A Dawn of New Beginnings, Part 3

Marissa woke to the press of Emi’s six arms around her and the hushing pulse of waves not far from where her cheek rested, warm and soft, on Emi’s shoulder. She didn’t remember falling asleep. She had no memory of yielding her weight to the woman next to her, only of the last thing she’d said (“Just… be here”) and the embarrassment of needing to say it aloud. At some point, she must have let herself go slack, because now the world was flattened to an intimate geometry: Emi’s narrow ribs, Emi’s slow and steady breathing, the briney chill of the breeze against Marissa’s skin, and the awkward droop of her own hand, splayed like a bird carcass in the sand.

She tried to move, to sit upright and reclaim her perimeter, but Emi tightened her arms—gently, not a trap but a permission—then loosed the hold as Marissa untucked her chin. She expected a joke, or a comment, or some kind of apology for the imposition, but all Emi did was look at her, a little sleepy, a little hopeful.

“You were out for a while,” Emi said. She kept her voice as low as the tide. “I thought about waking you up, but—”

“I’m sorry,” Marissa said, not even letting her finish.

Emi smiled, the edges of her mouth soft and unjudging. “You don’t have to be. I know you haven’t been sleeping much. I was just glad you wanted to stay.”

Marissa let the words settle on her like a towel warmed by the sun. She wanted to say that wasn’t true, that she’d wanted to get up and run, but it would have been a lie, and she didn’t have the energy for those today. Instead she looked out over the water, past the log where they sat, to where the tide had drawn a trembling line between this side of the world and the other. The sky was full of seagulls in a holding pattern, waiting for something, and the sand below was etched with the crazy, unreadable ciphers left by thousands of tiny crab legs. The air was so clean she could taste the salt on her tongue.

She realized she was shivering, not from the cold, but from the foreignness of being held.

“I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” Marissa said. The apology came out automatic, like clearing her throat.

Emi didn’t answer right away. She let her thumb circle the back of Marissa’s hand, slow and repetitive. “It was nice,” Emi said finally, and her voice carried no artifice, just a quiet awe.

Marissa tried to focus on the feel of the air, the scratch of the log beneath her, anything that would let her slide back into the old habits—observation, diagnosis, and distance. But the longer she sat there, the more impossible it became to find the old edges of herself. The world had gone blurry, like someone had used their thumb to smudge the lines. She didn’t want to cry, not here, not with Emi, but something was happening under her ribs, something that wouldn’t go back to sleep.

She wondered, briefly, what she must look like to Emi: a statue, maybe, or a bird half-dead from a window strike, one wing canted, unable to stand. She thought about how easy it would be for Emi to leave, or laugh, or gently disengage and walk back up the path to where everything was safe and warm.

But Emi just sat with her, arms still loosely circled, as if the act of staying put was all that was required.

The quiet stretched. Marissa watched the tide roll in and out, watched the way the foam receded and left behind a new, unbroken pattern each time. She wondered if that was the point of sitting here: not to erase anything, but to learn that new shapes would always replace the old.

Eventually, Emi spoke again. “You want to talk about it?” Her voice was feather-soft, and Marissa recognized the technique, the slow-motion question, the way you gave someone all the time in the world to answer. It should have annoyed her, but instead she felt her shoulders drop another half-inch.

“No,” Marissa said, and then, after a long pause, “Not yet.” The relief was almost physical—nobody demanded anything from her, not even Emi, who had been known for dreams and hope since the first day she arrived.

They sat like that for an hour, or maybe two. The sun edged up and made a gold stripe on the water. Marissa felt the first flush of warmth on her forearms and decided she was, for the moment, a little more human than when she’d sat down. Emi started drawing in the sand with her pinky, a series of spirals that overlapped and erased themselves with every shift of the wind.

Marissa traced the outline of her own hand, then let her wrist flop over to make a lazy shadow puppet. It looked like a dead moth. She laughed—just once, just a bark of air—and the sound startled her.

Emi looked over, eyes shining. “What?”

“Nothing,” Marissa said. “I just—it’s not usually this easy for me.” She searched for the words. “Being still.”

Emi tilted her head, eyes gentle but probing. “You don’t have to fill the silence. It can be just for you.”

Marissa picked at the hem of her sleeve, thinking about all the times she’d used noise as a shield, all the hours of her life spent untangling other people’s silences. She thought of how, even as a child, she’d filled every second of quiet with a new story, a diagnosis, a forecast. She thought about the fight with Laura, how she’d tried to fix it by talking, by naming the feelings, by building a narrative strong enough to anchor them both to reality. She’d thought it would help. But maybe it hadn’t.

She closed her eyes and tried to imagine herself as someone else, someone who could accept comfort without translating it into a problem to be solved.

“I wish I could turn it off,” Marissa said, eyes still shut. “The—” She made a vague gesture with her hand, not sure what she meant. “The need to… be the strong one. The one who holds everything together.”

Emi’s reply was so soft it barely carried over the rush of water. “I don’t know if you can turn it off. But you don’t have to hold everything by yourself.” Emi’s hands, always busy, stilled. “I think you can let other people help, even if it’s just for a little bit.”

Marissa tried to imagine what that would look like. She pictured herself asking for help, saying out loud, I need something, and not immediately wanting to bite out her own tongue. She opened her eyes and looked at the horizon, where the sky was starting to turn white-hot at the edges.

“What if you don’t know what you need?” Marissa asked. “What if it’s easier to keep doing the thing you know how to do?”

Emi shrugged, her smile crooked. “Then you just sit with someone, and if you want to talk, you talk. If you don’t, you just watch the waves.”

Marissa absorbed that. She wasn’t fixed, not even close, but the urge to run had ebbed to something manageable. It helped that Emi didn’t look at her like a project, didn’t pepper her with questions, didn’t make her feel like her pain had to serve a purpose.

The ocean breeze kicked up, blowing Marissa’s hair across her face. Emi reached over and tucked it behind her ear. The touch was featherlight, a kindness so small and so careful that it almost undid her.

She decided to try, just once, to say what she really felt.

“I’m scared,” Marissa said, the words slow and heavy. “Not just of what happened, but of what it means if I can’t fix it.” She glanced at Emi, who waited, unblinking. “I’ve never been… this bad, before. Usually I can find a reason, or a solution, or just something to get through it. But this time it feels like there’s nothing left to do except wait for it to go away, and I’m not sure it will.”

Emi squeezed her hand with all six of hers at once, a strange and beautiful bouquet. “It’s okay,” Emi said. “You don’t have to do anything, except be here.”

For a while, Marissa let herself believe it. She tried to imagine herself as not broken, not defective, not a flaw in the world’s design. She wondered if this was how Andy felt, all those years after Laura, when the world kept expecting him to move on and he just… couldn’t.

She said as much, letting the words spill into the open air.

Emi listened, nodding along. “I think he’s always been the same way. He tries to carry too much. But that’s why we’re all here, right? To carry it together?”

Marissa considered. “I think I forgot that was the point.” She rolled her neck, letting her muscles unclench. “It’s hard to remember, when you’re so used to being the one people lean on.”

Emi smiled again, brighter this time. “You can lean on me,” she said. “Or on any of the others. Even if it’s just for a second.”

The sun was dropping now, laying gold coins on the surface of the water. Marissa felt a warmth settle in her chest, a weight less like a stone and more like a blanket. She didn’t know how to say thank you, so she just let herself drift, letting her shoulder press a little more into Emi’s.

They watched the ocean, the two of them, letting the world get smaller and slower and quieter. They didn’t talk about the fight with Laura, or the mess of feelings still sloshing inside Marissa’s chest. They didn’t need to. The moment was enough.

When the sun finally dipped to the edge of the world, Emi stood up and brushed the sand from her pants. She offered Marissa a hand, which Marissa took without hesitation.

“Ready to go back?” Emi asked.

Marissa nodded. She wasn’t sure she was ready, not really, but she wanted to see what the world looked like from the other side of this moment.

---

Dawn found the entrance to the Sky Archive in the Hotel library, exactly as described. What she hadn’t expected was the immediate, breath-stealing sensation of climbing from a dim, dust-scented library into a cathedral of glass, light, and impossible geometry. She stood just inside the door, hands braced on the frame for balance, and tried to process what she was seeing.

The Archive hung off the volcano’s side, its walls and roof formed from huge interlocked panes, a lattice of brass and shimmering glass in polyhedral shapes. The floor was clear, revealing blue and green mist beneath, the island landscape vanishing into a vault of open air. Sunlight shot through the structure in shifting bands, refracting off the clouds below, turning the whole space into a planetarium of color and movement. Books floated between shelves in lazy, weightless orbits, some rearranging themselves with the soft flump of wind-ruffled pages. There were chairs and tables, but they looked like afterthoughts—small, dark islands in the ocean of glass and sky.

For a full minute, Dawn could only stand and stare, unable to move her feet. She’d seen so many beautiful things in her life—paintings at the Art Institute, the jewelry-box domes of Old San Juan, a river sunrise from the deck of her dad’s canoe. But nothing had ever felt this transcendental, like she had stepped out of time and into a different story.

A gentle sound, like a page being turned, pulled her attention toward the long table at the room’s center. Claire sat at its far end, a notebook open, her pen flying across the page. The catgirl’s ears—blonde, alert, slightly askew—swiveled toward Dawn, then the rest of her followed. Claire looked up, blinking behind her glasses as if she hadn’t expected visitors. She wore a loose cardigan over a summer dress, the whole effect making her look as if she’d been raised by a family of librarians, then sent to study among the clouds.

Dawn took two careful steps forward. The floor flexed ever so slightly under her weight. “Holy shit,” she breathed. “It’s like—” She fumbled for words, but nothing seemed big enough.

Claire watched her, an amused tilt to her head. She picked up her pen, wrote something, and turned the notebook so Dawn could read it:

If you’re looking for Andy, he isn’t here. But I can call him if it’s urgent.

The handwriting was neat, almost mechanical, but the edges of the words were softened with tiny flourishes—a loop here, an extra stroke there. It took Dawn a second to process, then she grinned.

“Not looking for Andy,” she said. “I just… wanted to see you. And this place.” She gestured, a sweep of the arm that almost knocked over a floating volume, which dodged her by a fraction and rotated in place, spine-out, as if annoyed. “Is this your work?”

Claire made a modest hand motion—part no, part yes—then wrote: Arabella built it, but I curated it. It’s not finished.

Dawn scanned the room. “Could’ve fooled me.” She walked closer, pausing to peer through the glass floor at the clouds scudding by. “I’ve never seen anything like this, ever. It’s transcendental. Like being inside someone’s brain when they’re dreaming about the Library of Congress.”

Claire’s smile was so sudden it made her eyes disappear into crescents. She underlined transcendental twice on the page, then added: You’re the first person to say that. I think it’s soothing.

Dawn laughed. “That’s how I know you’re the real deal.” She looked back out at the horizon. “It’s perfect.”

Claire’s hand hovered over her pen, hesitating, and Dawn realized she was waiting for the next move.

Dawn let the silence thicken, but not in a bad way. It was more like the hush in a darkened theater before a show started. She waited until she could find her words again.

Dawn cleared her throat and tried to pull her focus out of the sky long enough to address the reason she’d climbed three flights and braved a glass floor in the first place. She took a breath, then walked to the long table where Claire sat, anchoring herself in the world of wood and paper and, above all, the real.

“Sorry,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck. “It’s just… This place is beyond anything I ever imagined.”

Claire tapped her pen against the notebook, an invitation to continue.

“I had to see you,” Dawn said, “because… something happened two nights ago. And I think it might matter to you.”

Claire’s eyebrows flicked, her ears twitching in curiosity.

Dawn took a seat, the chair a little too tall for her, and forced herself to face Claire straight on. “It’s about Andy. And about—” She paused, glancing sideways, as if anyone could overhear them in the cathedral of clouds. “About the way things are changing around here.”

Claire flipped a page, clearing a whole new spread for Dawn’s words. She wrote, Tell me everything. Take your time.

Dawn smiled, relieved. She tried to put it all together in her head, but the story wouldn’t resolve into a single clean line. Instead, she started in the middle.

“You know about Abuela,” she said. “How she raised me, how she was like a mom to me. When I had my date night with Andy, we talked about her a lot. We were out on the balcony, and I was missing her so bad. Andy hugged me, and he said she’d want me to be happy.” Dawn’s voice wavered, but she pushed on.

“Then I smelled her kitchen. Not just a memory, but really smelled it—the café con leche, the sweet bread, the soffrito. And then… I swear to God, I felt her. Not like a ghost, but like she was really there. She kissed my forehead, Claire. She told me she’s always with me, and she loves me. I thought I was going crazy, but Andy heard her, too. He didn’t say anything until after, but when I told him, he said it was real for him, too.”

Dawn stopped, breathless, waiting for Claire to laugh or scoff or, worse, look at her with pity. But Claire just looked at her, eyes soft, then wrote:

I believe you. That’s not the weirdest thing I’ve heard this month.

Dawn exhaled, relief and surprise twisting together. “Really?”

Claire nodded. She wrote again, slower this time: I’m happy for you. I know you missed her. But… did it feel like a dream, or like something else?

Dawn thought about it, chewing her lip. “Not a dream. Too sharp, too… layered? I could feel her hand, and I could smell her perfume, and then it was gone. But it left something behind, like a weight, or a charge in the air.”

Claire’s tail flicked, almost imperceptibly. She wrote: Did you feel different after? Not just happy, but changed?

Dawn nodded. “I felt like I could breathe again. Like a big weight was taken off my shoulders.”

Claire nodded. She wrote, underlined: I’m glad you’re here, Dawn. I'm glad you brought this up to my attention. Her tail swished.

Dawn felt herself blush. “Thanks. Sorry if that’s corny.”

Claire shook her head, ears flattening briefly in earnestness. Then she set down her pen and pushed her notebook aside. With both hands, she beckoned Dawn to follow her to the other end of the table, where a drift of loose pages and color-coded post-its waited in a precise, almost obsessive grid.

Dawn followed. She felt like a kid, summoned to the head of the class for a show-and-tell.

Claire pointed to the first stack—post-its in pale green. She wrote on a fresh page:

These are all those I collected so far. There are more, I’m sure.

She slid the page toward Dawn, then flipped over the top paper in the stack, revealing a record of incidents—times, dates, exact descriptions.

The top paper in the stack was dated a week prior and labeled, in careful block print: PHENOMENA LOG. Underneath, Claire had written:

Day 4. 9:25 AM. Inner Gardens—Erin observed tending flower beds. Noted: flowers visibly more vibrant post-contact. Color saturation increased by est. 20%. Two petals detached and landed in hair.

Day 5, ca. 10:00 PM. Strings of light bulbs appear spontaneously to decorate the Suite’s balcony during conversation between myself and Andy about missed prom. Vinyl record altered itself to play prom music. Andy speculates Arabella may be responsible.

Day 6. 8:08 AM. Inner Gardens—hydrangea spontaneously reoriented toward Erin’s line of sight; multiple leaves followed her as she exited. Hydrangea returned to baseline orientation after departure, but extra growth did not disappear.

Day 6. 7:10 AM. Liesa painting in Atelier. Canvas briefly “shimmered.” Sam commented: “Looked like it was alive.” No further report.

Day 7. 10:00 AM. Sky Archive—post-Erin visit, multiple new plant species appeared overnight. No record of these plants on file. None detected by me during pre-visit survey.

Every note was dated, timed, and paired with a brief comment on the mood of the participants, as if Claire was building a case study of the entire island. Dawn scanned them, her heart thudding faster with each new entry.

“This is wild,” she whispered. “You’ve been tracking all of it?”

Claire nodded, then scribbled: I started after Erin told me, the day after Laura came back, when everything got weirder. At first, I thought I was going crazy. But now I think there’s a pattern. It’s not random.

Dawn pointed at the entry about the hydrangea. “Did you actually see it move? Or was it just a feeling?”

Both, Claire wrote. And I double-checked. The next day, the hydrangea was two feet closer to the path than before. Arabella said it was probably a gardening staff error, but… I don’t think so.

Dawn blinked, her brain racing. “What about the other girls? Do they know?”

Some of them, Claire wrote. She hesitated, then: Sam saw the painting incident. Liesa was excited, but thought it was a joke. Riley thinks the hotel is haunted. Marissa doesn’t believe any of it, but she can’t explain the plants, and she has seen them bloom in Erin’s presence.

Dawn looked at the neat grid of notes, color-coded and cross-referenced, and suddenly felt less like a bystander and more like a researcher herself. “You said something about the lights? The strings of lights?”

Claire nodded, pointing to one of the notes. Day 5, ca. 10:00 PM. Strings of light bulbs appear spontaneously to decorate the Suite’s balcony during conversation between myself and Andy about missed prom. Vinyl record altered itself to play prom music. Andy speculates Arabella may be responsible.

It happened right as we were talking about prom, Claire wrote. Not before. Not after.

Dawn’s gaze moved back over the page, slower now. The hydrangeas. The lights. The painting. The overnight growth in the Archive. The neat, almost clinical way Claire had recorded it all made something inside her shift.

“Claire,” she said carefully, “if this is all connected… then that means Abuela might be part of the same thing.” She didn’t look up when she said it. Her voice had gone thin. “Just… one more entry on the list.” The realization landed visibly. Her shoulders folded inward, as if bracing. She swallowed. “What if it wasn’t her? What if something here just… made it feel like her?”

Claire reacted immediately. She shook her head before she even reached for her pen. Then she wrote, firmly: I don’t think these are tricks. She underlined don’t.

Dawn blinked. “How can you be sure?”

Claire wrote again, more explicitly: Lights appearing from nothing aren’t a mind trick. Same with plants growing two feet in an instant. What you described had sensory detail, emotional specificity, and—most important—Andy witnessed it too. She underlined Andy witnessed it.

Then she added, Whatever is happening, it’s real. I can’t prove what it is, yet. But none of the events so far are tricks or deceptions. If you were visited by your grandmother, I don’t think it was a trick. I think whatever is happening, opened the door for a moment.

Dawn’s hands loosened slightly on the edge of the table. She sat, digesting. For a second, she didn’t say anything, just watched the way the paper caught the light, how the words shimmered slightly in the sunbeams. Then she leaned forward, her hands flat on the table. “Then what do you think it is?” she asked, a little breathless. “Is it magic? Is it Arabella? Some kind of tech?”

Claire didn’t answer at once. She reached for her pen and wrote, very slowly: I don’t think it’s Arabella. Or, if it is, she’s not just playing a prank. There’s a logic, but it isn’t technical. It’s almost—narrative?

She let Dawn read it, then drew a little spiral in the corner. Underneath, she wrote: Maybe it’s magic. But not like in books. More like… a story that got so strong it started bending the world.

Dawn read that three times. “Like the island’s reading our minds?” She tried to make it a joke, but the room was too solemn for anything to land.

Claire shrugged, her tail flicking behind her. She wrote: Or maybe it’s just listening very, very closely.

Dawn absorbed that, watching a book float lazily past her head. “That would explain the plants,” she said. “But not the lights. And why? Why us?”

Claire didn’t hesitate. She wrote: Because we’re paying attention.

The answer knocked the breath out of Dawn. She glanced around at the notes, at the meticulous order of the Archive, and realized that Claire had built a whole world out of observation, out of never letting the little things slip by. Dawn felt a flash of warmth for the other woman. “Do you want help?” she asked. “Like, with the experiment?”

Claire paused, then wrote: Yes, but we have to be careful. I don’t want to develop theories until we have more evidence.

Dawn’s gaze drifted back to the notes. “There’s more,” she said, hesitating. “I didn’t tell you everything.” She described the visitation in fuller detail now—the scent, the touch, the way Andy had heard it too. She emphasized that he had been present, not just nearby but part of the moment.

Claire’s pen moved quickly, adding a new entry to the log:

Day 9, ca. 11:00 PM. Master’s Suite. Dawn’s Abuela visitation. Witnesses: Dawn, Andy. Multi-sensory manifestation. Emotional resolution event. She added Dawn's details underneath, everything she remembered.

Dawn swallowed. “And there was something else. In the kitchen. A few days ago. Laura dropped an egg. It cracked. I saw the shell split.” She frowned. “And then it just… sealed. Like it had never been broken.”

Claire froze. Then she wrote, slower this time: Reconstitution?

Dawn nodded. “Andy was there for that too.”

Claire underlined his name twice.

Dawn considered. “What’s the plan?”

Claire tapped her chin with the pen. Then, on a clean page, wrote:

Gather more evidence. Try to rule out Andy’s influence. She paused, then added beneath it: He is present for most high-intensity events. I thought these might be effects of his Correct Gift, but that doesn't make sense. Most of these weren't mistakes or accidents. Claire tapped the page where she’d written Dawn’s report, and Andy’s name was underlined twice. That’s not random. Watch what happens if we bring together people who haven’t triggered an event before. Try to find the limits.

Dawn’s mind raced ahead. “We could try to get Liesa and Riley together. See what happens if we put them in a painting room and just let them go.”

Claire nodded, writing, Or you and Marissa? Nothing has happened around her, has it?

Dawn shook her head. “Not a good time right now. She’s still hurting.”

Claire stilled at that. Her ears dipped slightly. She wrote: I’ve been so focused on this I forgot to check on her. The admission seemed to surprise even her. She added, smaller: That’s just like me.

Dawn softened. “She’ll be okay,” she said. “She’s got Emi checking on her.”

Claire exhaled quietly, tension easing from her shoulders. She wrote: I’ll go see her later.

Dawn smiled. “She’d like that.”

Claire nodded. She wrote: You can talk with the others, maybe. You’re better at reading people than I am. You’ll see things I miss.

Dawn clutched the stack to her chest, strangely moved. “I won’t let you down,” she said, and meant it.

They sat in silence, side by side at the end of the table, the sky wheeling around them. The world below was impossibly far away, the only real thing the grid of paper, the scrape of pen, and the silent conversation of two women who knew exactly how lonely it was to always be the observer.

After a while, Dawn broke the quiet. “Thank you,” she said. “I don’t think anyone’s ever trusted me with something this… big.”

Claire’s cheeks colored, just a hint. She wrote, I trust you.

Dawn smiled, the kind that didn’t go away right away. “Maybe we’ll figure it out together,” she said.

Claire nodded, a decisive, almost catlike gesture.

They sat in the Archive, examining instances, until the sun drifted past the zenith and the shadows grew long across the glass floor.

---

Erin led the hike, cutting through the brush with a stride that made it clear she’d once lived for trails like these. It wasn’t a formal hike, more of a friendly stomp up the low foothill behind the Main Building—a well-worn animal track, still slick from the rain, ringed in wild ginger and whatever creeping green weed had decided to take over this corner of the island. The sun overhead threatened full summer, but the woods ran cool and dark, casting Erin’s mint-green skin in a color that would have been unflattering on anyone else. On her, it just looked like a dare. She wore nothing at all, as usual, except for a pair of battered trail runners that already started the day with mud on them, a silent testament to Erin’s unwavering commitment to hiking, no matter the weather.

Behind her, Liesa followed, taking impossibly long steps, body angled always as if a camera was watching from the perfect line. If the world had been fair, she’d have been cast as a supermodel artist who solved murders on the side, her hair a mess of strawberry-gold and freckles dusted like powdered sugar across her shoulders. Each movement was a sashay or a stretch—enforced by her transformation, whether she wanted to or not—but her attention was on the world, not herself. She took photos with her camera, paused to admire birds, and even stopped once to sketch an oddly-shaped fungus in her notebook. She never let on whether she was aware of how much her body wanted to be watched.

Sam brought up the rear, lagging a few paces behind, the stride of a natural runner reined in by the gravity of old friends. She’d come in shorts and a T-shirt, nothing fancy, but her calves were ropes of muscle and her arms cut like someone who’d had to pull-start lawnmowers her whole childhood. Every few minutes, she’d find a stick and, after a beat, snap it between her hands just for the sound of it. Whenever the trail got steep or washed out, she’d just pick her way up like it was nothing, never asking for help or comment.

They’d been walking for maybe twenty minutes before Sam broke the comfortable silence. “You know,” she said, “I used to think Erin’s skin would be the weirdest thing about this place. But then, here I am, and I don’t even notice it anymore.” She aimed the comment at Liesa, who grinned back without breaking stride.

“What is weird is how Erin is always leading the hike,” Liesa said, voice touched with that accent of hers, but softened by years of English. “You must have some unfinished childhood trauma. Or maybe you just like everyone staring at your bottom.”

Erin, several steps ahead, reached back and gave it a slap for punctuation. “It’s not my fault you two walk like you’re on parade floats,” she called. “You’d get eaten by the first bobcat.”

Sam made a face, but it was all affection. “What, and you’d just photosynthesize the bobcat into submission?”

Erin smirked. “Bobcats aren’t herbivores. I’d be fine.”

Liesa laughed, a sound like a bottle uncorking. “Do you think Andy would be scared if he saw you wrestle a bobcat naked?”

“I think he’d probably get off on it,” Erin said, without a beat. The girls all laughed, but after the echo faded, the woods went quiet again, and something of the real world filtered through. Erin’s stride slowed.

It was Sam, again, who bridged the gap. “Hey,” she said, softer this time, “does it ever bother you? The whole, you know, all-over-the-place transformations?”

Erin thought for a second, then shrugged. “Not anymore,” she said. “First week, maybe. Now it just feels… normal. Like I’ve been this way my whole life. I can’t even remember what it’s like to have a tan line.”

Liesa fell into step beside her, matching the pace. “Am still waiting for the moment I stop thinking about it,” she said, turning her ankle just so, so the sun caught her calf muscle as if it needed to be lit for emphasis. “But I think I like it. Or, at least, I would keep some of it. Probably not the…” She trailed off, glancing at Sam for rescue.

Sam offered, “The ‘every movement is a burlesque act’ thing?”

Liesa beamed, as if proud. “Exactly.”

Sam smirked. “You know, according to the Commissary, if you found a Moongem, whatever that is, it’s supposed to undo one transformation, just like that.”

Erin stopped and turned. “You’re making that up.”

“Swear to God,” Sam said. “Except I still don’t know what a Moongem is.”

Erin snorted. “That’s a scam. I’d bet money no one’s ever actually seen one.”

Liesa shrugged, shading her eyes against the sun. “We could dig up the whole beach to find it.”

Sam grinned and pretended to jot a mental note. “Next challenge: beachcombing for magic rocks. You’d win, Erin, no contest. Especially since you don’t have to stop to adjust your shorts every three minutes.”

“I literally can’t,” Erin said, spreading her arms in a gesture that encompassed her entire unclothed self. “Best part is, after a few weeks, I forgot what it’s like to do laundry.” Erin shrugged again, less interested in the memory than in the bird that flitted through the undergrowth just ahead of them. “They say if you want to break a habit, you replace it with something else. Turns out exhibitionism is a great replacement for self-loathing.”

“Wow,” Liesa said, sidling closer to Erin, “that is profound. You should write for Cosmo.”

Erin laughed, the sound bright in the filtered shade. “You can take headshots for the article,” she said.

Sam watched them, her smile a little wistful. She loved the new Erin—open, funny, sometimes even kind. She’d missed this side of her, and sometimes it still surprised her how easy it was to just… be friends again. Even if the setting was a weirdly sexual fantasy camp and Erin’s fiance/Sam’s best friend was somewhere on the island with at least ten other women.

The trail rose sharply, and Erin powered up, legs working like pistons. Liesa followed, hips swaying in a way that was almost certainly involuntary. Sam lagged, taking her time, letting the rhythm of the hike clear her head. She waited until the path leveled out, then jogged to catch up.

The conversation wandered for a bit, as it always did—bits of gossip, debate over whose transformation would win in a battle royale, wild speculation about what happened if you reached the horizon and kept rowing. Sam was content to listen, adding a joke here and there, until the banter faded and something else crept in.

Sam was about to offer a distraction—a dumb story, a challenge to race to the top of the next ridge—when she noticed the shape of Erin’s face had shifted. The lines of her jaw were tight, and she looked… thoughtful.

Sam nudged her. “Okay, spill. What’s going on in that head?”

Erin scowled, but not at Sam. “It’s nothing.”

Liesa rolled her eyes, and Sam gave her a look: let me handle this. She slowed her pace until they were all walking in step, the trail wide enough for three. “Seriously,” Sam said, gentle now, “what’s up?”

Erin hesitated, then took a deep breath. “I think I might be pregnant.”

The words landed so hard they seemed to knock the wind out of the entire forest. Even the birds paused. Liesa’s eyebrows shot up. Sam just blinked, unsure what to do with the news.

“Whoa,” Sam said. “Wait, for real?”

Erin nodded, her face a little green even by her own new standards. “I haven’t had my period in weeks. And Andy—he said it might be that. I thought it was because of my plant transformation, but now I’m not sure. I think he might be right.”

Liesa put a hand on Erin’s arm. “Have you checked?”

Erin shook her head, her hair whipping across her cheek. “How would I? It’s not like they stock pregnancy tests in the gift shop.”

Sam considered. “You could ask Arabella, or the doctor in the Hollow Garden. What’s her name, Hornblower? The one who was at the party? She’s an OB/GYN, I’m pretty sure.”

Erin made a face. “I’m not going to the Hollow Garden. Besides, I’d need Andy to take me there, since you can only access it through his elevator.”

Liesa squeezed her arm. “You could ask Claire. She knows everything. She may know a way to check. Or maybe Myra.”

The silence this time was softer. Liesa kept her hand on Erin’s arm, thumb stroking the inside of her elbow. Sam felt herself wanting to hug Erin, but didn’t know if it would be welcome, so she just walked beside her.

Liesa, after a beat, said, “Are you scared? Or are you hoping it’s true?”

Erin bit her lip, silent. Then, so softly Sam almost missed it: “Both, I think.”

Liesa nodded, understanding. Sam tried to lighten the mood. “Well, if you’re pregnant, you’d better hope it’s just one. Can you imagine carrying twins with those?” She gestured at Erin’s chest, which made Liesa laugh.

Erin managed a half-smile. “At least they’d never go hungry.”

Sam couldn’t help it; she hugged her, arms tight around Erin’s shoulders. “Whatever happens, we’re here for you. Okay? No one is gonna make you do this alone.”

Erin stiffened for a second, then let herself relax, even leaning into the hug. “Thanks,” she muttered, half-choked.

Liesa joined the hug, and for a moment the three of them just stood there, tangled together, the whole world holding its breath.

When they broke apart, Sam said, “You know, if it weren’t for this place, I doubt we’d even be talking right now. Let alone hiking together or… any of this.”

Erin nodded. “Yeah. I never thought I’d get to be friends with you again. Not after everything.”

Sam shrugged. “It’s not like you killed my cat.”

Erin’s lips twitched. “You didn’t have a cat.”

“Exactly,” Sam said, then winked.

Liesa, who had been quietly watching, smiled, a real one, wide and a little vulnerable. “I’m glad we’re together,” she said. “Even if I have to do this with my body for the rest of my life.” She gave her hips a little shimmy, which made everyone laugh.

They kept walking, and for a while the trail was filled with easy talk—about what they’d name the hypothetical baby (top picks: Leif, Fern, and, from Sam, “Swordmaster Delgado-Cooper”), about the weirdest thing they’d each seen on the island, about which of the other girls would make the best godmother. Once Liesa pushed ahead, Sam snorted. “Just don’t let Liesa name it. You’ll end up with a kid called ‘Froyo’ or something.”

They crested a hill, and the sea was suddenly right there, filling the world with light. Liesa turned, backlit by the sun, and held up her hands in a victory pose. “I beat you,” she called, voice echoing down.

Sam grinned. “You only won because you have a ten-foot stride.”

They joined her at the summit, wind tugging at their hair. For a moment, they were just three women on a hilltop, facing the future with something like hope.

Erin let herself relax. She looked at Sam, then at Liesa, and thought about how lucky she was to have them here. She was still scared—of being pregnant, of not being pregnant, of everything that might come next—but it was easier to breathe, knowing she didn’t have to face it alone.

As they headed back down the trail, Erin leaned in to Sam and whispered, “When are you going to ask her?”

“Ask who what?” Sam repeated, feigning confusion as she bent to pick up a small, palm-sized stone from the trail. She turned it over in her hand, letting the quiet hang in the blue-shadowed stretch of path.

Erin didn’t buy the act for a second. “Sam,” she said, her voice soft and slightly mocking, “I’m not an idiot, okay? You keep looking at her like she’s the best thing that ever happened in your life since… ever. When are you going to put a ring on it?”

“Cut it out,” Sam said, but she didn’t sound mad. “She’s been through enough.”

Erin nudged Sam’s arm, keeping her voice low. “I mean it. I know you don’t do the fairy-tale stuff, but you really like her. And I think she’d say yes, if you asked.”

Sam snorted, looking at the scuffed trail as if it would hide her embarrassment. “Jesus, when did you become a wedding person?”

“Since the guy I love asked me to marry him,” Erin shot back, rolling her eyes. “But this isn’t about me. It’s about you, and how you should tell her.” She dropped her voice as Liesa paused ahead, photographing a mossy rock. “She looks at you like you’re the only person who’s ever gotten her. That’s not nothing.”

Sam didn’t answer at first. She shifted a branch out of the way for Erin, then ducked under it herself. “You think I don’t know that?” she said finally. “I’ve never met anyone like her. She’s—” Sam cut herself off, shaking her head. “I’m scared of screwing it up. I always screw it up, Erin. It’s biological, clearly. That’s all.”

Erin slowed, letting the gap widen between them and Liesa. “You won’t.”

Sam stared ahead, voice going thick. “I do, though. That’s my thing. I get excited, I push too hard, and then I break it.” She made a gesture, like wringing a towel. “It’s been good, you know? Scary good. I don’t want to fuck it up.”

Erin grinned. “That’s the most you thing you could say. You’re not going to break her, Sam. You’re not even going to dent her.”

Sam looked at Erin, then away, then back again. “Okay, but, you and Andy…? That’s different, right? You guys always fit. You knew it, even when you were miserable.”

Erin laughed. “We fit because we both thought the world was out to get us. And, spoiler alert, it probably was. But that’s not the point. The point is, you can be happy, Sam. You can want more.”

Sam bit her lip, looking unconvinced.

“You think Liesa’s not scared, too?” Erin asked, softer. “You think she hasn’t been hurt, a hundred times? You know what her life was like back in Belgium. No one would blame her if she had weird hangups about romance and sex. But she picked you.”

Sam let the silence build. “I told myself I’d talk to Andy first,” she said. “You know, clear the air. Let him know I mean it, that I want her. But I keep putting it off.”

Erin nodded. “Because you’re afraid he’ll say you don’t deserve her.”

Sam looked at her, the admission hovering on her lips. “Yeah.”

Erin shook her head. “God, Sam, we all love you, but you can be an idiot sometimes, just like your best friend. Didn’t Andy already say a bunch of times that he’s happy for you two?”

Sam grunted. “Yeah. But sleeping together is one thing. Marriage? What if he wanted to marry her?”

Erin snorted. “Sam, he’s marrying me, Claire, I’d bet my green tits on Laura, and who knows who else. I doubt he’d be all up in arms if Liesa married you and him, even if he wanted to marry her. And you know the guy. He wouldn’t ask unless he knew it’s what she wanted.”

They stopped on the path, the sounds of the forest crowding in: birds, the far-off scuffle of Liesa’s feet, the soft wind in the trees. Sam wiped her palm on her shorts and said, “You ever wish you could go back, start over, and do it all right?”

Erin smiled, just a little. “No. Weird as it is to say, I think I like where I am. Even if I had to do it the hard way.”

Sam looked at Erin’s face, the stubborn angle of her jaw, and felt her own fear lose some of its grip. “Alright. Fine, you win. I’ll talk to him before the next Challenge,” Sam said, voice steady now. “I promise.”

“Good,” Erin said. “I’ll be very disappointed if I don’t hear you spoke with him by your date night. And if you ever need someone to practice with, or just to freak out at, I’m here.”

Sam let the words land, then nodded. “Deal.”

They stood for a moment, letting the world fill in around them. The air was green and gold, and Liesa’s laughter filtered through the leaves ahead.

“Hey,” Sam said, voice soft. “Thanks, Erin.”

Erin shrugged, but her eyes were bright. “You were there for me. This is just… keeping the balance.”

They walked on, catching up to Liesa, who waited by a fallen tree, sketchbook already out, the page half-filled with a rough drawing of the trail. She saw them approach, and the look she gave Sam was so open, so entirely without guile, that Erin had to look away or risk laughing.

“What did I miss?” Liesa asked, flipping the book closed.

Sam tried to play it cool. “Just gossip,” she said, then reached for Liesa’s hand, threading their fingers together.

Liesa squeezed back, a silent yes.

They walked the rest of the hike like that: three women, one naked and green, one made for runway but covered in bug spray and dirt, and one who’d finally stopped waiting for permission to be happy. They made it to the summit, where the sun bled over the ocean, and Liesa insisted on taking a selfie of the group, her arms long enough to fit them all in the frame. Erin stood in the middle, beaming like she’d won a marathon; Sam held up a peace sign; Liesa kissed Sam’s cheek and snapped the photo mid-smooch.

The photo was ridiculous. Erin’s chest took up half the shot, Sam’s hair was plastered to her forehead, and Liesa’s eyes were squeezed shut in laughter. But when she showed them the screen, nobody wanted a retake. They just stood together, arms around each other, and looked at it until the sun sank and the sky went dark.

When they headed back down the trail, Sam was first, Liesa second, and Erin brought up the rear, happy to let her friends lead the way.

No one said anything for a while, but no one had to.

---

Chloe didn’t usually bake for herself, but the day’s atmosphere in the Main Building felt too heavy to do anything but. She moved around the kitchen on instinct, sifting flour and zesting a lemon, letting the gentle friction of labor do what conversation and comfort food sometimes could not. The counters were wiped clean, the oven preheated to a plausible memory of her childhood home, and the bowl in her hands was a weight she could control. Her mind drifted, as it often did, to the kids in her class—who would love these scones, who would hate them, which ones would pick out the candied ginger and line them up like checkers on a napkin. She smiled at the thought.

The first sign that she wasn’t alone wasn’t a sound or a shadow. It was the sensation—unmistakable now, after so many weeks—that she was being watched. Not admired or even regarded, but studied, like a specimen in a glass dish. She turned from the counter and found Mildred, the hotel’s everywhere-and-nowhere maid, standing in the kitchen doorway. Not moving, not even swaying, as if someone had pressed PAUSE on her existence and left her there, a black-and-purple photograph cut out and glued onto the world.

Chloe froze, a pinch of flour dusting the air between them. “Oh! Hi, Mildred. Did you need something?” She tried to sound casual, but the words came out a little high, her nerves betrayed by the whine of her own voice.

Mildred didn’t blink, didn’t even move her chin. She wore her hair swept back and her lips a precise, severe red, not a speck out of place. The badge pinned to her dress, Mildred—Service, gleamed like a target. Her arms hung perfectly at her sides, not the smallest ripple of tension in her posture.

“No,” said Mildred. The word was absolute, all breath. Then she added, “You are baking. I have observed.” She didn’t inflect the statement as a question.

Chloe blinked. “Uh… yeah. I’m baking. Would you like some?” She held up the bowl as an offering.

Mildred’s head rotated on a flawless hinge. “No.”

Chloe waited, expecting the maid to turn and go, but instead, Mildred’s gaze remained fastened to her face. There was no glint of humor or impatience—just the steady, unblinking stare of someone who had never learned that looking at people made them uncomfortable. Or maybe who enjoyed it. Chloe cleared her throat. “Is… something wrong?” she asked.

Mildred replied, “No.” Then, after a long pause: “You are alone.”

Chloe shifted her weight, self-conscious of her cardigan and the apron she’d found in the communal laundry. “I guess I am. Everyone else is out. I thought I’d bring something to lunch for the group, but I got a little carried away.” She gestured at the spread of dough, the lined-up muffin tin, the lemon rinds in the sink.

Mildred’s eyes flicked, so minutely that Chloe wasn’t sure she’d seen it. She did not move from the doorway, or even step in further. “Why?” Mildred asked.

Chloe fumbled the response. “Why what?”

“Why do you bake for them,” said Mildred, “when you are alone.”

Chloe tried a laugh, but it sounded off-key. “I guess because it makes me feel better? Or maybe because I know they’ll like it, and that makes me happy.”

Mildred absorbed this without comment. There was a long pause, so long that Chloe felt herself itching to break it. She rolled another ball of dough, pressed it into a ring, and placed it on the tray with exaggerated care.

She risked a glance up. Mildred’s stare hadn’t softened. “Did you want to help?” Chloe asked, half-hoping the answer was no.

Mildred didn’t answer the question. She said, “Why do you want them to like it.”

This was getting weird. Chloe dusted her hands on her apron, more for the distraction than anything else. “Because I care about them? Because it feels good to make something for people I care about, I guess.”

Mildred considered. It was the closest Chloe had ever seen her come to actual thinking: a micro-pucker of her lips, a shift in her jaw that made her look momentarily vulnerable. “You do not have to,” Mildred said. “There is no reward for this.”

Chloe shrugged. “I don’t think everything’s about rewards.”

Mildred’s lips parted, then shut. It looked like the start of a sentence that got lost on the way out of her mouth. Then she said, “Why.”

Chloe tried to make a joke out of it. “You sound like my students,” she said, pitching her voice up into a playful whine. “Why this, why that, why is the sky blue, why do we have to learn fractions—”

Mildred’s eyes narrowed, but not with offense. More as if she was making a careful note. “Because they want to understand. Is that it.”

“Maybe? I don’t know. Sometimes I think they just like making me explain myself.” She smiled, hoping the warmth might catch, but Mildred’s expression didn’t budge.

“Do you want to understand,” Mildred said.

“Um. Sure? I like learning things. I mean, I became a teacher because—” Chloe stopped, realizing she didn’t want to open the autobiography can right now. She gestured at the dough. “Do you want to try rolling one?”

Mildred ignored the dough entirely. “You are not angry.”

The sentence was so abrupt, so unconnected, that Chloe dropped the scoop she was holding. It bounced on the counter and rolled toward the sink. “I’m sorry, what?”

“You are not angry,” Mildred repeated, enunciating every word as if she’d had to look up the pronunciation. “You have not attempted to harm, sabotage, or retaliate. You have not sought to injure any person, even when you were denied.”

Chloe felt a cold bloom in her chest, the kind that sometimes followed a parent conference where nothing she said got through. “Why would I want to hurt anyone?”

“That is what I do not understand,” said Mildred. “I have watched you. You should want to.”

Chloe let the silence settle. She was suddenly hyperaware of the way her own arms crossed, the way her feet in their battered sneakers shifted to block the oven. “Do you think I should be angry?”

“You were denied,” said Mildred. She spoke with the cool neutrality of a voiceover, but every word pressed against Chloe’s ears like a thumb on a bruise. “For years, you desired something that you were told you could not have. Something that is essential to you, or to your concept of self.”

Chloe’s hands closed around the edge of the counter. She knew what Mildred was talking about. Everyone in the group knew, by now. She had told the story enough times to know how it sounded from the outside: one more teacher with an old, dull ache; a childless woman playing surrogate mother to a parade of other people’s kids. She tried to breathe.

“You were denied,” Mildred repeated. “You should be angry. Instead you make scones.”

Chloe’s first instinct was to argue, to deflect with a joke or a wave of the hand. But something about the intensity of Mildred’s focus—her unblinking, unsmiling presence—made Chloe want to answer honestly.

“Yeah,” Chloe said, her voice small. “I wanted to be a mom. More than anything. And when I couldn’t, it hurt a lot.”

Mildred waited, giving her no help.

“But—” Chloe said. She looked at the dough, the smooth, hopeful circles lined up on the tray. “It’s not like being angry would help. It’s not anyone’s fault. It’s just… what happened.”

She felt a heat build behind her eyes, the old burn of having to be the strong one, the soft one, for everyone else. “And anyway, there was nothing I could do about it. So I just… I try to give what I can to the kids in my class. Or to my friends here.”

Mildred’s head cocked, birdlike. “Does it help.”

Chloe swallowed. “It does,” she said. “It even makes me happy.”

There was a new kind of pause—one that felt less like silence, more like a computer stuck in an infinite loop. Mildred’s lips pressed together so tightly the color vanished from them.

“Do you still want it,” Mildred said, “now.”

Chloe answered without thinking. “Yeah.” She blinked, surprised by her own honesty.

“Even though you have been denied and you have suffered,” said Mildred.

Chloe hesitated. “That’s just… being human.”

The silence stretched, but not in a threatening way. Mildred looked as if she wanted to reply, but the code wouldn’t compile. She finally said, “I have watched you for weeks and I do not understand. If you cannot get what you want, why would you want anything at all. Why would you not wish to destroy the world that took it from you.”

The phrasing was wrong, Chloe realized. Why and who were the same word, here; want and need and deserve were all tangled together like wires stripped of insulation.

Chloe searched for the answer, then tried, “Because if I destroyed it, I’d never get what I wanted. Even if I could. Even if it was possible.”

Mildred blinked, once. “You would still have nothing,” she said.

Chloe nodded. “But I’d rather make friends and have nothing, than hurt someone else and still have nothing. Maybe that’s the difference?”

Mildred’s jaw worked, as if she were chewing a mouthful of glass. For a heartbeat, she looked less like a person and more like a mask stretched too tight over something that didn’t understand how to smile.

“Does it ever go away,” Mildred said, voice so quiet Chloe almost missed it.

“The wanting?” Chloe said. “No. Not really. But it gets easier. Especially when I remember I’m not the only one.”

Mildred’s hand, finally, moved—a tiny twitch of her fingers. Her eyes flicked to the bowl, then back to Chloe’s face. “You wish to give even when you have not received.”

Chloe’s laugh was shaky. “That’s how it’s supposed to work, right? You give, and you hope that maybe one day you’ll get something back, but if you don’t, it’s still worth it.”

The silence this time was heavy, but it didn’t feel hostile. If anything, Chloe sensed in Mildred a kind of hunger, not for the scones but for the shape of the answer. A vacuum where an emotion should have been.

Chloe bit her lip. “Can I ask you a question?”

Mildred said nothing, but the question hung in the air.

“If you could have anything you wanted,” Chloe said, “what would it be?”

The effect was immediate, and unsettling. Mildred’s hands clenched into fists. Her jaw trembled, then locked. There was a faint, audible grind as her teeth met, the sound so raw and close that Chloe flinched.

“Nothing,” Mildred said, voice flat as a slammed door. “It is not possible.”

Chloe thought she saw, for a flash, the old agony of wanting something you could not have, projected onto a face designed only to serve. She wanted to reach out, to say something comforting, but Mildred beat her to it.

“You are lucky,” Mildred said, and turned to go. But as she left the kitchen, she paused at the threshold. Without turning, she said: “You now have what you wanted. You will not need to worry about it anymore.”

Chloe stood for a long moment, hands dusted in flour, trying to parse the words. She ran through the last few seconds of conversation. Then the penny dropped.

She stared down at her hands, then at her belly, her heart racing.

Mildred was saying she might be pregnant.

Chloe’s knees wobbled. She pressed both palms to the counter to keep herself upright.

She thought of all the times she’d dared to hope, then told herself not to. Of the wish she’d buried, then tried to pass on to the next generation.

She closed her eyes, took a steadying breath, and tried to imagine—really imagine—what it would be like to have that wish come true.

The idea was so big it made her feel hollow and infinite. But the part that amazed her most was not the possibility itself, but the fact that after everything, after loss and denial and years of learning to live with the ache, she still wanted it.

She wanted it more than ever.

Chloe wiped her hands on her apron, finished the scones, and set them to bake. When she took them out of the oven, she set one aside, still warm, on a small plate.

She would give it to Mildred.

Maybe that was how it started.