I have the weirdest feeling. One I’ve personally never had before.

I should be writing.

I’m an artist. Writing is Goreth’s thing, or Ashwin’s thing.

But as I approach the door to my grandma’s house, I can only think, This is stupid, I should be writing. There are words that need to exist.

—

Erik is facing the apoplectic visage of his boyfriend, Beau, words ringing in his recent memory, an almost physically painful vibration in the following verbal silence.

Waves are making plocking noises on the side of the boat.

His brain refuses to process the meaning of what was said, focused instead on the muttering of the Murmuration and Beau’s friends from belowdecks.

“What?” Erik asks.

Beau’s voice is as taught as a line when under sail, but he doesn’t repeat his words. Instead, he says, “I am beginning to feel like you’ve come aboard a fire ship to my crew, and I won’t have it. Go sit forward, on the bow, while I clean up this mess.”

‘Come aboard a fire ship’? What does that mean?

The webs that bind everything together are thickening around the mast, stretching with every sway of the boat.

One of the other Eriks is already seated where Beau had just pointed for him to go, cuttlecrab on his lap, waiting.

Wanting, needing to say so much more, Erik only manages a shaky, “OK.” And then he begins to make the nerve wracking climb to the front of the vessel.

He’s always felt like a victim of his own decisions. Decisions that had no other alternatives because of the consequences of the decisions before them. And he can’t trace them back to the one time he’d actually had a choice in something. Not anymore. It’s been too long. Or there never was one.

Maybe he’s wrong about that. Maybe he’s seeing everything all warped by bitterness and paranoia. But here he is, headed toward a time out, just as if his mom had ordered it, because he couldn’t face the fallout from standing up to Beau.

And then, from there, who knows what will happen while he’s sulking in the one momentarily private section of the boat.

Only it’s not exactly private, is it?

“Hello,” says the other Erik. “First time?”

—

Knock? Or ring the doorbell?

The doorbell always feels rude and knocking, inadequate. When visiting Erik or the Murmuration, we always text them instead to let them know we’re there. This feels untenable.

I knock. Better to be inadequate than belligerent.

Really?

Knocking is not belligerent?

That knock sure came out louder and more forceful than I’d intended.

The agonizing delay before the door is answered gives me time to think about the changes to the old house front. It’s been over four years since we’ve been here last. And the last time we visited, it was on our own dime, alone, to be with our grandma during better times and under more favorable conditions. The reason we hadn’t made it between then and now is for lack of money.

Nevermind the cars filling up the driveway and burdening the curb well into the neighboring properties, more permanent things have been altered. 

The old hydrangea bush that was growing too close to the house near the front porch, staining the siding with rot, is gone, and the wall repaired and repainted. But only in that spot. And the wisteria that lined the porch, and gave rats something to climb on, is gone, too. Better for the house, for sure, but I hate it. It makes it feel like someone else owns the house now.

The lawn is freshly mowed. Not a thing I’m used to seeing here.

All the trees and bushes that line the property are taller, though, and that feels right and good. But the lowest branches of many of the trees have been pruned, making it possible to walk under them and to see the neighboring houses. I don’t know what to think about that.

Somehow these alterations seem more jarring and upsetting than all the new apartment buildings that crowd the neighborhood, that made it harder for us to recognize that we were in the right place. We’d almost missed our bus stop and the city no longer feels like a place we know. But this is personal.

Of course, we’ve changed, too. A lot.

I can’t exactly say it was two genders ago. Not even a name change. We’d technically still been recovering from surgery the last time we’d visited, and our family had already reckoned with our transition. But, four years of HRT and a new haircut can change a lot about a person.

More than twice the number of headmates and an unwillingness to mask anything is also the kind of change that won’t go unnoticed.

To make an extra point, though, I’d shaved twice this morning, freshly trimmed our side cut, and put on my favorite dark red lipstick. Even a little eye shadow. Leaving our backpack at the motel room, I’d thrown on our great aunt’s old navy blue wool cloak, zipped our feet into a new pair of moto boots, which became partially hidden by our red, purple, and black broom skirt, straightened our feathered wide brim hat, and made sure I had our cane, which I could hook into the inside pocket of our cloak when not using it.

It’s an old outfit with a few new additions that we haven’t had the energy to wear most days. There’s a black tank top in there, too, but it’s hardly worth mentioning. It could be any shirt. It’s the rest of the clothes that make the point.

Goreth calls it our draconic look, but I feel very comfortable in it, too. Like a cross between a swashbuckler and a witch.

Our phone, which is not getting enough bars for a call here, is in our right cloak pocket. I’ve already removed our earbuds and curled them up in that same pocket. Our left cloak pocket has our left hand, and a little resin dragon’s egg we’ve recently purchased as a stim toy and surrogate brood for Goreth.

I’m clutching the egg and feeling comfort from it when the door finally opens.

It’s uncle Joseph, who says, “Ah,” in a short, emotionless assessment.

I know him. I know his feelings about me, and past reactions, and I am absolutely going to force the issue. I’m one of the women of this family, even if we’ve changed our last name to Ampersand, and we women of the family hug.

I smile, open my arms, and step forward, saying, “Hey, Joseph!” I’m even respecting his name according to his specifications.

I’m met with a stiff outstruck hand at gut level, rigid and aimed right at me, ready to be shaken.

So I drop my arms and my smile, turn away from him, and walk inside, greeted by the chatter of family in the other rooms of the house, but not by a single, “Hey, it’s Sarah!”

Why am I doing this?

Why am I subjecting myself to all of this?

When I’d gotten the invitation, I’d committed our entire system to the course, but now I can’t remember why.

—

How in the hell did he get on a boat in the first place?

This is rich people shit!

Sure he had a life vest on, and had had the luck and fortune to have a mom who’d had the money and determination to force him to take a few swimming lessons when he was a little girl. But damn.

And, of course, they weren’t actually sailing around the world, like he’d assumed they’d do. Beau had, months ago, mentioned the idea, and it had sounded amazing at the time. He’d said it was easily possible with his captain’s license, his own sailboat, and enough planning.

And, high on the thrill of hosting a sub-collective of cuttlecrabs from the Sunspot, and seeking ways to bond with Rräoha, the Ktletaccete visitor in the Murmuration’s system, he’d agreed to the whole deal as the right thing to do. Despite everything.

Also, there had been that fleeting thought that maybe, just maybe, being on a boat with his boyfriend there’d be times when he wouldn’t have to mask about anything. Even with the Murmuration there, there’d be moments at least.

But there hadn’t been quite enough communication there or something, and there were others on the boat now too, and this was just a trial run up and down the coast.

Absolutely for the best, too, though. Holy shit this was bad. Foolish.

It turned out that the costs per person alone for doing a world tour on a little seaworthy sailboat was close to a thousand dollars per person, per month. No way Erik could save up for that on his barista’s wages, not even with big tips. The only way he’d been able to swing this shorter trip was to get a promise from Zeda and Morris of Aunti Zero’s to consider hiring him when he got back after three months away.

Working with Kate would be a hoot, though, so he’s looking forward to that. Clinging to that vision of the future while sitting here with his hallucinations, one of his headmates, and the Collective for company on his angry boyfriend’s damn boat is maybe all that is keeping him from jumping ship and trying to swim to shore. Well, fear of water this deep, too. And knowing that riptides exist.

Hypothermia is probably not a great idea, either.

It’s not that he thinks he’s that good at swimming, by any stretch of the imagination. It’s that the urge to get away is so strong that it takes all of his natural fear of the ocean and hopes for the future to keep him where he’s at.

They’d been down to southern California and back already. The plan was to sail up to the top of Washington next. And they’d been dawdling, enjoying the ports and beaches.

The costs for a short trip like this one were so much less, at least.

The financial costs.

The psychological and social costs, on the other hand?

If a sailing trip this lax is this hard for him to handle, well…

He looks back toward the stern of the ship, the back of it, and the opening to the cabin, whatever the hell that’s called. Everyone else is belowdecks, away from him and his skyrocketing psychosis.

A cuttlecrab taps him on his knee with a foot, and lays a tentacle on his bare skin. It wants to sit in his lap, too.

Sure, little guy, come on up, he thinks.

And the cuttlecrab waves its two tentacles and flashes its belly lights for help, so he obliges, lifting it up with both hands, holding it gently like a hamburger full of gagh, thinking the whole time, you don’t need my actual hands for this.

He looks back up at the webs that crisscross the sky and bind the mast of the boat to the shore and to everything else, even things that are way out past the horizon.

It is a cloudless afternoon off the coast of northern California, and hot. He’s using a temporary shelter erected on the bow of the boat just for the purposes of keeping the sun off anyone lounging here while they’re moored.

But against the sun and blue of the sky, the webbing of the universe has taken the cast of a thunderstorm, the bottom surfaces of the thick material dark as if with rain and static electricity.

Erik swears he can smell ozone.

There are lurkers in the surf, too, standing on the water and bobbing with it like Jesus Christs.

Yep. The stresses of this little adventure have made it a bad one.

Now it’s just a question of who’ll survive it.