Fallow

What do I even do anymore? Anneth thought. She rocked slowly in
her rocking chair, really trying to answer that question. Kim does
real estate, gets to show people around to new and different
homes, peek a little bit into other homeowners' lives, and she
still goes out drinking with some of the old gang. Howard rock
climbs, out on real rocks with real ropes by himself, which is
insane of him, man with one hand, but I get it, and it is a thing
he does. He actually does things, in his life. I'm... what? Some
woman who makes sure office supplies are on the shelves each day?
And then comes home, and sits in front of a computer, playing
computer games. Not even liking when there's an update to the
computer games. I grind levels on the same dungeons that have been
in the games for the last, what, five years, longer for some of
them. Actually. Actually longer than that for all of them: most
are older than ten years, of doing the same dungeons, just
grinding. Why? I don't think about anything, at all, while I'm
playing. Is that why? So that I can not think? Or is that a side
effect that I haven't realized and unpacked until just now? Here's
another question: When is the last time anything new happened?
Prior to last Friday, of course. Before that, when was the last
time there was novelty in my life? When was the last time I
noticed anything? Literally anything. A... a nice sunset, or, an
interesting smell. When was the last time I had a witty
observation, even to myself? I don't think I could if I tried.
When was the last time I had an actual conversation? Not telling
someone what to do at work or being told what to do at work. Not
direct messaging other players in the games I play, telling them
things they might not have known about the games. When was the
last time I talked to a friend? Do I have friends? Or, do I only
have friends who I used to have? Fuck, when was the last time I
was happy? I'm not unhappy. Well. I'm... What do I even do
anymore? It's since Myrtle died. What have I done since Myrtle
died, twenty years ago?

She let that thought hang for a while, sat with it. Even the most
precious memories of time spent with the palomino were so
simplified now. Some flat notion of standing at the mare's head,
and the mare leaning her head against her. Some note to self that
she was supposed to remember all of the moments of brushing the
mare, and both of them liking that. The weight that those things
had had on her then was sincere. The most sincere things Anneth
had felt in her life. But the other life in that equation had come
to a natural end.

I didn't die too, Anneth told herself. I very specifically did not
kill myself, and that was really on the table, and I didn't. Shit,
I transitioned, that was quite an accomplishment. I got help for
anxiety. I've been surviving. Maybe I'm not happy. Maybe I am post
happiness, now. But I am surviving. Even if it's not that
interesting to tell someone about. Even if the day to day is one-
note.

She was putting it off.

Anneth knocked her open palm against the arm of her rocking chair
about twenty times, and then hit the speed dial button for her
boss. As the line rang, she rocked in the chair. She looked out at
her back yard, the back yard of her townhouse, and tried to force
some observation about it. Something nice. She saw the wind
shaking the neighbor's trees, and the birds and squirrels hopping
around in the branches. That was a nice image on its own, she
supposed. It did not need any deep addition on her part. It was
just nice to see the pretty critters running around and flying. It
was a nice thing in front of her.

The line was answered. "What's up Anneth?"

No delaying it with small talk then. Anneth jumped right into it.
"Jane, hey. I'm going to have an absence coming up."

With no pause at all, Jane shot back, "How soon?"

"Like, now," Anneth stammered out, before a more tactful way of
saying it came to mind. She rocked back and forth quickly in the
rocking chair, though, nothing about that should have been audible
through the line at least, which was good enough. She figured she
looked like a crazy person. She quickly explained, "I got a
summons. I can't be in starting tomorrow, and I'd count me out for
a full week after that too."

"It is DECEMBER!" Jane said, the harshness of it causing the audio
on the line to peak out on the word 'December.' In a more
modulated whisper into the receiver, Jane added, "We are good
enough to get by on seasonal shits we've been able to get on
board, but I cannot be out a floor manager and you know that."

"Jane," Anneth shot back. Standing her ground wasn't common for
Anneth, but she knew the fuck how to do it. "I don't have a
choice. You know I've called in two days the entire five years
I've worked here, and I even wish I wouldn't have had to do those.
I do not get joy in telling you I can't come in, but like I said,
I have a summons, it is frankly not my choice right now."

"Wait," Jane said, "like a..." She trailed off, and then sighed as
the words escaped her. "What kind?"

"Chronuous," Anneth answered. "It's the real thing."

"I thought you were..." Jane began, and then cut herself off
before she said something very rude. Discriminatory, someone from
HR might be willing to describe it as if backed into the right
corner. Anneth metaphorically patted herself on the back for
calling Jane by the company line, instead of the bitch's mobile.

"You thought I was what?" Anneth drilled in sweetly, not willing
to waive Jane's partial statement away if this was going to be
part of a record.

Jane quickly backtracked, no doubt picking up on all of the same
implications. "I just haven't had to do the forms for anyone
getting any kind of summons in a long time."

"Understandable," Anneth said, seeing no harm to herself in
conceding whether or not that particular information seemed true.

After a little pause, Jane said, "What day is the summons for?"

Anneth saw through it instantly, and really wasn't willing to
concede the ground. Answering that question was heading straight
into give an inch, take a mile territory. Instead, Anneth said,
"No um, I really have to call in a disability privilege. I really
can't be in for the week, and, I'm telling you now that I don't
hope to extend that but I am reserving the possibility of it. My
anxiety hasn't been... out of control... in years... but this did
it. I'm going to be in and out of therapy, and..."

Thankfully, really surprisingly, Jane actually did say the line
that she was, in theory, required to: "Take the time you have to.
We'll figure it all out here."

And that was about the end of it. Anneth considered asking if she
was already fired, but knew that the answer wouldn't be honest
either way. If she was fired, she would figure something out after
the fact. If she wasn't fired, well, that was easier, her schedule
would return to normal in a couple of weeks, probably. For the
next week, what mattered was that she was free.

It was a Sunday afternoon as she had made the call to Jane. She
had seen the letter on the previous Friday evening, and had,
admittedly, avoided opening it for a large amount of the weekend.
Purple envelope, and a black stamp on the face of it of an
hourglass. Correspondences from the gods were a suicidal kind of
thing to fake. It was almost assuredly real, and yet, it was so
unexpected to Anneth that she still grappled with the reality of
it.

What Anneth's boss had just barely stopped herself from saying out
loud, the thing that would have been very rude to point out, was
that some people were never contacted by the gods. 'Untouchables'
was among the more polite names for them. And it had, in fairness,
seemed to Anneth and everyone who knew her that she was one of
those people. She was approaching forty and had never been
summoned before, even by the more accessible gods. Hermes, Cupid.
It was common enough for someone to be summoned by Chronos at one
point sometime in their life, to be called away to some point in
the past. But it was also common enough for someone to never be
called.

Others seemed to be personal favorites of the god of time. Some
lived lives in a very confused order, always backward and forward,
even intersecting with themselves as a regularity. The second most
of the same person in the same place as himself was a filmed
porno, where seven of the same man, Luke T., engaged in an orgy
together. The importance of it or the lack thereof was studied and
debated at length among religious scholars. The first most of the
same person in the same place as himself was 9/11, where videos
placed at least 45 of the same man, Jeremy Lucas, at the scene,
helping to rescue survivors. Going forward in time was
exceptionally rare: four people were documented to have done it,
and each of those instances had been of a duration that did not
exceed five seconds.

Anneth did not assume she was being summoned to be a part of
anything so notable. The surprise, for her, was that it was
happening at all. The letter from Chronos contained very little,
as was usually the case. It had the time and date she was to show
up at the temple, which was noon on the Wednesday that followed
the Friday she had received the letter on. It had a brief,
standardized statement saying that the nature of the visit was to
have her be translocated in time, and that her participation was
not compulsory but strongly encouraged.

Anneth had to scroll through her texting history for some time to
find the number of the reception for her old therapist. It had
been eight, nine years since she had last talked to him. Doctor
Holland. He had helped her overcome a lot, back then, but there
had come a point where there hadn't really been anything left to
talk about between them. She was better, so to speak. She was
done. They were done. But now, they were back on at his next
availability. At first the receptionist had texted back saying
that the doctor was booked up for the next three weeks, but within
two minutes, she had sent a follow-up text saying that something
had freed up, and the doctor could make an appointment with her
tomorrow, Monday, 2:20 PM, preferably nothing that would go over
into the doctor's three o'clock. Anneth confirmed the appointment,
avoiding commenting to the receptionist how just-so all of that
seemed, or, more honestly, how inconsiderate it was to lie about
the doctor's scheduling to someone who was seeking mental health
help, only to find out that the doctor would be willing to make
time, and so have to make up a pretense as to why the unworkable
situation had suddenly become workable. She decided to move beyond
looking a gift horse in the mouth, there.

The following Monday at 2:23 PM, she was sitting in a couch in an
office that smelled like cinnamon candles. The walls were lined
with bookshelves full of nonfiction textbooks and fiction novels.
She faced a bookshelf mostly full of sci-fi novels, as Doctor
Holland sat on a chair side-by-side with her couch, facing the
bookshelf alongside her.

In some ways, she had worried the conversation would have to begin
with why she hadn't kept in touch over the last near-decade. She
had come in ready to admit she had assumed it would be
inconsiderate to take up his time and act like a friend when their
relationship had been formed on a more professional basis. But
when she had come in, he had opened with such a sincere expression
of happiness, and a very warm, "It's so good to see you again!" It
had made her realize very quickly that there was no animosity, he
was not mad at her. They caught up. Both of them had overall been
doing very good since the last time they had talked. Anneth then
divulged that the reason she had come in was because of the purple
letter she had received, with the image of the hourglass on it,
marked for two days from then, the following Wednesday.

The doctor began to ask questions about that. In some ways, Anneth
always wanted to criticize his questions for being cliche,
obvious, even though the questions were exactly fit to purpose,
exactly what they were supposed to be.

"How do you feel about getting the summons?" the doctor asked.

"Nervous. Extremely nervous. I don't even... I can barely talk. I
don't know what to..." She tried to put a cap on the thought, and
couldn't. In many ways she did hope to wrap this up quickly, and
not take up the doctor's time waffling about her feelings. She did
want to get to the root of it. But evidently she was not there
herself yet. Hence the visit. But she did want to get to the root
of it quickly, if possible.

The doctor asked, "Do you think you'll go to the summons?"

"Yes. Oh gods, you think I would miss it? I'm worried... I'm
worried I might mess it up, I think? But I know that doesn't make
sense."

In a friendly tone, the doctor agreed, "It is comforting that
these things are preordained, isn't it? But we don't always worry
about things that make sense. Sometimes we can worry anyways."

"Sure. But then what am I worried about?"

"Well. Do you have any ideas?"

Anneth sighed through her nose.

The doctor suggested it another way. "What do you worry will
happen?"

"I..." Anneth thought about it. "I guess I'm not worried I'll, I
don't know, create some problem in time itself. That doesn't...
well, I couldn't, I think, even if I wanted to for some reason,
which I don't. I'm not worried I'll screw it up THAT bad. I'm just
worried I won't live up to what I'm supposed to be for this."

"Mm," the doctor intoned. He thought for a moment himself, it
seemed, and then asked, "Where do you think the summons will take
you? What time, who will you meet, what will you do?"

"I have a guess," Anneth said. She felt her cheeks start to burn
up a little, and presaged an awkwardness at even being able to say
it out loud. She had told this doctor about her past relationship.
She had been very open with talking about it. At one point she had
been open about it with a lot of people. But she did not currently
make a habit of talking about it with anyone. It had,
incidentally, been a long time now since it had ever come up.
Without intending to, she talked around it at first. "I know it
won't be myself."

"Never met yourself?" the doctor asked.

"No," Anneth answered. She then asked, as it had actually never
come up before, "Have you?"

"Myself and I have had a couple of very nice dinners, but I have
to admit, I wouldn't stop going on about music trivia," the doctor
said, and then laughed at himself. "You know what's the worst? One
of those dinners, I've now been on both ends of, and I could feel
myself doing it, but it couldn't be helped."

Anneth laughed at that herself, not faking it. She was very amused
at the idea of the doctor being awkward. "I didn't even know you
liked music that much."

"I really don't, but I know that I'm going to talk my own ear off
at least three more times about it anyways."

"Oh no," Anneth said, lightheartedly.

"There was some other good advice to myself in there too, to be
fair. Stuff that sent me on what I would like to call a good life
path. It was all very specific to things I needed to hear at the
time, nothing that's not a life skill you don't already have. But
that was peppered in among quite, quite a lot of rock band trivia.
The one of those I can say I have delivered now, I believe I was
phrasing it the way I did to attempt to make the metaphors stick
to a less wise self who needed the help." Doctor Holland cleared
his throat. "So, you've never met yourself," he said, circling
back. "But you have some idea of who it might be that you're
meeting in the summons?"

"Yes."

"If you write it down on a paper first, can I take a guess?" the
doctor asked.

That caught Anneth by surprise, the idea of that. "Oh. Sure. Do
you have..."

The doctor ripped a page out of a spiral bound notebook, and
handed it to Anneth along with a pen.

Anneth wrote down the name, glancing over to make sure the doctor
wasn't peeking. The doctor had indeed turned his head away to face
the wall.

"I wrote it," Anneth said, having already folded the paper a few
times as well, to obscure the name farther.

"Myrtle?" the doctor asked.

Anneth unfolded the paper and showed it to the doctor, revealing
the name 'Myrtle' freshly written in her handwriting. "I'm
surprised you remembered," she said, and then added, cutting the
doctor off slightly, "I don't mean anything by that, I just, I'm
bad with names, I'm surprised you could remember the name this
long after."

"We talked about her a lot," the doctor said. "I might not
remember every story, I'm sorry, but yes, I remember her name,
absolutely. You think you're going to see her?"

"Nothing else would be as important as that," Anneth answered.
"And it's not myself. So."

The doctor let a silence hang.

Anneth finished, "So yes, I think I'm going to see Myrtle."

The doctor asked, "And you're worried about that?"

"Yes," Anneth answered. "Oh gods, I can barely... yes, I'm more
nervous than I've been in... I've never been this nervous as an
adult. I'm serious. It's not a bad thing that I would get to see
her again, not at all, obviously. But how can... how can she be
dead, and then I get to see her alive again for what, a few
minutes? How is that supposed to happen and it won't fuck me up?
How could I make enough of that? That's impossible. I..."

Anneth began to tear up, not even having suspected she was going
to, herself.

The doctor handed her a box of tissues, and set a waste basket
beside her.

Anneth took out a tissue to wipe her eyes with, and then balled it
up when she was done and put it in the waste basket.

"I'm sorry," she choked out.

"It's okay," he said.

A silence hung in the air.

Anneth broke the silence by saying openly, "I don't know what to
say."

"It's difficult," the doctor said. "What would you want to say to
her, if you had the chance?"

"Don't--" Anneth began with a tone, and then cut herself off. She
started again, still harshly, but not overly combative, "Don't
talk down to me about what me and her shared."

"Of course," the doctor said. "I'm sorry. My impression of your
relationship with her is very high. I understand that your
feelings towards her are very loving."

Anneth laughed bitchily to herself.

Sounding surprised himself, the doctor asked, "Was there something
other than loving in that relationship?"

"No. I mean, we annoyed each other sometimes, but, who doesn't?
No. At the time it was... she was the center of my world. Getting
her out to run each day, bringing her new things to try, going on
our rides. I didn't listen to what anyone else said for more hours
in a day than with her. That was... we loved each other. But that
was then. That was... a really long time ago. About twenty years."

"Oh. Your feelings have changed since?"

"Not changed, just..." Anneth felt herself becoming choked up. She
readied another tissue, but more tears didn't come. She held the
tissue in a tight fist. "The part of my life where I loved her,
was..." Anneth couldn't finish it other than to repeat herself: "a
really long time ago."

The doctor adjusted in his chair, and then said, delicately, but
firmly, "The reason I wanted to ask what you would say to her
wasn't because I wanted to hear a platitude from you, like 'I
would say to her I love you,' or 'I would say to her I've missed
her.' I think, and you can let me know if I'm wrong, but I think I
do understand how heartfelt your position on her is, and I'm not
trying to step over that like it isn't a big deal. I only wanted
to ask what you would say to her because if you're anxious about
meeting her again, and you think that you are going to meet her
again, then that's an obstacle that might be troubling you."

Anneth nodded. "Sure. I think I would just tell her I love her
though."

"Okay," the doctor said. "Anything else?"

Anneth threw up her arms. "Play it by ear, I guess. If she wants
to run circles, we'll run circles. If she wants to go on a ride,
we'll go on a ride."

"Is there anything you would like to do with her?"

Anneth covered her sudden smile with the tissue she was still
holding. "I don't have the equipment for that anymore."

The doctor chuckled along, and said, "Ah, fair enough. It sounds
like whatever comes, you're planning to make the best of it."

"Yeah," Anneth said.

"I think that's all anyone should expect from someone," the doctor
offered.

Anneth nodded. "Maybe. Gods. This is still just..."

The conversation went on, but mostly consisted of circling back to
the same topics, finding other ways of saying the same things.
Anneth worried that she had moved on from the palomino so
completely that she had forgotten her, that the feelings had
become too distant, that meeting her again would not live up to
the miraculous nature of such a thing getting to happen. By the
time she thanked the doctor and they agreed that it was a good
place to put an end to the session, Anneth had not gotten as far
as no longer being nervous, but she did believe she was ready to
appear at the appointment at the temple of Chronos without being a
complete wreck. And as for what would happen on the other side, it
was like she had said. She would play it by ear.

That Wednesday, in the morning, she dressed in comfortable jeans
and a flannel top, and packed a satchel with two pears. Bringing
items back and forth through time was only prohibited if deemed
exploitative, and the priests were guided to be permissive in
their judgment. She made the drive to the temple much earlier than
she was scheduled to arrive, and parked in the lot outside. In a
nearby courtyard there was a fountain. She sat on a bench and
looked idly at the water, it flying up and splashing down. She
wanted to reflect on dear memories of time with her soulmate, as
she looked at the fountain. But nothing more substantial came to
her than the dim memories she always had. She sat staring at the
fountain, and only that. She had to force herself to not zone even
that out. When it was time, she entered the sliding doors of the
temple.

Standing inside, there was a priest in a white robe. He smiled at
her. "Anneth Williams. Thank you for coming."

She nodded. "Of course. Is there um... where do we do this?"

"Follow me," he invited, and turned and walked deeper into the
temple. The halls had white walls, and at intervals were hung
framed works of art, quite a lot of the art depicting architecture
or weather.

Anneth and the priest arrived at a room that made Anneth think of
a classroom. There were no desks, or lectern. It was likely only
the size of the room that made her think of it. She tried to think
of other rooms that were that size. There were probably plenty.
But she couldn't think of any others at that moment. This room,
the room in the temple, was a room of grey bricks, and no other
features. The fluorescent lights in the hall outside cast the only
light into the dim room.

The priest led her to the room's center. "Stand here. Face the
doorway. Close your eyes. Okay. Keep your eyes closed as I depart.
It will happen shortly."

She heard the priest walking away, and then the sound of the door
closing.

Immediately after the door had closed, the sound of cicadas
buzzing filled the air, and the world smelled of grass and dirt
and water. Anneth opened her eyes. She was outside, in the
nighttime, standing on a little grassy finger of land that jutted
out to encroach meagerly on a large lake. A crescent moon hung
overhead. Anneth turned around, and around, and didn't see a
palomino anywhere.

From the edge of the water, past a bush that was farther out on
the finger of land, a deep voice called to all who might hear it,
"Is someone there?"

"Oh," Anneth said, realization causing her spirits to sink. "You
have got to be fucking kidding me."

"Excuse me?" the punk said. 'Man' wasn't the right word. Maybe for
two reasons, but at the very least, for the reason that the person
with the deep voice was still an insolent shit, not fully matured,
still didn't know enough about the very basics of the world for
'man' to not at least come with some footnotes. This was herself.

"Hey Nick," Anneth called past the bush.

"Who the fuck," the punk said to himself, but still loudly, and
then stood up, emerging from the incidental cover.

The dude wasn't bad looking. She had to give that much to her past
self. He had some things working against him, most notably a black
pencil moustache, but his features around it were handsome, very
Dean-esque. It looked like he still had the black leather jacket
at that point, because, well, he was wearing it. She didn't know
where that had ever ended up.

"I don't know where to begin," she said to her other self. To him.
To Nick. Thinking about what she wanted, in light of the fact that
this was not who she had been hoping to see, she supposed that,
now, all she wanted to do was impart whatever lesson, whatever
information, it was that her past self needed now, at this moment.
Get it over with, whatever it was that she was here to do for him.
She supposed she would start with the basics. "I'm from 2023."

"Oh," he said. The information seemed to have a softening effect
on him, taken the edge off of his rather hostile demeanor that had
been present until that point. "Are you someone I know already,
yet?"

"I'm you, loser."

"Pffff!" Nick said, and then turned and paced alongside the water,
laughing to himself. "I don't know who you actually are but that's
funny."

"Why's that, Nick?"

"Easy, I'm a dude," Nick said, pointing to himself with both
pointer fingers. "I'm a dude on the outside and I'm not not a dude
on the inside. Being a dude is the fucking best. Why would anyone
WANT to be a woman?"

"You'd be surprised. But you know what, part of that is true,
you're not transgender. Not yet."

"Wuzzat?" Nick asked.

"Wuzz what?" Anneth mocked.

"Transgender."

"Oh gods I was a moron."

"Hey! Even if I don't believe you that is not very nice!"

"Look," Anneth said, "we can prove this."

"Oh yeah, how?"

"You're..." Anneth looked Nick up and down, trying to gauge it.
She was surprised she wasn't even good at placing herself in terms
of age, but she took a shot at it. "You are at least seventeen."

Nick looked at her like she was an idiot. "Twenty two," he said,
pretty bitterly.

"Oh," Anneth said. Well, damn. That changed things quite a lot,
from where she thought this was at. "I'm sorry."

"Why?"

Because that put him, currently, in a very dark place he had been
in, in the few years after Myrtle had died. She hesitated to even
bring that up, though. What did she have to say to him about it?
It clearly wasn't anything that had helped, if she didn't even
remember having had this meeting with a stranger at night by a
lake. And at this particular moment, the guy seemed to be in what
would have been a better than usual mood, overall.

"If you're twenty two, I know who you lost a couple years ago,"
she said.

"It wasn't a secret, that doesn't make you special."

"No, I know. That isn't what I was going to bring up, I just
didn't know that had happened yet, and, I'm sorry. I really know
how it is right now."

"Yeah, well." Nick shrugged.

"But, my point," Anneth brought back up, "is that you're older
than fifteen, when you got Howard to give you a tramp stamp of
Bender the robot lying seductively and burping fire."

Nick suddenly snorted, and doubled over, wheezing out laughter,
barely able to breathe. In the breaths he could get out, he
mocked, "There's no way... you..."

His words trailed off as Anneth loosened her belt, turned around,
and lifted up the back of her flannel, showing the exact tattoo
that Nick assuredly had. Well. She had actually gotten it touched
up, since, but it was the same lines Howard had done, in the
parlor they'd broken into that night.

"Noooo fucking way," Nick muttered.

"Fraid so," Anneth said, and then hiked her pants back up again,
and faced herself once more.

Nick's eyes darted all over her, seeming to take her in for real
now. He seemed afraid of her, actually. All the implications.
Really the one main implication, but, that one was nothing that
had started to be on Nick's mind yet, not for a couple more years,
at least. Anneth let out a little huff of a laugh, actually. She
really was such a fucking dude back then, back now. She, he, had
taken masculinity by the horns. First to jump to the challenge at
any implication that he wasn't the best at something: the number
of times arm wrestling had happened at lunch tables well into high
school was stupid as fuck, but she remembered the fun he had had
in that, because he was really good at it, really strong, and
almost always won. The feeling of winning, of impressing people,
he sought that out so much. He and Myrtle had been insatiable in
riding competitions. She was a competitor type too. He and she,
they got each other on that. He had been asked in literal
interviews how he pushed the palomino so hard when he seemed to be
doing nothing. It was because she wanted to give things her all
too, and her all was very, very, very impressive without him
needing to act for an audience like he was the one pulling that
spirit out of her. The way they would fuck after a victory, her
thing giving rapture to his thing, his thing giving rapture to
hers, celebrating in their winning, they were champions, the most
incredible soulmates in the world.

Nick, twenty two and with that kind of fire dying from him
quickly, asked, "So what do you want? Cause I've kinda been
feeling done with things, and I'm surprised to see I live more
than another year."

"I don't know, dude. You get through things? It gets better than
this right here?"

"Does it?" Nick asked. "What do you do now?"

Anneth let out a long puff of air that flapped her lips. "Yeah not
much. Shit."

Nick made a pointedly unimpressed hum, and then took a flask out
of his jacket, and had a drink.

"Tch! Oh, come on!" Anneth said, only just realizing what should
have been a given, given that Nick was at that point in his life.
"You're drunk!"

"Guilty."

"You are actually blacked out right now!"

"That is a possibility, random crazy woman who is apparently me."

"Wow, so that's... huh," Anneth said, and then laughed once to
herself. "That does explain some things. But then... what could
possibly be the point of this? You're not going to remember this,
at all, I can tell you that already. Come tomorrow this is just
GONE, from your perspective. Huh." Anneth thought on that. "So I
guess this is for me? That seems wrong."

"Maybe this is the gods' last ditch effort to remind you of your
old ways and save you from cutting your schlong off."

"Oh that ship has sailed."

"What!"

"Can I wear that jacket?"

"Does something happen to the jacket too!"

"Maybe. But come on. I actually like PART of that idea that you
said, about reminding me of old things. I wanna wear the jacket
again."

"It is the best," Nick said. He took another sip from the flask,
set it down on the grass, and then did begin taking the jacket
off.

Anneth unshouldered the satchel she had packed, with the two
pears. She suppressed letting out a sigh of sadness at something
about that.

"What's that?" Nick asked, looking down at the satchel. He handed
the jacket out to his later self.

"Oh, it's a couple of pears I brought. If you want one--"

"I bet I can throw one farther than you."

Anneth let out a sharp laugh. "Ohhh wow, you are so what you are."

"Hundred percent. Well, I'm drinking Fireball right now which is
actually weak as shit, it's like, thirty percent, but I was
drinking other stuff earlier."

Anneth took the jacket, and put it on. It had been big on Nick, so
it still fit her, actually pretty perfectly, even with breasts in
lieu of abs, arms that were all around a lot less muscle, a bit
more cushion. It took her back. She wore it pretty damn often. It
was what enshelled her, him, in the crisp mornings in the stable,
as his breath and an assertive palomino's both produced clouds in
front of themselves. So often, they came close enough, stayed
close enough, to where their clouds were one combined effort,
breathing in each other's vapor, having each other's breath.

Nick rummaged clumsily through the satchel and grabbed out the
pears, and handed one to Anneth.

"You're really serious about throwing them," Anneth said. She had
meant it to be a question, but the answer was so apparent that she
couldn't maintain the interrogative tone for the entirety of the
sentence, and it fell out as a somewhat defeated statement, which
wasn't entirely what she had meant for it to be either, she was
amused by him, her old self, more than any other feeling, but the
words had come out a little bit wrongly.

"You can stand ten steps farther ahead than me," Nick offered.

"Fuck no, we're gonna do this even, let's go," Anneth said, and
walked with her pear to the edge of the water, at the end of the
finger of land. The vast open lake laid before them, black water
barely perceptible in the light of the crescent moon. Nick came up
to stand beside her. The both of them scooted their feet, looking
down at them in the dark, to make sure that each of them had the
frontmost part of the frontmost toe even with each other's.

Anneth tossed her pear up and down in her hand a couple of times,
feeling the weight of it, and then hurled it out into the water,
where it made a splash.

"Oh damn," she said. "I actually didn't think I would still be
able to throw that far."

"That was honestly respectable," Nick agreed.

Nick then hurled his pear out into the water. It went far enough
out that Anneth lost sight of it, and only heard the splash.

"You win, good job," Anneth said.

Nick gave a weird laugh, some kind of half snarling gloat, Anneth
wasn't even sure what her old self was going for with it.

"I like this," Anneth said. Her old jacket. Hanging out with,
well, a more animated self, even if it was from a place of him
doing very badly. "Kiss me," she said.

"Um," he said back. Slowly, he said, "I have never kissed a human
before."

Anneth shrugged. "Yeah I know. Neither have I. But I know what
this is now. I'm getting reignited. So spread the fire."

"I ain't got no fire left, since Myrtle's gone."

"Well, you're drinking Fireball, so you're more on fire than I
am."

Nick gave that snarling laugh again, and then said, "Sure," and
wrapped an arm around the back of her neck, and went in for a big,
long kiss. It felt silly, kissing a human, but she gave herself
over to it, let his lips peck and suck on her lips, let his tongue
slide in and run between her upper lip and her teeth. It seemed
like he might have just been getting started when suddenly, he was
gone, and she was in a dark room.

She walked through the dark towards the door, and opened it to see
the priest standing outside in the hall.

She said to him, in an excited whisper, because the place seemed
so quiet, compared to all the buzzing of cicadas, "It happened!"

"I can see," the priest said with an amused smile, looking down at
her chest.

Anneth followed his gaze down at herself, and realized, after a
moment, that she had come back wearing the leather jacket.

"Oh. OH."

The priest chuckled. He did not pry on details as they walked back
out, though Anneth did volunteer some of it, saying she had met
herself, and it had gone well, it had been good. The priest seemed
glad to hear it, and wished her a nice day at the front door.

Anneth stood outside in the sun for a moment, giving her eyes a
sec to adjust to the bright glare reflecting off of everything on
that cloudless noon. As she stood she thrusted her hands into her
jacket pockets, and it was then that she discovered the phone
resting in the left pocket, with a screen that was cracked in one
corner. Her breath stopped. Leaving a hand on the phone in the
pocket, she walked quickly to her car, and got in. Only there,
where she wouldn't have a chance of dropping it on the concrete,
did she take Nick's phone out of the jacket pocket, and press the
unlock button. She tapped in the passcode. It was one she no
longer used, too obvious. Six digits. And then she was in. Seeing
the home screen background alone caused tears to strike her. It
was a selfie of Nick and Myrtle, taken by Nick of course, with
Myrtle nosing over his shoulder, nuzzling against the side of his
head. It called back to mind the closeness of the mare, the weight
of a mare pressing her head against her human.

She went into the photos, and looked through them, every one that
had that palomino. It was like getting to say goodbye. No. It was
like getting to say I loved you. No. It was like getting to say I
loved you then, and I love you now, and you have shaped me and the
result of you on me will never leave me, and goodbye. When she had
looked at everything, she pressed the lock button on the phone,
and wondered if she might not ever choose to look at it again,
since she had gotten what she had needed to, less or more.

The following day in Doctor Holland's office, after they had
talked about some of the other things, she told him, "I'm gonna
start dating again. Maybe humans. Maybe not even looking for love,
but just to meet people. I'm just gonna go to things. Bars, live
music, the state fair. I'm just gonna get out and do things
again."