We didn't discuss it any further over the weekend; Tammy could tell that I needed space after that conversation, and she probably did too. Thankfully, it didn't feel like there was any tension between us; we were in nearly the same boat, trying to make sense of unfamiliar feelings (or lack-of-feelings) after a major life upset, and we needed time to figure things out. Gil also let me be, and I took the opportunity to do a lot of serious not actually thinking about it.

In my defense, I was pretty sure that was what I needed right now; I hardly knew what to make of it all, and that wasn't going to change in the space of a couple days, whether I obsessed over it or not. Besides, I had an essay to finish for Comp; the instructor had dropped one last assignment on us before Christmas break, to everyone's chagrin. But I got it almost-done pretty quick, and it kept my mind occupied when I really wanted it not to wander, so it worked out.

Emma's too-chipper insistence that Monday was the solstice - and Tuesday was therefore the first day of spring - was also a bit of a distraction. She wasn't, as far as I knew, a neo-pagan or a member of any other group that celebrated it, and she didn't have any festivities planned; in fact, she was flying back home to spend Christmas with the family. Near as I could tell, it was a way to psyche herself up for the long, slow cessation of winter; she'd been feeling the cold more than Tammy or I.

(That was natural, I imagined - she had more exposed skin on her head than the rest of us, and even for normal people it's a major point of heat exchange. In fact, she'd taken to going outside nestled snug in the crook of her arm, wearing an ushanka and wrapped up to the nose in a thick, warm, and tastefully-coordinated scarf.)

It was strange to wake up Monday morning and not have anywhere to be - Comp was my only class for the rest of the week, and that wasn't until the afternoon. I was a little surprised that I didn't just stay in bed; it was dark and overcast and I didn't need the weatherman to tell me that a storm was moving in. Normally, my deep-brain mammalian instincts would be telling me to hunker down and sleep through it; but I didn't have those anymore. Instead, I got up, sprinkled some substrate into Lucky's terrarium, and sat down to put the finishing touches on my essay.

I could hear Tammy get up and start her morning exercises on the other end of the suite, but it wasn't until late into the morning that Emma finally stirred, groaned, and worked her way out of bed. "Guhhh," she moaned, "smoke" billowing with irritation. "It is way the hell too cold out to have to get up today."

"At least the room's heated," I offered.

"Not enough." She stretched, working the kinks out of her back; I wondered if, somewhere out there beyond space and time, her neck was cracking. "Hella glad I'm gonna be out of here tonight and back where winter's a little more reasonable."

"Well, enjoy it for us," I chuckled. Not that I minded the winter terribly, even before becoming a machine; you could get used to pretty much anything if you grew up with it. Though the wind could whip up the hillside from the lake basin pretty good, and when the weather really got serious it could get a bit hairy even for us natives...

"Enjoy it for you!? Are you kidding?" she cackled, picking herself up off the bed and setting herself on the dresser while she browsed through her closet. "I'm gonna be gloating the whole time. We're gonna have spiked cocoa in front of a roaring fire while it's hardly less'n thirty-two degrees out, and I am gonna bask in the decadence of it while you poor souls are stuck here freezing your tits off." She settled on a cashmere sweater, knit leggings, and woolen jumper with a cardigan over top, and started to change.

It took me a moment to parse that, and then another moment of feeling weird about it on a couple levels before I put it out of my mind. I could hear Tammy chuckle in the other room. "Laugh it up," she called over. "I'm gonna be back home myself on Christmas Eve, and you don't even know what you're gonna be missing. You haven't lived until you've had my dad's baklava."

"Yeah, uh-huh," Emma scoffed. "Hey, Sue, speaking of sweets, I'm gonna hit the cafeteria and load up on goodies while they've still got the sugar cookies out. Wanna come? I could use the carrying capacity."

"I'm not your freakin' mule, Emma," I said, rolling my eyes as I got up from my desk. "And I can't even eat them anymore."

"Hey, it's not my fault if the ox that treadeth out the grain has issues with gluten," she said, turning herself to the mirror and fixing her hair.

"It's at least as much your fault as it is any of ours," I grumbled, thinking wistfully back to that pie at the Greenfields' as I got changed. "You're just lucky I need to run down to the print center."

"You know you just miss my company," she teased, "smoke" shimmering merrily. "You could use the printer in the dorm lobby, if you really didn't want to come."

"I'm not touching that thing," I said, face twitching and mechanisms rattling at the memory of it. "I don't know what's wrong with it, but I've seen it switch between color, black-and-white, single- and double-sided in the middle of a job."

"Afraid of catching gremlins from it?" she laughed.

"Suffice to say, I'm not taking any chances." I grabbed my purse, tossed the USB stick with my essay inside, and knelt down next to the terrarium to give Lucky a good-bye pat. I felt the hem of my skirt brush against my fabric "skin" and wondered if I should put on longer socks, but it wasn't like I had to go outside.

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Before long, we were back down in the tunnels, as isolated from the weather as we could get. I wondered what it would be like to just live down here, where nobody bothered to come and no storm could touch you...

...but then, you'd never see the spring, either...

Still, I thought, as we emerged from the elevator into the student union, I could kind of see the appeal. The sky above the lake roiled and churned like TV static, and the wind keened against the big glass windows of the cafeteria, an advance scout for whatever was brewing up there. It was going to be a very good night to be indoors.

"Cripes," I said, thinking of it, "you're not flying out of Lakeside, are you? Please tell me you're taking the shuttle down to the Cities, not getting on a puddle-jumper and going through...whatever that's gonna turn into."

Emma gave me a surprised look, thought for a moment, and shrugged. "Uh, no?" she said. "I mean, I have to connect through Bear Lake anyway, and it's three and a half hours by shuttle. I'd get home at like two A.M. if I went that way." She smiled reassuringly as we entered the cafeteria. "Besides, it's not supposed to roll in until after I depart. I checked."

"I guess," I sighed, not as reassured as I'd like to be, and set off in search of tea. "Just...be safe, okay?"

"Roger that," she chuckled, setting herself down, grabbing a paper bowl from the stack by the cereal dispensers, and piling sugar-encrusted stars and snowmen into it. I snagged a paper cup and surveyed the tea-bags by the coffeemaker; being college food service, it was pretty much down to a generic green tea and Earl Grey, and the packets likely predated the War on Terror. I'd just poured the hot water when Emma spoke back up. "Hey, what about you?"

"Huh?" I said, not catching her meaning. I tore the packet open and placed the bag into the cup.

"What're you doing over break?" she clarified. "You going home, too? You only live a few hours away, right?" She got that teasing tone in her voice. "Or're you going home with Tammy again...?"

"I'm not," I said, annoyed. "I don't want them thinking I'm just gonna show up to crash at their place and sit in on their jam sessions and...stuff...all the time. They're too nice to be a bad guest to."

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"Wait, are you not going home, either?" she asked, the teasing tone abandoned for mild concern. "Who's gonna wind you, then?"

"I, uh...oh. Huh." I hadn't thought of that. My brain chattered for a moment while I considered it. "...I'll be fine, I guess," I said, a little hesitantly. "I've stopped before, and there was no harm done."

Emma reached over and turned her head to stare at me. "Are you serious? You don't even run for a full day on one winding. You're just gonna...what, skip damn near two weeks of your life like it's nothing?"

"It's not like I'm gonna miss much," I said, whirring uneasily as I started loading up another bowlful of cookies.

"...Geez, Sue," she said, after just staring for a moment. "That...can't be healthy."

"I'll be fine, okay?" I sighed, giving my tea-bag a jiggle. "Heck, I'll be safer staying put than you guys will travelling, if you want to get right down to it."

She sighed and said nothing, piling up cookies until they were nearly falling out; then she grabbed another bowl and set it on top for a lid, clamping them together in one hand as she picked herself up with the other. I followed suit, grabbing my tea as we left the cafeteria and swung by the print center upstairs. I ran off a copy of my essay on one of the non-cursed printers, and we headed back to the dorm.

Tammy gave Emma a Look as we entered and I unloaded the cargo. "If I were you," she remarked, "I'd start charging her."

"Hey, I help wind her, y'know," Emma said in mock-annoyance, as she tore into the cookies.

Tammy cocked an eyebrow and turned to me. "Hey, yeah, wait. Are you just staying here? Who's gonna wind you while we're gone?"

"Um, I'll be fine, I think," I said. "I mean, we already know it doesn't hurt if I run down..."

She gave me a look of concern. "Well, yeah, in itself it might be harmless, but...what if it happens at a bad time? Or what if, like, the cleaning staff come through and knock you over or something? Trust me, there's a lot that can happen when you're immobilized and don't have anyone around to help you out."

I was a bit taken aback; Emma protesting it on general principle was one thing, but Tammy actually knew about this stuff. I wondered if it was really a good idea, but what were my alternatives? "...Look, it'll be okay," I sighed. "It doesn't happen all at once, remember. I'll know when I'm hitting my limit, get situated, and basically just take a nap, that's all. I'll be fine."

She gave me a look indicating that she didn't really believe me any more than I did, but sighed and nodded. "Well, okay, then. Just...be safe, okay?"

"For sure," I said, giving the printout a once-over as I got my things in order. I gave her the best I could muster for an appreciative smile. "Gotta get through one last bit of pointlessness first, though. I'll see you guys later."

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Class was every bit as perfunctory as we all knew it would be; we showed up, dropped off our assignments, and promptly tuned out, secure in the knowledge that nothing of importance was going to happen until the new year...but the instructor insisted on lecturing anyway. Some of us gamely tried to pay attention, and nobody wanted to risk getting dinged on their essay by walking out, but most of the class could hardly even pretend to care.

I did make an honest attempt...but I couldn't keep it up. Not wanting to look rude, I sat there staring at the board and nodding occasionally; inside my head, I was trying to model a game of solitaire. I wondered: did Grace ever do this with Eve? Was my imaginary deck of cards shuffled more or less randomly than hers? What even was "random," if a perfectly-ordered deck was theoretically a valid shuffle result...?

Finally, she reached a conclusion, offered us a pile of assorted holiday well-wishes, and sent us on our way. I exited the classroom in a state of mild shock at the thought that I now had almost a fortnight to kill before I had to be anywhere or do anything. Well, I wasn't going to be awake for most of it, but still - what was I supposed to do with myself...?

I ended up deciding to trek back to the student union for another cup of tea - but as I was heading down the hallway of the liberal-arts building to the elevator, I saw Anne exiting one of the classrooms. She turned, smiled, and waved me down with an immediacy and precision that would've been eerie if it weren't for the way I announced my presence these days with all the noise I made just operating.

"H-hey," she grinned, coming over to meet me. "You, uh, you g-got some last assignments too, huh?"

I nodded. "Just the one, but yeah. You?"

"Th-that was the last of them," she said. "I got my, uh, project turned in for the s-s-sewing group on, uh, Friday."

I didn't know we had a sewing group, I thought, but I wasn't surprised that she was in it. "That's, uh...that's great," I said, my internals chattering as I wondered whether her "project" would end up on me at some point. "...Any plans for the break?"

She smiled. "My, um, my c-cousin's in The Nutcracker this year. We're g-gonna go see her."

"Oh, cool," I replied. I remembered way back when, when the child of a family friend was a regular in a local production, and I'd get dragged to see it like clockwork every December. Kid-me found the imagery kinda captivating and the music engaging, but I never could make head or tail of what was supposed to be going on because nobody ever said anything. I wondered if it'd make any more sense now...

"Uh-huh!" she said, vibrating with excitement again. "She g-gets to be one of the, uh, the dolls. I'm so jealous..."

"I bet," I said, smiling fondly in spite of the palpable awkwardness that Anne radiated. She was odd, but nice enough when you got to know her that it didn't seem to matter. And if her interests were a little weird (or, at least, weirdly intense,) well, I wasn't in a position to throw stones...

"Wh-what, um, about you?" she asked. "Any, uh, p-plans?"

"Nah," I said. "My roommates'll be gone, so I'll be pretty much left to my own devices." I wondered why that didn't sound as appealing as I thought it should.

"Aww," she said. "I'd, uh, I'd let you st-stay in my room so you'd have some c-company, but I have to pack my dolls up and, uh, bring them with. Some of the s-s-sophomores said that, um, stuff in the dorms can go, uh, 'missing' over break."

I pictured myself standing frozen in her room, posed in the "company" of the other dolls, and felt a little notional shudder run through my head; but I was more concerned by the other thing she'd said. What if the dorm staff had "bad apples?" If I was stuck there, unable to even sense anything, let alone react...

Maybe I could go into low-power mode. I knew from that time at the lake that I had some degree of control over my systems. Suppose, instead of staying active until I ran down, I forced myself into time-lapse right off the bat; could I stay technically "awake" and minimally alert the whole time?

...and if I could, would that make this a good idea...?

"U-um, anyway," Anne said, "I, uh, I gotta go p-pack. Um, I hope you have a good rest. Uh, h-here." Unprompted, she came around back of me and wound me up, then circled around front and pulled me into a hug. "Um, m-m-merry Christmas," she said, smiling warmly as one eye peeked through her thick, heavy bangs to gleam at me in a not wholly unsettling manner.

"I, um...thanks," I said, smiling in spite of the mild eeriness, mechanisms ticking away unperturbed. "Merry Christmas, Anne."

She went on her way, and I fished my MP3 player out of my purse, put on my headphones, and went back to the cafeteria for my tea. The student union was nearly deserted; just about everybody who didn't have any last-minute assignments had left over the weekend, and the handful of students who weren't going someplace else were mostly holed up in their rooms enjoying whatever "holiday cheer" the remaining RAs were conveniently overlooking.

The campus had the eerie desolation of an empty theater about it, as if I'd stumbled into a world that was closed until next season, where the actors had all gone home and the sets were about to be torn down. For reasons I couldn't understand, this filled me with a nervous, restless energy, like there was something I needed to do, somewhere I needed to be, if I could only think of it. Like I belonged anywhere but here, in this in-between place, in this time-between-times; like I might suddenly vanish, packed away with the props and sets and costumes, if I were caught in here at the wrong moment. What was it that had me so rattled...?

Well, the gathering storm wasn't helping, I thought, as a violent gust roared up from the lake and assailed the building, right around the time that Pink Floyd's "Echoes" dissolved into eerie psychedelic wind noises and whalesong guitar cries. I really hoped Emma was right about her flight; the Lakeside airport was alright, but it was strictly for turboprop commuter flights, and I'd always found those a little unnerving even in good weather.

I remained weirdly affected all the way back through the tunnels - run, run, the ostinato guitar line insisted, but where was I running to? What was I running toward? The delicate, haunting organ figures made it a mystery...

But the song had reached its conclusion by the time I got back to the women's dorm. I stowed the headphones and walked back down the hall, satiated as if I'd just eaten a full meal, but still feeling a bit strange. It felt oddly like I was walking out into the storm, but it had yet to break, and it certainly wasn't going to make landfall in our dorm room...

I could hear voices from inside our suite. Something struck me funny, but it was only once I entered that I realized there were three people talking. Emma wasn't in our side of the suite, the light was off, and the bathroom door was shut. Who was our visitor? I couldn't make out the words, but the voice seemed familiar. I took off my shoes, but I was too distracted to do anything more; I stumbled into the bathroom, hastily flicked on the light, and pushed through to Tammy's side.

"Oh, here she is!" I heard Emma say. "Sorry 'bout the door, Sue; we weren't sure if she'd be weirded out by Lucky. You didn't tell us she was coming to visit...!"

Blinking in confusion, I got my bearings, looked around the room, and froze.

"Hey," Tammy said, hearing my tempo surge, "you okay there?"

I stared at the figure on the couch, my brain clattering; at the familiar, weary face, the graying hair, the square-framed spectacles that caught the light just so as to glint sharply...

"Oh my God," the visitor said. "Stuart...?"

I felt like my whole mechanism was going to seize up, but that was only my emotions talking.

"Mom!?"