Archive of Our Own

The first tremors of deja vu hit him at Vincent’s eighth birthday party.

He had a thin and untouched slice of pink cake on his plate, half-listening to Abigail discussing her latest attempt at venturing into the mines and half-watching Jodi fuss over Vincent’s wisping hair, when a thought struck him: hadn’t Vincent turned eight before?

Sebastian looked around the living room, scanning the sparse crowd to see if anyone else had felt the ground beneath their feet suddenly shift. He saw Jas shoveling a forkful of cake into her mouth, and Caroline scrubbing at a plate in Jodi’s sink, and Pierre venting to Marnie about outrageous shipping fees for fresh produce, and Sam pretending to be intrigued by a book Penny was showing him.

Wuthering Heights. Penny was showing Sam Wuthering Heights and Sebastian knew that because much later, shut in Sam’s bedroom, he would have the first chapter open on his chest, bemoaning how he’d manage to finish it and impress her. In the end, he’d resolve to ask Abigail to breeze through it for him.

Sebastian didn’t stop for a breath until he reached the small park behind Sam’s house. Even then, it felt as if something heavy had sat itself on his chest, pressing down with every frantic gulp of air he inhaled.

“Are you okay?”

He had expected Abigail or, more likely, Sam. Maru hadn’t even wanted to come to the party, but their mom thought it’d be nice for her to get out of the lab. Spend some time with Sebastian and his friends. He had started to suspect Mom and Demetrius were worried Maru’s only friend was her boss at the clinic.

“Sebastian?”

“I’m fine,” he snapped, though the weight on his chest continued to bear down. “You can go home now. No one will care.”

The stricken look on her face told Sebastian he’d be having a talk with their mom later. For once, Sebastian didn’t care. At least it would be something he couldn’t remember having already happened before.

Hours later, in Sam’s room just as Sebastian remembered it, Sam moaned and groaned over a book of Penny’s that he still held a little too close to his heart.

Even living through it a second time (or, as he secretly feared, many more times than that), Sebastian found it stung.

“Do you believe time can repeat itself?” Sebastian asked. Orange five sunk into the pocket. Across the table, Sam muttered darkly. He’d never win.

On the couch, Abigail bobbled her head. “Of course. There’s nothing we really know for sure about the universe, is there? Who’s to say the earth doesn’t rest on the back of a giant turtle, who rests on a larger turtle, and on, and on, and on. Turtles all the way down.”

“Scientists are to say,” came a gruff voice to their right. Shane, with a beer perched on the console, didn’t turn away from Journey of the Prairie King, so he missed the glare Abigail had trained on the back of his head.

“We could all just be in the matrix,” Sam said, sending the cue ball flying at green stripe fourteen and missing by a mile. That insignificant action, fixed in time, somehow still rang a faint bell in the caverns of Sebastian’s mind. “In the matrix, deja vu is like a glitch.”

Sebastian ruminated on it later as he stared out at the lake, a cigarette smoldering between his fingers. A glitch in the matrix. Turtles all the way down. Science, irrefutable science, that would say time did not repeat itself.

Abigail had started seeing turtles everywhere. She tended to notice slimes that strayed too far from the mines or bats flocking around the old and overrun farm, but rarely turtles. Had they always been so plentiful at the twilight of spring?

On the dawning of summer, Abigail watched one bob in the forest pond as Leah told her she was thinking of beginning a new piece.

“Yeah, a sculpture,” Abigail said, tracking the turtle as it dipped underwater. “Haven’t we talked about this before?”

The turtle resurfaced. Why did it keep diving? How had it not found what it was looking for?

“No, I just thought of the idea last night.”

“I swear we did,” Abigail insisted. “And you’re going to try to organize a local art show, right?”

“I—yeah, I am thinking of doing that,” Leah said, her brows knitting together. “I guess great minds think alike.”

Great minds already had this conversation. Great minds already went to that local art show, where the crowning piece was a wooden sculpture shaped vaguely like a twisting heart, and Elliott gushed over it, saying it gave him inspiration for his own work, and Abigail thought life would be so much better for the both them if they combined their two tiny one-room cabins into one shared two-room house.

The little turtle dove, and resurfaced, dove, and resurfaced, while Abigail listened to Leah describing a sculpture that had existed, once upon a time. Abigail swore by it.

After the sun hid itself behind the trees and Leah disappeared into her cabin for the evening, Abigail stormed into Shane on the way home.

Shane’s eyebrows hardly rose. “What’s the matter with you?”

“How do you know science disproves the theory?” Abigail asked, her voice carrying on the wind.

Shane cringed before saying, “How does science disprove the theory that the earth is sitting on the back of a turtle?”

“How do you know time doesn’t repeat itself?”

“It—it just doesn’t,” Shane said, frustration fiercer than usual. “It only feels like it does because nothing in this town ever changes. We never change.”

“I change,” Abigail protested, thinking of all the times her mother mourned the little girl who listened and obeyed.

“Dyeing your hair doesn’t count.”

Abigail shouldered past him as they went their separate ways and refused to feel badly about it. Later as she got ready for bed, yanking a comb through her stubborn curls, she stopped to twist a purple strand around her fingers. She hadn’t dyed her hair in a long time.

He found her again after a few days (days? or weeks, or months, or years) up on the mountain, sitting at the edge of the lake. Shane looked out of place so high up, as if he didn’t agree with the altitude and the altitude didn’t agree with him. Abigail had never seen him venture here before.

“You’ve ruined my life,” he said by way of greeting. When he sat down beside her, he was careful to mind her flute.

It was hardly past noon, but he smelt strongly of beer. Yet, there was something underneath that alcoholic fog, something of hay, and feathers, and a touch of pine. It was earthy and grounding and had Abigail wanting to lean in. Almost.

“Well, Sebastian ruined my life first.” Abigail wished she had a stone to skip across the water. It looked too tranquil. She wanted to cause a little chaos.

“Jas wouldn’t stop talking about reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with Penny. At first I thought she’s just a mediocre teacher who reads that to them every year, but when I asked Jas why she isn’t bored of that book by now, she said—” Shane trailed off. In the distance, Abigail heard the deep bellows of the mine.

“She’d never read it before,” Abigail finished quietly.

“And now I can’t stop thinking: how many years has she been eight?” Shane’s fingers kept flexing against his jeans. He had to want a beer. “Fucking turtles.”

They were silent for some time after that. The summer air up on the mountain was cooler than it was in town. That was one of the reasons Abigail preferred it here, at any season, but she couldn’t stop the goosebumps that rushed up her arms from the chilly breeze rolling off the lake. And for other reasons.

She felt Shane’s gaze against the side of her head and as it moved down her body, to her bare arms. Neither of them said a word as Shane shrugged off his sweatshirt and placed it on her lap, nor did they say anything when she slipped it on. That earthy smell she noticed before enveloped her.

Only when the heat started rising too quickly to her cheeks did Abigail find the silence unbearable. “It’s a good book,” she said. “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.”

“I’m guessing you like the witch part.”

Abigail scowled at him. His throaty laugh echoed across the lake.

Sebastian, cigarette in hand, found them in the midst of an argument on the fantastical legacies of Lord of the Rings versus Harry Potter as the sun started to set.

When Abigail met his eye, she felt a current of recognition pass between them.

After his first drag, Sebastian said, “We’re so fucked.”

Abigail exchanged a glance with Shane. She hadn’t noticed how red rimmed his eyes were or how dark. The sun had all but gone. The mine was strangely silent.

Shane thought of telling Marnie, but she had a business to run and a young girl to raise. She had enough troubles on her plate, Shane counting among them. What good would it do to drag her down this swirling vortex of time?

He went to Charlie instead. He was always going back to Charlie.

“That punk kid is right,” Shane told him. Charlie blinked. “We’re fucked.”

Charlie clucked at his language. It reminded Shane, bizarrely, of his father. When Charlie wandered closer, Shane smoothed two fingers down his head, ruffling his feathers. “Maybe that’s the one good thing,” Shane muttered, more to himself than to Charlie. “You’ll never age, so you’ll never die.”

Shane stayed in his basement coop until he could smell the beginnings of a stew brewing upstairs. Over steaming bowls, Jas told them about her great day at the museum and, in turn, Marnie told them about her productive day in town.

“And how’s my favorite blue flock?” Marnie asked.

Shane almost grunted, his usual worthless refrain, but instead said, “They’re good. They’re going to be good.”

A surprised blink gave way to a beaming smile that had Shane’s stomach flipping in a way he couldn’t blame on alcohol. Marnie was off to the races, talking of best practices for flock maintenance and egg collecting, with Jas piping in to say she hoped for blue scrambled eggs.

It was oddly exhilarating, Shane thought as he laughed at Jas slurping the last of her bowl, breaking from old and tired patterns.

Gus looked at him as though he had grown a third eye when Shane casually went to close his tab out after only two beers.

“It’s really no trouble,” he was saying, pushing Shane’s empty mug in the direction of Emily and the tap. “If the issue is money, you know I—”

Shane bristled slightly at that. He didn’t grind his life away at JoJo Mart to have Gus imply he couldn’t pay his way. It was no good snapping, though. Gus always meant well. Everyone in this town did, deep enough down.

“Nah, it’s just an early night.”

As Emily started wiping down his glass rather than refilling it, Shane swore she winked at him.

He had almost reached the door, a clean break, when Leah’s voice stopped him. “What’s up with you?”

She had a half-drunk mug of pale ale at her usual table, but her partner in crime was nowhere to be found. Must be off in his little seaside cabin toiling away at his verse. Leah gave Shane a once-over, clearly in search of some bodily injury that rendered him changed enough to stop after two beers. When she didn’t find what she was looking for, her eyes narrowed further.

Shane hummed, a low note from the bottom of his throat, and before he could think better of it, said, “I’ve just been thinking about time.”

The door had sunk closed, Shane on the other side of it, before Leah managed to get out, “What the hell does that mean?”

Midsummer in the valley was hot and unforgiving. The glorious cerulean sky made up for it, but as Leah squinted up at the cloudscape, she had a sinking feeling in her stomach that she had painted this exact sky before.

Impossible.

And yet, as Leah lifted her brush to the canvass, she instinctively knew the exact brushstroke to make. There was no hesitation, no fear she couldn’t take the paint back once she began. She always hesitated with a fresh canvass, but here she was, stroke after stroke, painting from a deeply-buried muscle memory.

I've painted this sky before, she thought. And I gave the painting to Caroline and she hung it in her family’s living room.

“I’ve gone mad,” Leah muttered as she continued staining her fingers with the sky. “I’ve gone absolutely out of my mind.”

Abigail found her sitting cross-legged in the grass, staring at her finished work of art, still ranting and raving to herself. She eclipsed the sun as she stood over Leah, her arms crossed and face wholly unsurprised.

“Welcome to the club.”

“Please rescind my invitation.”

I’m an artist, she wanted to scream at that mocking sky. How could you make me create the same things over and over again.

She thought of Elliot, toiling over a novel that once already had a beginning, middle, and end. She thought of Emily and her fashions, garments that would soon lose their shapes and stitches. She thought of the definition of insanity. And she laughed softly, sadly, to herself.

“My mom will still love the painting,” Abigail said, only a touch pitying. “You’re still going to give it to her, right?”

“Of course,” Leah said, and did not add, where else would it go?

She agonized over it for hours, but she always ended up at the sea, one way or another. Elliot stood stationary at his spot on the pier, looking like something out of myth, the salty breeze blowing soft as a caress through his hair. Even the air bent to his will, Leah thought as she took up the space beside him.

“You have a long face,” were the first words he spoke to her.

“Well, I’ve had a long—” Week, or year, or life, Leah wasn’t so sure anymore. “I’m stuck.”

“Have you lost inspiration? Is there anything I can do to help?”

Elliot’s plainly earnest face looked so sweet and warm where the sun glowed golden behind it. Not for the first time, Leah wondered what he’d do if she caught that face in both hands and kissed him. It had been so long since someone wanted to love her, really love her—with all the wild dreams and the ugly messes that came with them.

Had she really been living the same year, countless times, constantly wondering if she had made a mistake moving here, as Kel told her she had? Did time ever let her get over him or was she forever being taken back to the start, to all the spring nights she drank too much strawberry wine and secretly hoped he’d call, too all the early summer days where she walked the length of the lake and wished she had someone there to squeeze her hand?

In the waters below, a tangle of seaweed floated by on the lapping waves. So many people thought of seaweed as slimy and overabundant, but Leah loved it’s specific kind of green. Leah saw the color in Elliot’s eyes.

“You can, actually,” Leah said. “Let me paint your portrait.”

Elliot’s lips parted in surprise. Leah felt something electric in the air, though there wasn't a purple storm cloud in the sky.

And because she wanted to do something stunningly stupid or miraculously brave, she added, “And you could go on a date with me.”

“You—” The blush dusting Elliot’s cheeks was the ripest shade of peach. “You’ve never asked me that before.”

Leah held out her hand in the small gap between them and was only a little afraid he wouldn’t take it. If she were to sculpt the moment later, she wouldn’t know where to start—the slender lines of Elliot’s fingers or the deep contours of his brightest smile.

He squeezed her hand and the moment tasted a touch bittersweet, just like her favorite strawberry wine.

Elliot couldn’t stop writing sad love stories.

Outside, a storm raged quietly against the outer walls of his small cabin. He remembered this storm, how it rocked the sorry sea all through the night and left a litter of fresh oyster and pearly clam shells across the sand come morning. After an afternoon helping Willy gather them all, Elliot wrote a story of a young man who opened every clam washed to shore in hopes of finding a pearl for his true love.

The story had once ended with the man finding a piece of amethyst sea glass that he fashioned into a pendant and his love didn’t care that it wasn’t a pearl.

As Elliot sat at his typewriter now, he thought of an ending where his lover didn’t want something as simple as sea glass. So the man went out when the storm tides were brewing, right to the heart of the sea, where he cast his net in hopes of ensnaring the one clam in a million. Only, he’d never return.

“I liked the other version better,” Leah murmured from where she had come up behind him, her chin resting atop the crown of his head. Elliot wasn’t sure what ending she was recalling. It occurred to him there could have been more than two.

“I’m in my blue period.”

When Leah laughed, Elliot felt the vibrations of it right into his brain.

“Do you not think this version is more honest though?” Elliot asked. “We’re all desperately pursuing something that might not exist, until it kills us.”

The one in a million pearl. The book deal. The triumphant art show. The perfect harvest. The next year.

Leah hummed and Elliot felt that, too. “That’s why we have to learn to appreciate the sea glass, right?”

Her fingers twisted in his hair. The storm would not roll on for hours yet. He had a story that would need revisions, but there was time enough tomorrow. And in a year, he’d probably be writing it all over again.

Somehow, the final day of summer forever dawned the hottest. Elliot stepped through his doorway into a blistering sun and it nearly blinded him to other souls on the beach.

“Hey, Elliot!” Vincent came bounding over with a pail full of oysters. He had sand in his hair and a slightly burnt forehead because Sam was nothing if not consistent in forgetting to bring along sunscreen. “We’re here extra, extra early for the jellies tonight. I’m finally gonna see the green one!”

“If anyone can spot him, it’d be you.”

Vincent wrinkled his nose. “The green jelly is a girl,” spoken as if only an idiot didn’t know that. Maybe Elliot should have felt offended, but as he watched Vincent scamper back down the beach, he only felt happy to have learned a ridiculous new thing.

Elliot made his way over to Sam, stretched out on a towel, and decided he had plenty of time to sit down beside him.

Sam nodded in welcome and asked, “Was he telling you about the green jelly?”

“Indeed.”

“He’s said he’s going to see it every year since he knew how to talk,” Sam said, shaking his head with a fond smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “Never gonna happen.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” Elliot said softly, though if the green jelly didn’t make an appearance this year—

It wasn’t worth thinking about. Elliot’s hands, mining about in the sand, unearthed a piece of heavily sanded sea glass in a pale shade of pink. Held up to Vincent’s hair, the glass would blend in perfectly. 

Elliot held the glass out to Sam. “Tell Vincent I hope this is that time. And if it’s not…”

“There’s always next year?”

Elliot shook his head. “There are always other things worth seeing.”

Sam took the offered glass and rubbed it between his middle finger and thumb. When Vincent came running back up the beach, he saw the sea glass and took it eagerly, plopping it in his overflowing pale of treasures. And Elliot decided he did like the happy ending better.

Sam, whose mind seemed to have gone wandering, looked less sure.

“Time does repeat itself, doesn’t it?”

Abigail pressed her finger to her mouth and hissed through her teeth, but Sam didn’t see why he had to keep his voice down. Gus was taking inventory in the back, Emily was dancing by the jukebox, and Pam had rested her head on the bartop a half an hour ago without raising it since. Shane, instead of grouching in his usual spot by the fireplace, was sitting next to Abigail on the couch which could only mean he was in on the whole thing, too. Abigail, the traitor, clearly knew.

And Sebastian wasn’t there. Because he knew. He had known since spring and never said a word.

“Is he always like this?” Shane hadn’t bothered to whisper either. His unimpressed eyes followed Sam as he paced around the pool table, round and round, over and over—

Sam stopped abruptly, his hip colliding with a table corner. “Damnit!”

Abigail snorted. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“How are you both so—so—” Sam motioned with his arm to the pair of them, lounging back on the stuffy couch seemingly at peace with the valley and its time-suspended existence. Really taking stock of them, Sam noticed how Shane’s arm was slung over the back of the couch, his finger curling close to Abigail’s shoulder, not quite touching. They had a plate of pepper poppers stuffed in the slim space between them, even though Sam had never known Shane to share nor Abigail to try spicy things.

It all felt so new and somehow that unsettled Sam even more. They were changing, as Sam stayed stuck in his boring routine, completely unaware.

“Cool with it?” Abigail asked, uncharacteristically gentle.

Sam, energy at once spent, collapsed against the pool table and nodded.

“Well, I’ve always thought everything is meaningless and nothing we do matters to the universe, so,” Shane shrugged, “this is just proof I’m right.”

“Thank you for making me feel even more terrible.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Abigail said with a hard eye roll that only had Shane fighting off a smile. “You just learn to live with it. You start doing new things. Like maybe something with your hair…”

Sam fled shortly after Abigail started talking about shades of aquamarine. The sky had grown dark, the stars shine happy and blissfully unknowing above him. He should head for home, but he couldn’t stand the thought of the quiet house that awaited him.

He started up a familiar path, only to find himself stalling by the old community center, never to be revitalized. Or else, it’d be revitalized and fall back into ruin when spring came again. That was how Maru found him, sitting on the cold stone steps under a clock that didn’t tell time.

“Aren’t they beautiful?” She tilted her chin toward the midnight sky. “I was just looking at them through my telescope. I even saw Venus tonight!”

Sam did his best to smile and hated how hard it was. “Yeah, —uh, was Sebastian with you?”

Maru’s brow furrowed. “No, why?”

Maybe it made him terrible, to find comfort in a still-strained relationship between a brother and sister, but at least it meant Sebastian hadn’t gone changing too much, too.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Sam hated being angry with Sebastian. It always felt like time better wasted on happier things. Practicing songs in Sam’s room, or playing a game in Sebastian’s, or something as simple as standing by the edge of the river with a cigarette for Sebastian and a skateboard for Sam. Anything but staring sullenly at the walls above each other’s heads and wondering how to apologize.

Not that Sam had much to apologize for, not this time around. Even if there was a sickening twist in Sam’s stomach at the thought Sebastian had been suffering through so much of this alone.

“Did you think I wouldn’t get it?” Sam knew he couldn’t always keep up with Sebastian or Abigail, but he never believed they thought he was dumb. Wondering if he had been wrong on that count had his eyes burning.

“What? No—no, it wasn’t like that.”

“Then what was it like?”

Sebastian sighed. He had his arms crossed tight around his chest, in a way that reminded Sam of times he had seen Sebastian talking heatedly to his mom or Demetrius. It was a trapped stance and that sick feeling in Sam’s stomach bubbled up again.

Sam hated being angry with Sebastian, but even more than that, he hated hurting him.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Sam said softly, rocking back on his heels. “You probably had a good reason. I just thought we told each other everything, you know?”

No, not everything, a small voice in the back of Sam’s head said. He willed it to shut up, though the persistent thrumming of his heart never did quit, not anymore. It had all rushed back to him, how fall was when his feelings changed with the turning of the leaves. And so every time the year repeated itself, Sam fell in love anew.

It was a little beautiful, Sam decided. But mostly, it was sad.

Sam wondered if any of that sadness was showing in his eyes because Sebastian had a twisted look on his face, as though he had bitten into a salmonberry and his body had gone tart.

Then, he sighed for a second time and ran a hand through his hair. To his feet, he said, “I didn’t want anyone else to go through this. It was already my fault with Abigail, and then Shane, and—” Sebastian swallowed, scuffing his shoes against the floor. “I didn’t want you to know, because of this, that you and Vincent might not get to see your dad.”

The unspoken word—ever—hung in the air, as stark as a wrong note.

If Sam were being honest, he hadn’t thought about that. His father had been gone so long his absence was normal, all a part of the routine. But suddenly he didn’t know how he’d go home later and look his baby brother in the eyes, when all he talked of anymore was their dad coming back.

“Sam…”

“Can I stay here tonight?” Sam asked, cutting off what sounded like the beginnings of an apology. Sam didn’t like when Sebastian apologized, either. Strange given that’s kind of what Sam came here for.

After a long beat of silence, Sebastian said, “‘course.”

A while later, as Sebastian flipped listlessly through the new (or ancient) Cave Saga X and Sam played with the cuffs of a borrowed sweatshirt, Sam got up the nerve to say, “Thanks, by the way. For wanting to…”

Protect him. Shield him. Something else entirely.

Sebastian’s eyes flickered over to him. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, sure. Whatever.”

But Sam, for once, didn’t miss how Sebastian moved an inch closer to him and how he read the same page three times over when Sam tipped his head against his shoulder.

Since she was a little girl, Maru always loved the permanence of stars. The night sky changed, it’s true, with the orbit of the Earth, but the stars remained fixed. They had a proper place in the universe, a home they never wandered from.

And stars never cared about time.

The front door of the house swung open, probably Sebastian off to have his nightly cigarette by the lake. Maru was not expecting the footsteps to shuffle her way, toward the side deck, and she bit back a tiny gasp when Sebastian walked through the gate. There was a small bundle tucked under his arm that he unfurled and held out to her.

Her jacket, Sebastian had brought out her jacket. As she marvelled at that fact, a chilling gust of wind shook the trees and bit through the thin sleeves of her shirt. It was an unusually cold autumn, as Maru now remembered it had been in all the repeated autumns before.

“Thank you,” Maru said as she shrugged on the jacket. It smelled faintly of saw dust, as everything in their house did.

Sebastian nodded once and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his own coat. He seemed to get cold so easily and Maru once wondered how he could stand the wind whipping around him as he sped off on his motorcycle, heading straight into the horizon.

“I think I—”

“I’m sorry you—”

They both stopped short.

“You go,” Sebastian said, feet scuffing at the earth.

“I think I used to have trouble understanding why you, and Sam, and Abigail were so desperate to leave the valley. I mean…” Maru touched her telescope, it’s cold body, and still felt a heart beating under there, somewhere, metaphorical or not. “I had everything I wanted, right here.”

Not only the telescope and the sprawling view of the galaxy, but raw materials in abundance and a lab and a little family and a nice part-time job and a sweet friend who sat outside the saloon with her because neither were the type to enjoy inside.

“But I think I do understand it better now,” Maru continued, glancing up at her dear sky. Stars didn’t wander or care about time. But people did. “It’s scary thinking you might never get to live the life you want to live. That there’s always something pulling you back.”

“It was never about you guys. Mom, or Demetrius, or...” Sebastian said, voice hardly rising above the wind. “Not really.”

And Maru understood that, too.

The world fell quiet and Maru wondered if this would be the part in the movies where she and Sebastian exchanged a tearful hug. The thing was, she and Sebastian were never the kids of Friday movie nights, something Sam and Abigail used to admonish them for daily. Even Harvey would sometimes shake his head solemnly when Maru didn’t catch his popular reference.

No, they probably wouldn’t hug today or in a week. But Maru was more okay with that than she had been in many, many years.

“We just need a new variable.”

Maru had two books crammed in the crook of one arm as her other reached up and up toward the highest shelf where a book on rare fish in the valley eluded her. The museum was wonderfully cozy when compared to air outside, winter’s arrival imminent, and Maru forgot why she didn’t come around here more often.

Looking over her shoulder at Penny reading, smiling down at the book as warmly as the room was, Maru really didn’t understand what kept her away. The equation didn’t add up.

“What kind of variable?” Penny asked in genuine interest, marking her book carefully before closing it as Maru dumped her pile of old tomes on the table.

“Something that’s never happened in the valley in a long time, or never before,” Maru said, cracking open the book on legendary fish. “Something big. Like this.”

Penny peered down at the entry on the Legend, a mythic fish that had never been caught and only appeared in the dead of winter. Her father said that the first snowfall of the season could hit any day now. Maru knew it would arrive on the third.

“Are you going to take up fishing?” Penny asked. From anyone else in town, that question would come with an undercurrent of teasing. Not Penny. “I heard it’s really a wonderful hobby once you get the hang of it. Maybe I’ll give it a try with you...”

The quiet refrain Penny would never say aloud—anything to keep away from the trailer—made Maru decide not to say she had planned on asking Willie to fish out the Legend.

They left the museum with one book on beginner’s fishing practice each and Maru with a heaping helping of books on mining, and the old rundown passages to the Desert and Ginger Island, and Dwarven language, and even farming.

Abigail and Shane were huddled close on the stone bridge into town and they wrinkled their eyebrows in tandem as Maru passed.

“Did you hold up the place?” Shane said at the same time Abigail asked, bewildered, “What’s all that for?”

“Introducing a new variable!” Maru called back over her shoulder, knowing they’d connect the dots.

They all missed Penny, trailing behind, and her dawning look of revelation.

Jas wanted desperately to build a funky snowman. She told Penny it could have icicle antennas and—

“Pine cones for eyes.”

“Yes!” Jas said, her face lighting bright as the winter star, so happy that Penny shared her vision.

Only, Penny didn’t share Jas’s vision. Because the last time she stood in this same snow, nursing the same cooling cup of hot chocolate, watching the same breath exhale and turn into the same white frosted cloud, Penny had said they should stick to the classics. Coal for eyes, bent twigs for arms, and snuggly red scarf wrapped tight around the snowman’s lack of neck.

Penny liked classic, she liked simple, she liked the same. No wonder it had taken her so long to realize. No wonder others likely thought she’d rather not know.

“I think,” Penny said, placing her hot chocolate into the packed snow. It tasted a little too sweet anyway. “We can make this snowman even funkier.”

Much later, after the ice fishing competition had been over and won, Penny watched Jas drag Vincent to her funky snowman and force him to admire its holly buttons and winterberry smile. That was how Sam found her, smiling despite the bitter cold.

“You didn’t go classic,” he said as he handed her a new and steaming mug of hot chocolate.

Penny took a first sip and didn’t care that it scorched her tongue. “I thought it was time for a change.”

To his credit, Sam didn’t seem shocked she knew. They stood silent for a moment, both watching as Jas chased after Vincent, desperate to get back her snowman’s cranberry nose.

“I’m sorry if I ever…” Sam coughed, once, and bit at his lip. “If I ever, like, led you on.”

Penny’s brow furrowed. “No—no, you didn’t. I think we just both…” 

Across the iced lake, Maru stood with her father, admiring a great walleye Willy showed off for them. She and Maru had gone fishing every night last week and Penny hadn’t grown sick of it, even though she was a painfully bad reeler and wanted to throw every fish she did manage to catch back to their home. No, she’d never grow sick of a night with Maru.

“We realized we had moved on, probably longer ago than we knew.”

Sam nodded and gave her a pensive smile, the first she had ever seen from him. “No offense, but I kinda hope I get to stop realizing over and over again.”

Penny caught Maru’s eye over Willy’s shoulder and Maru gave a small, almost robotic wave that made Penny’s heart do a messy somersault.

And Penny thought, me too.

She so rarely came to the playground without Jas and Vincent. Tonight though, she swung her legs back and forth, the swing rocking with her. She didn’t want to go too high, just enough for her feet not to drag in the light dusting of snow.

Maru came bundled up in a puffy jacket, a chunky scarf, and the magenta gloves Penny had knitted her. She took the swing beside her, but kept her feet firmly planted on the ground. Penny was coming to realize how well she knew Maru now. For all the time Maru spent gazing up at the stars, she never wanted to fly up to join them.

“Have you found any other potential new variables?” Penny asked, slowing her swing to a stop. She wasn’t surprised when Maru shook her. “That’s okay, though. There will be something, some day. And if anyone can find it, it’s you.”

“Do you really believe that?” Maru asked, sounding quiet, and unsure, and very young.

Penny nodded, but really didn’t have the words to convince her. There wasn’t a book for this, though Penny desperately wished there was. Instead, she stood up and moved in front of Maru’s swing, close enough that Maru’s knees brushed her shins.

“Can I—” Penny swallowed. “Can I try testing a new variable?”

Maru’s head bobbed, once, and Penny dipped down, her lips lightly touching Maru’s. Nothing in the valley seemed to move in that moment, even the air suspended around them. Maru’s hand came to wrap around Penny’s wrist, her thumb tapping against the pulse point. Penny knew it was morse code, though not what it meant.

Penny pulled away, ever slightly, and smiled. “Do you think that did it?” she asked, even though the answer was no.

Penny loved that Maru, with no scientific proof, nodded anyway.

Sam found him easily because they both always knew where to look.

The Feast of the Winter Star was coming to a close, the last dredges of music and merriment drifting in through the great holes in the community center’s crumbling roof. Sebastian liked the decrepit kitchen best, liked that if he listened hard enough, he could almost hear the broken appliances still grinding their gears.

It wasn’t that he hated the feast. He knew he’d be receiving Lewis as his secret friend and with such advance warning from the steeped seeds of memory, he had his mom’s help in cooking the perfect plate of glazed yams. What Sebastian had not been expecting were the tears that welled up in Lewis’s eyes at what amounted to orange mush with a sweet film on top.

“Robin sure raised a thoughtful boy,” he had said before he lightly patted Sebastian on the shoulder. As he watched Lewis walk away to share the dish with Marnie, Sebastian felt his eyes welling, too.

And his eyes had kept trying to drown themselves all through the festivities. He saw Elliot present Leah with a bottle of wine that had a sea glass pendant hanging from the neck. Elliot had given an awkward gift to Alex in the loops before, so Sebastian could only guess at the numerous strings he had to pull.

Maru, who did have Penny by a touch of good fortune, had been fostering poppies in the lab since the fall and they had finally come to bloom. She presented her with a great bouquet of them in the shade of Penny’s hair. In years previous, Penny blushed, but accepted the present with a hug in thanks. This time, she had kissed Maru before a beaming Robin and Demetrius and Sebastian’s heart both smiled and ached.

It ached still. He had a final gift to give and yet he wasn’t sure, even after all they’ve gone through, if he was brave enough to give it.

It figured Sam would say, “Got something for you,” as he joined him on the dirty kitchen floor.

“You had Haley this…” Sebastian couldn’t believe he was still so bad at this. “You had Haley.”

“Yeah and it sucked a whole lot less this time around,” Sam said with a grin. “Who knew she’d be happy with just a sunflower.”

“Alex, probably.”

Not deterred by Sebastian’s attempt at misdirection, Sam held out a shoddily wrapped package and waited with rare patience for Sebastian to take it. The paper unravelled under his unsteady hands until he saw a flash of deep purple. “Where did you—how—”

“I owe Abigail many, many favors. And Shane, too, maybe, for putting her in ‘perilous danger’ not that he has any control over what she does, obviously, but—”

“Sam, I…” Sebastian gingerly took the obsidian from its paper bed and cradled it in his palms. He had only ever seen tiny slivers of this under a microscope in Demetrius’s lab. As a child, he declared it contained the power of the underworld and anyone who unearthed a big enough piece could declare himself dark prince. Sam had stayed up all night listening to his dark prince epics, never once complaining even though Sebastian had always thought him a prince of the sun.

Sebastian had been in love for so long. So, so long.

“Well, Elliot has been telling me about this story he’s writing about sea glass and it got me thinking about this since it’s lava glass and that’s so much cooler and…” Sam scratched behind his ears. Even in dusty moonlight, Sebastian caught his blush.

“What kind of story is it?”

Sam inhaled sharply. “A love story.”

Sebastian lay the obsidian carefully by his side, its power not too far away, and he just as carefully placed his hand over Sam’s. Another sharp inhale. Sebastian couldn’t hear the sounds of the dying feast anymore, only his heartbeat pounding in his ears.

As Sebastian moved, Sam moved with him. Their lips met for the first time and Sebastian felt the ground shift beneath him again. They kissed for what felt like an eternity, Sam’s fingers tugging at strands of Sebastian’s hair and Sebastian’s hand splayed on Sam’s collar.

When they finally separated, barely, Sebastian realized the weight, the one on his chest since the beginning of spring, had finally lifted. He didn’t know exactly what that meant and found he didn’t care.

“I have something for you, too,” Sebastian said, remembering there was a reason he came hiding out here and a reason he wanted Sam to find him, force his hand.

Sam, nudging Sebastian’s nose with his, smiled. “Is it more of this? I really want it to be more of this.” He kissed Sebastian again, short but sweet, and Sebastian just about forgot the gift wasn’t chasing after every one of Sam’s golden smiles.

“Sure.”

Sebastian did have a real present for him, a guitar pick he had Maru’s help in fashioning from a tigerseye stone. That could wait.

Anyway, they didn’t have much time to do this, makeout like the teenagers they were not supposed to be anymore, before spring came and the year started all over again.

And Sebastian really had been in love too long not to be stupid and Sam-drunk while he could.

There was nothing like the top of the mountain in the snowfall. The blanket freshly laid, she hopscotched around the train tracks, her footfalls creating impressions that disappeared as the snow kept drifting down. It was too cold to blow her flute, but she had a song humming at the back of her head.

Raindrops, and roses, and whiskers on kittens. A song to remind her of the season, a song her mother always used to sing, a song her fingers knew by heart.

Abigail liked that some things never changed. She just hated that nothing ever did.

“You can be a hard person to find.”

The snow had masked Shane’s approach. The tip of his nose was viciously red like a cherry lollipop and he had his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his coat. The mountain air still did not agree with him.

“Well, I’m always here when it snows,” Abigail said, opening her arms out in welcome to her blizzard kingdom. “So now you know.”

“Always.” He made the word sound a little poisonous. Yet, there was the barest hint of smile on his face, rueful but real.

“It hasn’t all been bad, though, right?” Abigail asked. She hopped back over to the home side of the tracks. “Like once we started realizing it, I started…”

Feeling wasn’t quite right. Abigail was always feeling, sometimes far too much. Like right now, how her heart rabbited against her chest just knowing Shane was there. Living fit better.

“I know what you mean,” Shane said without her having to finish.

In a few days, all this snow would be gone. The air would turn mild and the flowers would rush to bloom. Abigail never thought of spring as coming fast or fierce, but here it was, knocking insistently on all of their doors. Her father was excited for fresh produce and her mother for green tea. Abigail wanted to tell spring no one’s home.

Shane was staring at her with all the same feelings like a kaleidoscope in his eyes. How had they ever accused him of being emotionless before? Abigail didn’t want to revert back to the relationship they once had, a relationship inexistent.

With horribly chapped lips and terribly cold hands and no plan whatsoever, Abigail bounded across the remaining distance between them and threw her arms around his neck. His lips were as chapped as hers and his hands twice as cold where they tangled in her hair. Abigail pressed closer anyway.

He pulled away first, tipping his forehead against hers. He had to catch his breath. Abigail had never been the girl who made someone have to catch their breath before. 

“What if we’ve done this already?” Shane whispered.

Abigail blinked. She hadn’t stopped to consider it. By the way her stomach swooped, how her heart drummed in excitement, and anticipation, and a touch of fear, she didn’t know how this couldn’t be the first time. She’d swear she had never felt this way in all her life.

But even if she had done it four times and a half—“Does it matter?”

Shane’s thumb skated across the apple of her cheek and he smiled, a spring smile at winter’s end. A new beginning smile. “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

As the sun set on the last day of winter, four couples watched the curtain fall from four different vantages. 

On the pier, Elliot and Leah kept their eyes on the thin golden line between sky and ocean, their hands clasped together and gently swinging between them. 

Outside the old community center, Penny and Maru listened to the small creatures skittering inside, a little early spring cleaning, and their heads bowed together in silent conversation. 

By the river, Sebastian and Sam dared to dip their feet in for what Sam called a total shock to the systems; Sebastian tried not to laugh at him, or push him all the way in, or kiss him until there wasn’t any sunset left to see. 

And up on the mountain, Shane and Abigail sat at the station, waiting for a train.

None of them could know, in a city not far away, a young person was preparing for a very great change. Into the valley they’d bring with them the deed to a rundown farm, a small suitcase, and a new year.