Warm comfort. All troubles forgotten.

  In the arms of a man who’d never spoken to me, I felt something otherworldly that was more dream than reality. Like I was at home and belonged and fit.

  Two puzzle pieces snapping into place.

  I wanted to sway like a breeze shifting the summer grasses. I thought I smelled hay or something lightly herby, and there was soft light.

  It was the deepest peace I’d ever known.

  I thought about looking up. To see Pitch’s face. To behold his eyes and find if there was another Cosmos in them, but the bigger part of me didn’t care to move.

  I just wanted to hold onto the goodness and love I felt in his embrace.

  Something grew, stronger than the welcome. It felt not urgent, but eager.

  Pitch wanted me to see something.

  Oh! I needed to agree. I did, and just like in a dream, the scene changed.

  At first it was a single prism of light, different colors, sparkling. Then, like a kaleidoscope, the light refracted, shifted, and changed shape into a multitude of prisms.

  Colors everywhere in forms my mind could barely comprehend. Numbers so vast I’d never conceive of them. But numbers didn’t matter. All I needed to know was that they were there, and there was purpose connecting them.

  A solitary want.

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  A thread of desire uniting the multitudes.

  It wasn’t revenge or fear or anger.

  It was hope.

  The myriads of the Known Cosmos were united in their desire for a better world.

  I inhaled sharply, stepping back, breaking the connection. Blinking rapidly, I tried to come back to myself, but there was too much light in my brain.

  “We’re?” I gasped softly. “There’s. . .”

  I looked up at Pitch as my vision cleared, and he held a hand to me again. I clasped it in both of mine and closed my eyes. I didn’t see anything that time, but I felt something.

  It was like a question. . . But not.

  A feeling of leaving the choice to me.

  Suddenly, I understood. I was the architect here. Pitch wasn’t doing something to me, and neither was Bitsy or some other reality.

  Not even time itself.

  What I did next was my decision—mine alone.

  I could go back to Earth and try to forget what I knew.

  Or maybe I could find my way to the Unknown Cosmos? Cast aside the disaster that was the cyber mafia?

  I had a choice, but from where I stood, that was no choice at all.

  My eyes opened, looking into Pitch’s, and I declared with all that I was, “I will finish what I’ve started. I have a job to do, and I'll see it done.”

  I wasn’t gonna bail.

  Pitch's eyes glistened. Glowing like a purple nebulae held within.

  Then I was no longer in the Ayela Arcana Sanctuary. I was amongst the prisms of light again, but they weren’t static images. They moved in a dance, reorienting themselves.

  Shifting, aligning, whirling into place.

  It was an infinity puzzle. A chess game no one could perceive in full.

  I understood without question.

  I had a choice, and I’d made it.

  And I wasn’t the only one.

  Multitudes would take their decisions to heart, reaching into their deepest places. Confronting their fears. Gathering what they loved.

  They’d choose, and the confluence of lifelines would stream together, forging the way ahead.

  No one person bore the weight of the future on her shoulders.

  I sang softly, “The want, the need, the endless desire. Those hearts that sing, they light the fire. . . You’ll weave with stars the final scene. No one can stop or come between. This moment screams through times unseen. Your life and love they join the streams.”

  I looked at Pitch, smiling, and found him beaming back.