KerriAnne stared at her ugly cheap white door.

She had to go out. She had no money for rent. She couldn’t stay crying for love that she would never know again. She had to go into that bleak world and find some generous man to help with money. This lonely, sad apartment held no space for her anymore. She had a vague memory of taking pills but not of anything that had happened after that.

Pressed against the door, she reached cold fingers to slide the chain off and turn the bolt. It was hard to pull the door open; like a drowning woman clinging to a raft she couldn’t let go of its flat surface. But she could slide around its edge and up against the black iron of the security door.

Through the array of little holes, she could see their white faces out there. Wasn’t it safer to stay inside? But she was already turning the spring bolt and shoving the heavy door open.

Now their bodies bumped hers, their shoulders brushed hers, their voices hissed with hers.

They weren’t frightening. They were just strangers.

KerriAnne walked alone in the night, surrounded by strangers. None of them cared for her or ever would.

***

Lavinia’s arms were deliciously solid and firm as she landed in the parking lot, flexing her knees to take the impact. She swung Sally around in a great big circle, like Sally had wanted to swing that little girl. Sally gasped; she couldn’t remember even once being swung around in the air for sheer joy.

At last Lavinia put her down and laid her hands on Sally’s shoulders. “Welcome, tiger,” she said intensely, “Welcome to our home.” She spread her arms to indicate the great world.

With her raven hair, her leather jacket that might be the handiwork of a god and her body rippling with ecstasy, Lavinia had never looked so desirable. She breathed great drafts of golden air, danced laughing around the parking lot, threw herself into the air and twirled.

The intensity of Lavinia’s joy after the dark dream journey started to weigh Sally down. When Lavinia scampered back, drunk on sunlight, and swung her into the air again Sally went numb, prepared to bear it until Lavinia put her down.

Baby, I trusted you. If you needed me to stop, god fuck it, you should have said!

“Stop!” Sally declared, strong and firm through the rushing air.

Lavinia instantly honored the magic word and put her down. She vibrated in the sun for another minute before, clearly making a difficult choice, she walked to the rear of the camper and sat in its shade.

Sally, tentatively ready to be happy again, sat on her lap and wrapped legs around her hips. She risked looking into the hypnotic eyes. “Please tell me how….” She spread her hands.

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Lavinia said “Don’t you know, baby? You called me back. You found me, you called me.”

“But how are you walking and dancing in the sun? Did…” She let the words come this time. “Did my love do this?”

Lavinia looked almost shy. “I, I think so, tiger. I really think so.”

Wow. If even Lavinia thinks so… wow.

“After the sun, I floated on a warm ocean of sweetness,” Lavinia said. Sally half expected her to make fun of herself: ocean of sweetness, Jesus fuck. But her dreamy voice just added, “Happy as a babe in a blanket, me.”

“Then I saw something in the distance like, fuck, like a cold ancient fog.” She shivered. “Soon it was everywhere. The whole world, you, me, everything was just a paint job over it and we’d vanish with a puff of breath if I said welcome to it.

“I held out cause of that shining piece of you that you breathed into me, I held onto that. But it was so tiny. I was in some dark room, fighting with, I don’t even know what, monsters.

“And then you came bursting in! You looked just like one of Odin’s damn ravens, I can’t remember their names. You flew right up to me, cocked your head and looked at me with gold eyes.”

Sally was fascinated at how similar and how different Lavinia’s experience had been.

“I saw me in those eyes, the way you see me,” Lavinia grinned. “I looked good, too. I thought, the kid’s got good taste.”

She was still for a minute. “You wanna know what I really thought?” she asked, shy again. “What I really thought was, I gotta be that woman she sees.” Sally squeezed Lavinia’s hand.

“Then you said, ‘Your home is here with me.’ And boom, it hits me. The world is a home. The animals know it; that’s why the vampires can’t trash the whole ecosystem. Even the damn word ecosystem comes from an old Greek word, means home. Super Brain, I bet you know the word.”

“Oikos,” Sally said promptly.

“I fuckin’ adore you.”

Sally remembered wondering to someone why vampires didn’t just drink every living animal. Oh yes, it was Jesse, one of the two gay men who had held her — just night before last! This was the answer, anyway: the animals were in their home.

“So,” Lavinia concluded, “if the world is a home and you welcomed me into it, well, here I am!”

Sally said in wonder, “And you woke up and found that you could move? Just like that?”

Sally gave in to delight and kissed Lavinia as she answered, “I woke up to your call. Mmmm.” A long kiss. “I knew you were my wife in, mmm, every part of me.” Her eyes drifting shut, she murmured against Sally’s lips, “You wan’ an answer or not?” Sally shook her head, smiling.

A long time later, Lavinia went on, “Anyways, right about the time I remembered I couldn’t move, I was already jumping out the door with you in my arms.”

Just a day and a half ago, Sally marveled, looking into Lavinia’s eyes, Jesse and Walter had held her in the empty night. Just a day ago she’d put the key in the lock of the camper, resigned to a life alone. “We have to find all the parameters of this thing. And then we have to tell the world!”

Suddenly eager to explore, she added “Can you be in the sun without going bonkers?”

Lavinia picked Sally up and stood. “Ready and willing!” Then, abashed, “You okay if I keep carrying you? Feels good.”

“Yep,” Sally decided. Like stepping on a motorcycle or a rollercoaster. “Go for it.”

Sally felt power ripple through Lavinia as she left the shade, threw back her head and whooped. She tossed Sally into the air and caught her. “Yippee!” Sally cried, experimentally.

Lavinia leaped the stones at the edge of the lot, skipped down a sandy hillside covered with ice plants and ran toward the south end of the big beach.

For a dreamy time, Sally closed her eyes, laid her head against Lavinia’s shoulder and reveled in being carried. You don’t get to be carried once you grow up, she thought. She would never have believed how much she needed it.

I wonder what would happen to the new solar-powered Lavinia if she was naked?

What that sparkling thought, she drifted into normal sleep and dreamed she was flying.