We awoke unusually early on a very sunny day with the realization that we were going to get to visit the Coffee Collective at Aunti Zero’s and tell them about everything wonderful and scary.

We were full of adrenaline and endorphins, just like we’d been for the full month and a half after we’d agreed to accept that we were trans. Our body just didn’t need any more sleep.

“Dang!” Peter said, as we breezed into the kitchen and danced around him to reach for our English muffins and peanut butter.

“Yeah!” Sarah replied.

“This seems good,” he said.

“Maybe it is!” she said, cryptically.

Every movement was easy. Every inanimate object we interacted with cooperated. Everything happened in perfect order with perfect grace, as if we didn’t even have to exert any force to do it. The English muffin came in half and fell into the toaster, and the toaster lever went down, all in one fluid motion as if the curvature of space itself made it happen.

“Boom,” Sarah said quietly in a light little voice. Then she turned to Peter and said, “Goreth is in love, and I can feel it!” And then she wagged our finger at the sky and said, “And there are plans!”

Peter’s eyes widened, and he couldn’t help smiling, but he did so conservatively and asked, “Earthly plans?”

Sarah dropped our shoulders and looked at him and said, “Maybe? One day? But maybe not.”

“Ah, well,” Peter said, “I’ll miss out then. But if it’s making you like this, I think we all benefit anyway.” He went back to his coffee project.

“Who is huh wuh?” Abigail said from the kitchen doorway, just waking up before her morning routine for work, which we often missed.

“Hey, cute stuff,” Sarah said, poking her in the nose.

“Hey! Don’t.”

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”

“No, actually, you can,” Abigail said. “Just, after coffee and food, OK?”

“Working on the coffee part,” Peter said.

“Good.” Abigail shuffled further into the kitchen to stand beside Peter and just stare at what he was doing.

“We’ll do our tea when you’re all done,” Sarah said, and glided us out to the living room to sway and look out the windows at the neighbors starting their commutes, while we waited for the toast to pop.

“I did ask what’s going on, I thought,” Abigail called after us.

“Oh,” Peter said from beside her. “It sounds like they’ve expanded the polycule. Explains why they’re so giddie and graceful this morning.”

“Oh!”

“But, you know. On the Sunspot,” Peter said. “Things like this make it seem more real to me, though.”

“Oh,” Abigail said a little more quietly. “That’s cool.” Then she shuffled out into the livingroom and asked, “Are they coming over here to join you? Or, are you just going to put them in your books? Oh, you could draw them!”

We turned to face her and she was standing just as I’d perceived her without our eyes.

Sarah said, more down to Earth, “Probably not coming over here anytime soon. But definitely in a book, with their consent. And drawing them is a great idea! With their consent, of course, which I bet they’ll give.”

“Neat!” Abigail lit up. Then pouted a little, “sad they won’t visit, though.”

“We’ll see,” Sarah said. “You know how Ashwin talks about these things. Earth is harsh compared to what they’re used to. And coming over here is a commitment to pain.”

Abigail nodded solemnly and said, “Preach it.”

“Well,” Sarah stretched. “We haven’t felt this good since I came out as a girl!”

“Fuckin’ rahr!” Abigail said, and then grinned toothily.

“I love it,” Peter called from the kitchen.

“Can you tell us about them?” Abigail asked.

“They want us to!”

“Well?”

Our toast popped up.

So we started telling Peter and Abigail about Nifirri and Geri as we all went about making our breakfasts and collecting around the dining table.

“So, they’re basically like new ol’ gaming buddies, but with benefits?” Peter asked after we’d taken turns gushing for a while.

“Depends on what you mean by ‘benefits’,” I said.

“Sex?” Abigail asked outright.

“Eh….” I said, then abruptly stopped as I realized whose name I was saying in the process. I breathed and composed myself and said, “You know we’re both asexual. We’re not exactly opposed to sex, but we’re not attracted to people for it. And the way they do things there, well. They’re alien. We’re still learning. Feeling things out.”

“In what ways?” Peter asked casually.

“Well, in a practical sense, you know, they don’t have the socioeconomic pressures we do,” I said. “That’s saying nothing about their biological drives and instincts. Just, there’s no pressure to start a family, or to form anything remotely like the U.S. nuclear family, and hasn’t been for millenia.” Whenever I was on Earth, I found it hard to add on the ‘over a hundred’ part to that. The significance of time was just so different in both places. “So, what that means is that they haven’t had that weaponization of romantic love and sexualities that we’ve had here. Not since they broke away from their parent ship, at least. And, there’s just no urgency for any of it.”

Peter chewed his food for a bit, blinking, and then guessed, “I expect with advanced technology and all extending their lifespans and making them healthier, mortality is less of a driving force, too.”

I folded our arms and leaned on the table. It felt a little bit like loafing as a humanoid. And I gave him what I think was a sardonic look, “I forget what we’ve told you about their lifespans, I mean, besides that Aswhin is nearly five hundred of our years old.”

He blinked one more time, definitively, and then said, “Ah, yes. Right!”

“So, yeah, you’re right about that. Extremely right,” I said, leaving out the part about how we benefited from that, too. Because I remembered how much it hurt Abigail to think about it.

“So, what would ‘benefits’ be a euphemism for?” Peter asked.

“Cuddle piles like we used to see our classmates have in highschool, that we felt like we couldn’t join for some reason,” I said.

“Ooh,” Abigail said into her coffee. “We’re going to have to get more plushies to make up for that here.”

“Yeah,” Sarah said. “That’d be good!”

“So, what about their biological drives and instincts?” Peter asked. “How does that work?”

“I mean,” I said. “They’re animals, like us. Remarkably like us.” ‘Like us’ felt weird, but I knew it made sense to him. “So, aside from the removal of survival pressures by their technology and culture, they’ve still got the same type of basic evolutionary background, for the most part. They’re extremely social animals, too. So, cuddling is big. Making sure everyone is fed as a matter of hospitality is not part of their culture, because that’s already taken care of, but eating is thoroughly enjoyed. Sex is a thing. They feel embarrassed, and prideful, and jealous, and all of that, too. Just, like, compared to us, really slowed down and thoughtfully. A bit less so for people our age, though, like Geri and Nifirri. I think their child rearing instincts are really different from ours, though, since they hatch from eggs, and haven’t built families from personal lineages for ages.”

Our housemates were both nodding with interest but working to finish their food. It was pretty obvious they didn’t have time to chat as much as we had the capacity for. So, we took a moment to take a bite and drink our tea.

I decided that we shouldn’t tell them about the Dancer, if we hadn’t already. That could wait for the evening.

I sighed and said, “They’re on the verge of a new era, really. Maybe letting go of their bonds to organic life altogether, except for maintaining the Garden. Perfect for a series of science fiction novels, I guess.”

“Right!” Peter exclaimed, perking up. “How’s that coming?”

I scratched our head, realizing I’d lost track. I tugged on Ashwin to try to get nem to come forward, and they blearily did.

“Round three of edits,” Ashwin mumbled, and then reached for our tea.

“Fantastic!” Peter declared.

“Thank you,” Ashwin replied.

Round three? How had I completely missed round two?

Ashwin gave a sleepy smile and returned back to our subconscious, leaving me holding the tea unsipped.

I felt their physical exhaustion and sleepiness slip away with nem, to be replaced by a more subdued version of our original euphoria. Completely awake and well rested again, but not with all of our cells singing.

I opened our mouth and let our tongue hang on our top front teeth for a moment before dropping down, and squinted. “Was Ashwin up really late last night?” I asked.

“Yep,” Abigail said into her coffee.

“I wonder how much sleep we got,” I said.

Abigail shrugged.

“Well, we better not keep you two with our rambling,” I said. “We can hypeshare with the Coffee Collective until we see you this evening.”

Peter frowned at us as if he was trying to examine us for flaws, and Abigail looked up from her cup.

“What?” I asked.

Peter perked his head forward and put his right hand on the table and said, “They left for their sailing trip last month. You had a little party with them and everything.”

—

The shock of that.

Our plurality is such that, after Peter had reminded us, our memories returned, and our headmates filled us in on anything we might have missed anyway. But we’d made the social gaff of forgetting in front of our family, and then we’d felt the shock of so much missing time and suddenly absent friends before our memories returned.

After that, even when you start piecing things together, the shock and terror of it, the self recrimination, none of it goes away.

You might feel it for years afterward as this one moment When That Happened.

So, we took a shower when both our housemates had left, and cried in it. And had some more tea, and listened to music out loud.

And then, instead of going to Aunti Zero’s and seeing any of our other friends and acquaintances there, we went to the Zoo to recollect ourselves while visiting the animals.

We may have finally forgotten our beloved cane, we were so out of it. We didn’t really need it anymore, except for self defense and style. And it was nice to walk around with both our hands in our dress’s pockets and mope.

This meant a bus ride to the MAX station, and then a MAX ride across the city.

And we didn’t put our headphones in right away, again, because we were off our routines. So we overheard some conversation on the MAX between a couple of people who looked like fellow queer folks.

“Did you hear about the Supreme Court’s ruling today?”

Silence from their friend.

After a bit, “Yeah, that was my reaction, too.”

“Don’t know what to do.”

“Yeah.”

No cussing. No exclamations of anger or frustration. No calls to protest. No hyperbolic declarations of, ‘we’re fucked this time!’

Just.

That.

We’d never heard that before, regarding the Supreme Court.

Things had been really bad in the last decade, on and off. Heartstoppingly terrifying sometimes. We thought we were going to be killed outright by our government at one point.

But we hadn’t ever experienced whatever-it-was-we’d-just-heard bad before.

Feeling our heart collapse into vacuum and our muscles calcify with shivery horror, I thought, I’m glad Erik and Beau and Murmur are out of the country, and, I don’t want to know what it is. We missed it somehow for real, and I don’t want to learn what’s coming.

There was silence from the rest of the system, and I quickly grabbed our earbuds and shoved them into our ears and hit play, before we could overhear anything more.

By the time you’re reading this, you know what happened. You’ve seen it on the news if you’re on Earth, or you’ve learned about it in school. And if you’re on the Sunspot, we’ve spread the word there via other channels. If you’re reading this book and wonder, you can ask Metabang. It’s agreed to field those questions for us, the Sweetheart.

I’m not going to write about it, and I’m not sure Sarah is either, if she writes her book. I want my reaction recorded here for history, but I don’t want the words in my book itself.

When we did finally learn just what had happened, I almost managed to go permanently dormant on this side of the Tunnel.

—

Using the annual zoo pass our parents always gave us for Christmas, a holiday we don’t celebrate, to pay for our way, we trundled into the park.

We didn’t even look in the direction of the mobility scooters, leaving them for the people who needed them more than we did. Moving our legs now helped more than it hurt anymore. Though, what we’d learned of our conditions, prognosis wasn’t great for anyone without Ktletaccete help.

Interferon might have helped. Maybe.

We were uniquely fortunate that no doctors had diagnosed us properly yet, but holy shit balls, that doesn’t go for anyone else. Unless your magic works for real like ours does, where mutual consent for its practice can sometimes be achieved through raw cultural ableism, don’t not seek a diagnosis for physical things like what might be Multiple Sclerosis.

With the actual quackery out there, even perpetuated by the medical establishment sometimes, I feel really iffy about sharing anything we’ve experienced with our local Earthlings, honestly. Your consensual realities are not ours. Don’t assume.

If you can trust your ancestors or your doctors, defer to them.

Please.

We have alien scientists on board.

Anyway.

We’re not going to tell you that you don’t. Just.

Don’t do this at home, OK?

We’re insane.

I’m a dragon.

Moving on.

Deeper into the park, searching for the penguins.

We wanted to observe and softly interact with an abundant social animal with curiosity who’d likely be pretty active. Who weren’t humans or Ktletaccete.

Penguins were a pretty good choice for that.

By ‘softly interact’, I mean to make eye contact with, influence just by standing there, and not much else. The animals do know you’re there. We of the Inmara of Portland are maybe a little bit more in tune with and sensitive to their reactions is all. So we can appreciate them more clearly than humans can.

We kept our earbuds in. We were listening to Metric, the Nimona soundtrack, and a small mix of other similar music on a dedicated MP3 player we’d gotten recently, and we didn’t want to hear people talking.

There’s this one little band from up in Washington called Bellamaine, and I hesitate to recommend them because I don’t know their politics and some of their songs sound suspiciously like Evangelical worship music. But they have this one amazing song called, “Don’t be far away,” and we had that in our mix.

And it came on right after Mary Lambert’s “So far away”, and tears started streaming down our face as we approached the swimming birds’ enclosure.

“So far away” is about long distance relationships. Which, that’s obvious for us.

“Don’t be far away”, however, seems to be about reaching out to someone who’s been emotionally distant, maybe someone who’s dissociating due to pain or depression. And, it has a line about sitting together and catching up over old times, and missing that, and how important it is to keep talking.

All its lyrics are about that.

And it’s a duet, between a man and a woman, both with fairly young sounding voices, a tender tenor and a soft soprano. And it always makes me want to hug Sarah and never let go.

I know the song’s not anything about transition or plurality, but I can’t help but relate it to the sorrows and joys of both. The losses and rediscoveries. The coaxing out of an old friend or sibling that’s been hiding since early childhood, and maybe has missed way too much of the outside world, and who hasn’t ever gotten to be herself, and then finally giving her what she needed all this time. A life.

And we stood and watched the penguins for maybe hours, not thinking about much of anything except occasionally of pasts that never could have been. Quiet.

The playlist looped on shuffle three times.

Then we left the zoo without looking at any of the other animals, and rode back to Pioneer Square to splurge with what would have been our coffee money and have a half a cheesesteak, saving the other half for tomorrow.

And we sat and kept listening to that same music while eating and watching seagulls in the sky.

It was a bad day.

Maybe the beginning of a lot of bad days.

But it was ultimately something we really needed.

A day where we didn’t talk to anybody for hours and didn’t really think about anything significant but old daydreams.

It was already Summer. Half a year had gone by in a blink, and I didn’t understand it. It was all there. We could prompt the memories and trace events, but it felt like it had been just yesterday that we’d had the scare regarding Aunti Zero’s health inspection and possible permanent closure.

And because it was Summer, when it was getting close to dinner time it was not getting dark yet.

Stuffing the other half of the sandwich, rewrapped in foil, into our purse, we got up and headed for the MAX home.

Swiping our HOP card on the reader before the train even became visible from up the track, I revisited our reality.

I thought, At least we have our families. Erik, Beau, and Murmur are safe at sea, and we can contact them on occasion, and they’ll be back if things go well, and we can warn them if they don’t. Peter and Abigail have our backs while we’re here. Nifirri and Geri are helping us make a home on the Sunspot as we speak. And we have all of you.

There was silence from everyone, but I could feel the weight of their agreements giving me strength to move.

I even felt the cuttlecrabs scuttling about.

Let’s keep writing, and let’s keep pulling our shit together.