluid as a swarm of fish, every arm either smoothing her dress or touching a surface. She stopped at a wall of framed canvases and stared. The effect was immediate: her posture stilled, her smile gone quiet and private.

The first painting was of a girl—maybe eleven, maybe younger—standing at the edge of a canal, chin up and face painted with the fierce, stubborn dignity of someone who’d spent most of her life alone and hated to admit it. She wore a red raincoat and muddy sneakers, one sock slouched at the ankle. The buildings behind her were just outlines, unfinished, but the girl was rendered in exquisite, painful detail, down to the bruise on her cheek and the bite marks on her thumbnail.

Emi glanced at Liesa, then back to the canvas. "Is this you?" she said, voice pitched low.

Liesa nodded. "Yes. The coat is real, but the bruise… I do not remember if I made that part up or not. Sometimes is hard to tell with memories."

She reached up and adjusted the painting, careful and precise. Emi watched the movement, then looked at the next painting in the row.

This one was stranger: a picnic table covered in a riot of flowers and fruits, but all the food was out of place—bananas the size of baguettes, grapes growing on vines twisted into little cages, a crystal goblet with a goldfish swimming inside. At the end of the table, a pair of hands, elegant and tan, reached for a slice of melon, but the knife was floating above the scene, caught mid-drop, a bead of juice forever frozen at its tip.

Emi’s gaze softened. "That’s your father, isn’t it?"

"How did you know?" Liesa said, eyes wide.

"The hands," Emi said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "And you always use that orange-yellow for memory. It’s in every one of your old sketchbooks."

Liesa smiled, a little shy. "Am predictable."

Emi shook her head. "No. Just… you convey your feelings well." She trailed her lower right hand along the frame, then let her fingers flutter over the next row of paintings, drawn to them like a compass needle.

She stopped short in front of a portrait. For a split second, Emi’s heart stuttered, and all her arms stilled.

The painting showed a man: tall, broad, arms crossed, head completely bald, black beard bristling over a jaw built for scowling. He wore a suit, the lines crisp and severe, but the way he filled it out—shoulders too wide, neck thick as a tree, hands as big as spades—made it look like a costume stolen from a smaller, meaner man. The background was nothing, just smoke and ash and the ghost of a streetlamp, but the man’s eyes were alive. Not in a friendly way.

Emi stared at the painting, feeling a chill run down the back of her neck. The kind of man who didn’t need to move to make you feel watched.

"Is this… your dad?" she said, but she already knew it wasn’t. The energy was wrong.

Liesa shook her head, a shiver running through her, too. "No. It came with the Atelier," she said, voice almost a whisper. "I found it in one of the back rooms the first day I stayed here. I thought about getting rid of it, but it keeps showing up. If I turn it to face the wall, it is back on the easel the next day."

Emi considered this, her arms wrapping around herself, the two smallest hands folding tight at her waist. "It creeps me out," she admitted. "He looks like he’d be mean, but he’d never need to yell. You’d just know."

"Yes," Liesa said, and this time she didn’t smile. "Sometimes I think he is watching me, even when I’m not in the room." She shrugged, tried for a laugh, but it stuck in her throat. "Arabella says every Atelier has a ghost, but this one is especially stubborn."

Emi nodded. She reached out—upper right hand, careful and gentle—and spun the painting so it faced the wall. "There," she said. "He can stay, but he doesn’t get to look at us."

The tension broke, and Liesa laughed for real this time. "Thanks," she said, her voice unguarded.

They moved on. The next wall was a grid of tiny portraits, each barely bigger than a sticky note. Emi recognized several at once: the women of the harem, rendered in styles that ranged from photoreal to surreal to cartoonish. Riley was all sharp angles and ink wash, a shadow turned to the side with a single eye glinting. Dawn was a cluster of sunflowers, each petal a different shade of orange, her smile the only thing in focus. Chloe was painted in soft, wet strokes, her eyes huge and ****, every brushstroke shimmering with a kind of see-through longing.

Emi found her own face—a study in blues and whites, all six arms folded in a gesture she hadn’t realized she did, every hair and eyelash rendered with scientific precision. She blushed, just a little, and looked away, but her bottom-left hand lingered on the edge of the frame.

"You can keep it," Liesa said, noticing.

Emi ducked her head, but she was smiling. "I love it. It looks like how I feel in here." She gestured at the Atelier with one arm, then at her chest with another.

"Weightless?" Liesa guessed.

Emi shook her head. "Safe." She looked at Liesa, and for the first time, Liesa saw Emi as she was now, as she must have been as a child, with Andy and Laura: not the shy, watchful Emi of the first rounds, but the gentle, wild, laugh-out-loud girl.

They wandered deeper into the Atelier, past shelves of glass and shelves of clay, past hanging scrolls and paper sculptures and weird, half-finished mosaics of seashells and bottle caps. Emi touched everything, sometimes with just a fingertip, sometimes with all six hands. The air grew warmer the farther in they went, and the light turned honey-gold, then sunset red.

At the far end of the gallery, a battered wooden table was covered in art supplies: jars of pigment, blank canvases, knives and brushes, a rainbow of paper and string and glue. Emi stopped, looking at the mess with the reverence of someone walking into a sacred space.

"I’d love to try," Emi said, voice soft.

"You can," Liesa said, and the invitation was more than words. "Is yours as much as mine. Anyone can use it. I just keep the lights on."

Emi’s hands itched for action, but she hesitated, looking at Liesa as if for permission.

"Please," Liesa said, and the word was a benediction.

Emi sat, gathering a blank canvas and a block of graphite. She set to work immediately, six hands working in wild concert: one held the canvas steady, two sketched, two more blended shadows, the last one picked up a brush and touched the edge with a streak of cobalt blue. Her face went slack and dreamy; she barely noticed Liesa watching her.

For several minutes, there was only the sound of graphite on paper, the swish of brush and the dry, happy hum Emi made when she was completely absorbed. Liesa stood back, letting her own nerves unspool in the quiet.

After a time, Emi paused, four hands poised mid-air, and two others cradling the edge of the table.

"I wish I could take this room everywhere," Emi said, almost to herself. "When I get inspired, it’s always when I’m out in the Forest. But by the time I get back to the hotel, sometimes it’s gone."

Liesa nodded, understanding perfectly.

Emi turned, curiosity lighting her up. "Have you ever seen the Forest of Beginnings? Andy says it’s like a dream, but you remember everything when you wake up."

Liesa shook her head. "Never. I only heard about it. Erin says is like standing in a memory you never lived, but you know it is yours."

Emi’s smile was so bright, it made Liesa want to look away. "You should come," she said. "It’s better with someone who can see the colors." She looked at her painting, then back at Liesa. "I could show you the best spot. There’s a pool of water that glows at night. And there’s a fox, made of glass. I tried to draw it once, but it kept changing."

Liesa found herself nodding before she even considered it. "I’d like that," she said. And it wasn’t just politeness. She meant it.

Emi finished her quick sketch, then stood, stretching all six arms overhead. The movement was so natural now. She leaned back against the nearest wall, arms splayed to catch herself. She tilted her head, then frowned.

The wall behind her, a banded pearlescent surface, felt different. Softer, less like stone. Emi shifted, and her elbow dipped into it, just a little, like it was dough.

"Is this normal?" Emi asked, wiggling her arm.

Liesa stepped closer. "It’s not supposed to—"

Emi gave a tentative push, and her entire left side slipped through the surface, her shoulder vanishing up to the socket.

"Whoa!" Emi yelped, more surprised than scared.

Liesa grabbed Emi’s hand, but the wall rippled and parted, swallowing Emi up to her chest. For a panicked second, both women thought she might get stuck, but then, with a sound like tearing silk, Emi popped through, leaving only a faint shimmer behind.

On the other side, Emi stumbled and fell, landing not on stone or hardwood but on cool, springy grass.

She looked up and gasped. She was in the Forest of Beginnings. The air was blue and gold, the trees lined up in perfect columns, their glassy trunks refracting the sunlight into a prism that made the whole world shimmer. The undergrowth glowed, too—patches of moss, clusters of oversized bluebells, pools of water with drifting motes of color.

Emi scrambled to her feet, looking around in disbelief.

"Liesa!" she called, not sure the sound would carry.

But then Liesa was beside her, having pushed through the wall herself, eyes wide with shock. She looked at Emi, then at the landscape, then at the shimmer behind them—where, if you squinted, you could still see the faint outline of the Atelier.

"It wasn’t here yesterday," Liesa said, her accent thickening with awe. "I swear. The Atelier never did this before."

Emi laughed, spinning in a circle, all her arms wide. "Maybe it changed for us," she said. "Like the dream Andy talked about. If you want something enough, it just… happens."

Liesa looked around, still in shock. "I don’t understand it," she said, but she was grinning, too. "Is it a shortcut, or—?"

Emi shook her head. "I think the rooms just… wanted to be together." She paused, then looked at Liesa, earnest and serious. "Maybe they know we’re not supposed to be alone all the time."

For a second, the only sound was the wind in the glass trees, the soft hum of distant insects, and the electric buzz of two hearts beating a little faster than normal.

Liesa reached out, not thinking, and squeezed Emi’s hand. "Let’s explore," she said.

They did. They walked for what felt like hours, Emi pointing out the fox, the pools of light, the way the grass spiraled in little galaxies around the roots of every tree. They talked about nothing and everything—childhood memories, old heartbreaks, dreams for a future neither of them could picture.

At some point, they sat at the edge of a shallow pool, legs folded underneath, and watched the fake stars flicker in the water.

"This is better than I imagined," Liesa said, voice low.

Emi nodded, her hair glowing blue in the reflected light. "I like it when things get better," she said, almost shy.

Liesa glanced at her, then looked away. "I’m glad you wanted to see the Atelier," she said.

"I’m glad you wanted me to," Emi replied, the words so soft they almost got lost in the hush.

They stayed there until the stars brightened, the forest turning strange and beautiful as the world shifted into its next dream.

When they finally wandered back toward the Atelier, the shortcut was still there: a shimmer in the world, a promise that art and memory and the best parts of themselves could bleed together, if they wanted.

As they crossed back through, Emi looked over her shoulder, just to make sure it was still real. It was: it had become a door now, as they had crossed through. It even bore a brass tag: “Forest of Beginnings - Shortcut.”

Sometimes, Emi thought, you didn’t need to choose between two worlds. Sometimes you could keep both, and let them overlap. Maybe that’s how you made something new.

Claire liked the Sky Archive best at night, or what passed for night in a place where the windows forgot the hour and the prisms in the walls played tricks on the starlight. She had staked out a private alcove in the far northern gallery, a perch high enough that the floors below looked like a sea of glass, the bookcases and stairways turning and twisting until they dissolved into a cloud of color and confusion.

For the past... she wasn’t sure how many hours, she had been working. That’s what she called it: “working.” She had filled four notebooks with diagrams, hypotheses, page-long equations she didn’t fully understand. At first, it was about the odd occurrences—the egg, the garden, the light strings, the odd way time slipped sometimes if she wasn’t looking. Then it became about the women themselves, their stories, the way they collided and changed course like billiard balls with secret agendas. Finally, it was about the Archive itself. The way it responded to her moods, the way the books sometimes drifted closer if she thought about them long enough. The way the words on the spines sometimes rearranged themselves, as if they were aware of her gaze.

She was mapping it all, trying to find a pattern. She thought maybe if she mapped it precisely enough, the world would snap into place and make sense again, the way it used to before the show, before Andy, before her voice vanished and her skin sprouted the cat’s ears that now twitched at every sound.

Tonight, the Archive was empty except for her and the silent, floating stacks. Claire wrote with a felt-tipped pen, blue ink, not for aesthetics but because blue ink was harder for others to erase. That mattered to her, even if she was the only one who ever read her notebooks.

She was drawing a flow chart of the last week’s events when she heard footsteps, soft but definite, coming up the stair behind her.

Claire closed the notebook and turned, tail already bristling, notebook pressed flat to her chest.

The woman who entered the gallery looked as if she’d been sculpted for a place like this: tall, imperious, a mane of black hair that gleamed with midnight blue. She wore a deep blue cocktail dress and a wrap of lapis lazuli, and even in the low light, her eyes seemed to drink in the world, then quietly judge it for its shortcomings.

Claire recognized her instantly. Anna.

Anna looked at Claire’s notebooks, then at Claire, and offered a smile that was both greeting and test. “This is a beautiful space you’ve built,” she said, her accent soft and without clear origin. “It’s like someone imagined a library and then willed it into being, without once worrying about budget or sense.”

Claire nodded, unable to speak, but held up the notebook as evidence that she was not just lurking in the dark for the hell of it.

Anna paced the perimeter of the gallery, her heels not quite touching the glass floor, as if she floated an inch above reality. She ran her fingers along the spines of the books, each touch deliberate.

“Are you looking for something in particular?” Anna asked, tilting her head as if Claire might answer aloud.

Claire flipped to a fresh page in her notebook, scribbled a quick message, and held it out: Still cataloguing. Everything’s… shifting.

Anna read it, then smiled. “It’s always shifting. That’s what makes it alive. Don’t you think?”

Claire considered, then wrote: Alive things need boundaries. Otherwise they’re just chaos.

Anna nodded. “Boundaries are important. But sometimes, if you draw the boundaries too tightly, you miss the magic that happens in the overlap. And the liminal is its own realm.” She glanced at Claire’s notes. “You’ve started to see the liminal, haven’t you?”

Claire hesitated, then nodded. She didn’t trust Anna—not fully—but she was fascinated by her, the way she seemed to speak only in riddles, the way her presence made the air feel charged, like a thunderstorm about to break.

Anna perched on the edge of the stair, looking out over the galleries below. “Arabella says you’re the most perceptive of all the women,” she said. “She thinks you’re the only one who will figure out what’s really happening here.”

Claire wrote: Do you know what’s happening?

Anna’s eyes sparkled. “I have my guesses,” she said. “But Arabella has her reasons for keeping secrets, and it wouldn’t be polite for me to ruin her show. Besides,” she added, “you’re so close. I’d hate to deprive you of the joy of solving it yourself.”

Claire’s tail flicked in annoyance, but she understood the game. She wasn’t here for straight answers.

Anna shifted, looking at Claire again. “How long have you been here, do you think?”

Claire blinked, caught off guard by the question. She wrote: Maybe a couple of hours?

Anna laughed—a sound that was low, almost a purr. “It’s been more than half a day, Claire. And before your time in the Bamboo Grove, you were here for almost three days. The sun rose, set, and rose again many times while you worked. I watched it myself.”

Claire stared, not quite believing it. She tried to remember the last time she ate, or drank. Her hand was cramped and the pen nearly dry, but she had not once felt tired, not once thought about sleep. She looked at Anna and wrote, The stamina from Andy’s gift, isn’t it?

Anna watched the realization dawn, then said, “That stamina keeps you sharp, but only so much. It is not infinite.”

Claire wrote: Then why am I not tired?

Anna read the question, then tapped her perfect blue nail once on the railing. "You're not tired," she said, "because you haven't let yourself believe that you should be. Not while there's still more to learn and understand." She didn't look at Claire as she spoke, but her voice seemed to fill the Archive, making the vast space feel like the inside of a shell. "Your willpower, Claire, sometimes can make the world bend a little."

Claire thought about this. Something about the way Anna said it gave her a shiver. Was she implying another occurrence? She picked up her pen, found a blank corner of the notebook, and wrote: What about the others? Have they noticed?

Anna smiled at this, not mocking but impressed. "Some of them, yes. Liesa, for example—she noticed the shortcuts in the Atelier. She doesn't say it, but she knows the rooms are bending for her, letting her skip steps when she's really in the flow." Anna considered. "Dawn has noticed the way her kitchen produces exactly what she needs, even if she doesn't remember putting it there. Erin's plants keep growing back, obeying the pattern she has laid after she trims them. They're all seeing it, but you and Andy are the only ones mapping the whole pattern."

Claire felt something inside her tingle at the idea of a "pattern." She wrote: Is it always this way?

Anna shrugged, elegant. "No. Only when someone wants it badly enough. Only when someone makes the crossing. Only when someone steps into the liminal." She folded her arms, looking at the far wall of the Archive. "That's what Arabella’s season is for, really. To see who wants the world to make sense so badly that they'll break it a little, if that's what it takes."

This last was said with a note of sadness, or pride, or perhaps both. It struck Claire as the truest thing she'd heard since arriving in the Sky Archive. She looked down at her hands—ink-stained, trembling a little now, as if the fuel was running out.

She wrote: Why didn't Arabella come get me, or punish me? Isn't she supposed to monitor the rooms at night?

Anna didn't answer. Instead, she walked to the edge of the gallery, peered over the side as if searching for something among the ever-shifting stacks below.

Claire felt a wave of fatigue wash over her, slow at first, then gathering ****. She tried to write another question, but her fingers cramped around the pen, and the tip barely scratched out a legible word. She blinked, then blinked again, the notebooks and charts and books suddenly too heavy to lift.

Anna turned, and for a moment her expression was openly fond. She crossed the space between them and placed a gentle hand on Claire's shoulder. "Go to sleep, Child of Bast. Our conversation has broken your flow. But the Library will keep your place for you." The warmth of Anna's palm was electric, and for a second, Claire wanted to stay awake forever, just to chase the edges of the mystery.

But the moment Anna's touch lifted, so did the magic, and the exhaustion roared up like a tide. Claire stumbled to the nearest chair, a deep-cushioned, velvet-covered monster of a seat, and collapsed into it. Her ears drooped, and her tail curled protectively around her legs. Anna watched her for a moment, then walked toward the stairs as if she had never been there at all.

Before Anna disappeared, she paused, turned back, and said, "One last thing. That diary Emi found—do you still have it? The one written by the knight?"

Claire nodded, the movement slow and syrupy. She remembered exactly where it was: third shelf in the northwest corner, tucked between a fake book about pie crusts and a real one about medieval mathematics. She had placed it there herself, days ago, because the title was in a language she didn't read, and she hadn't wanted to lose track of it.

Anna smiled, as if pleased, and left.

Claire stared at the swirling words on the notebook for a long moment, willing herself to stay awake, to finish the chain of thought that had kept her alive for so many hours. But her brain was fuzzed, her eyelids sticky and heavy. She could barely move. With the last of her strength, she **** herself upright, shuffled to the shelf, and retrieved the diary. She cradled it in her lap and opened to the first page.

The handwriting was beautiful but cramped, the ink faded to a muddy brown. She didn't know the language—only recognized it as Provençal. She remembered it had belonged to a knight named Jaufre, that it was about a lost love, a promise, or perhaps a debt that had to be repaid.

She traced a finger down the margin, picking out the few words she could remember, and as she did, the words on the page began to bleed together, swimming in her vision. For a heartbeat, she thought she saw a name embedded in the scrawl, a tiny, accidental "Anne" nested in a line of poetry. She let the diary slip from her fingers onto the floor, then curled up in the velvet chair, tail hugging her knees. The Archive darkened around her, the prisms in the ceiling flickering and fading to black.