There was something ethereal about Songserra at night, a quavering essence to the streets that whispered “what you encounter today will never be seen again.” In front of us on the sidewalk, a hovering sphere of glossy obsidian argued loudly with a wizard over which operating system was best. They were either both drunk, high, or sparked, because they shouted with such fervor that the nearby troupe of high school students nudged the spective in their midst, who held out their paws and willed a shimmering, soundproof bubble into existence around the kids.
Ana and I squeezed between the two groups, the riotous clamor of the old to our right and the embarrassed silence of the young to our left, then met each other’s eyes and burst out laughing.
We were off after that, jogging hand-in-hand down the street for no reason other than that the sun would rise and our time would end and it seemed a crime to let any of these sweet, syrupy moments slip from our skin.
The restaurant we hit up served potatoes hot and cheap, with no regard for the time of day. It was perhaps still more than a couple who had just lost their latest job should have spent, but I needed one moment free from fear for the future, and Phin’s Potatoes provided.
They served one thing, and they served it good. There was no toppings bar or menu, just baked potatoes with butter and sour cream, and they were heavy and warm as soft sun-baked stones. Any of my rations cards could have bought twenty of them in a month; I swiped my Metran-Cuisine-Lovers card and tossed a boxed potato to Ana.
I think that’s when the magic set in, when the mantle of spectivity swirled soft around my shoulders. I caught a glimpse of the cook in the backroom, how they wove a net of light with their fingers and transmuted some kind of dark sludge into sour cream, and I nudged Ana and she gagged a little and then we both devoured the potatoes anyway because we hadn’t eaten since noon.
The magic of the moment gripped me, and I flexed my will against the world’s. The colors of the potato stand melted into each other like sidewalk chalk in summer rain, and from the rivulets and swirls I guided us to the cookie shop we’d gone on a date to last month.
We startled the cashier, as teleportation tends to do, and he tucked away his phone, the movie still faintly playing from his pocket. “Ah—what can I get you two?”
“Rodleri, right?” I asked. When he nodded hesitantly, I said, “Walnut flour medium for me, please.”
“Cranberry,” Ana said, and a heartbeat later we crumpled two empty cookie wrappers into the cheap paper boxes we’d gotten our dinner in.
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I called the magic once more, the bakery becoming liquid blurs as we took the shortened path, and all at once we were face-to-face by the duck pond that had closed for maintenance last spring.
It was empty, the reflecting pond drained, but the moon found a home in Ana’s eyes instead. The singing velocity with which the night had passed seemed to slow a moment, perhaps caught and dammed up in the nearby pond. “You’re pretty,” I said, poking her lightly in the shoulder.
Ana blushed. “You’re beautiful,” she replied. “Honestly, I don’t deserve you.”
I poked her again, harder, though I could have hit her as hard as I could and not made a dent in those arms of hers. “Doesn’t matter what you deserve. I want you. You, Anachel. You’re mine.”
Her breath hitched slightly, and she tilted her chin up, perhaps meant for agreement but swiftly repurposed to let me kiss her neck. “Yours,” she managed to agree breathily.
I slid one hand under her shirt, but with a disappointed sigh Ana said, “Wait.”
Immediately, the pleasant flush to my thoughts withdrew, and I took my hands off her, reassessing. She had a grim, frustrated expression, though given our chat in the tram I suspected it wasn’t at me. “Hey. You okay?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I was really enjoying your… it’s not you,” she said. “I’m sorry, it’s just… not the time.”
The mantle of power that had swirled around me balked at the concept of not the time. For mine was the power that made “next block over” measure time instead of space, the power of streets blurred from laughter and nevermorrow sunrise. It was the magic of the moment, and letting that moment end would take the magic with it.
But if Ana wasn’t in the mood, she wasn’t in the mood, and that was that. The power didn’t understand—it simply wasn’t its nature. It was ephemeral and delicate as a strand of hair in the breeze, and it was never meant to be forever.
So carefully, I packed it away. I opened the greasy paper box lined with sugar cookie crumbs, holding it to the sky, and let it fill with moonlight. The power coursed from my heart and soul, and I knew I would never be able to teleport on my own, ever again.
But some shard of that was infused in the box, as I folded and sealed it for a rainy day.
The moment packed away, I sat on the stone bench overlooking an empty pond, nodding to Ana. “We can just be with each other, if you’d like.”
She nodded slowly, sitting next to me. “Yeah. Can we do that?”
Oh, sweet, silly Anachel. “Of course.”
She sat next to me, and after a moment, I lightly rested my head on her shoulder. She didn’t stiffen or shift, just resting her head on mine. After a moment, she draped her jacket over my shoulders, holding in our warmth. And we stayed like that until our shoulders ached and the sun began to rise and a couple grumpy cops with rotten persimmons on their belts told us to clear out of what was, to them, just an empty pond.
