of all our ambitions, we swam aimlessly together, absorbing the ever sunlit waters, the sunlit waters absorbing us. In the evenings, we rested, afloat in the oceans, and let our wet, ghostly hair become tangled together as we indulged in a kind of sleep, our mutual dreams a permeable construction.
Glen welcomed us, poured us amaranthine tea. He wanted to know how we had found him, and Benjamin only smiled as he traced the path of the waterfalls from one floating island to another until it reached the stream at our feet. Later, we each chose an island for ourselves. Susy and Lionel preferred the views from the highest, to observe the flight paths of immense birds. Benjamin staked his claim to an island that geysered mist scented like bergamot and warm cashmere wool, the contented exhale of a young world. Helena and I preferred one where the water formed a bottomless oasis that reminded me of my frozen lakes. It was Glen who made the observation that, Just as we left one another behind on different worlds, establishing a constellation of death, so we choose to replicate our variable distances on a constellation of islands. Glen, the psychologist, the sociologist, the philosopher, the gloomiest of us all. We knew he missed his best friend, Francisco, and so we made one last journey.
Francisco, bandaged with browning leaves, kissed each of us with lips stained azure on unfamiliar berries and roots. He offered handfuls of golden fruit that dripped saffron nectar through our porous hands. We smiled as we listened to Francisco, an acclaimed botanist, describe a world flourishing, alive in a way that we were not. It was not unlike our old world, he said, though there was one main exception. Here, our words come alive, he cautioned. We remembered then the blades that had cut him down, but we had never considered that such a magic might be useful. Suddenly, everyone turned to me.
I had no special degrees. I had dropped out of high school and as I worked dead end jobs, I had written a few stories that eventually became
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