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Gaia can’t help but spin excitedly as you usher her to the office. Makes it hard to keep your hands over her eyes, but she keeps them closed for your convenience. She bumps the doorframe as you enter the room and clumsily comes to a stop. “Whew!”
“You can open ‘em, if you’re ready,” you say, bracing your hands on her shoulders.
Gaia breaks away from you, rushing forwards to get a better look at what you’ve prepared for her. “Yes, b’y!” she exclaims, reaching out to touch it. She runs her fingers from the west to the east, taking in its scale. “I thought you were maybe fixin’ to Realize me today. This what you mean to replace me with?” She says it with a grin.
You smile sheepishly as you pull the desk chair up next to her and the giant map pinned to the bulletin board. There’s nothing you want more than to Realize your favorite girl, and Gaia’s been eager ever since you first brought it up to her, igniting dreams of globe-trotting not far to come. But you’re still working on those last few stats; commandeering the bulletin board will get you those Empathy points from Penelope one way or another. Until then… “It’s for you, Gaia. To plan your travels on.”
“And I can’t do that on my own?” says Gaia. She picks up the bowl of thumbtacks and string you’ve left for her.
“Not without marking up yourself, or your jacket. You’re one of the nicer things I own, you know.”
“Shucks, m’dear.”
The first pin goes in approximately in the place of Coolsville. That’s where you both are right now, of course, and compared to the rest of the map it seems so tiny. The hugeness of what Gaia wants strikes you suddenly. You find yourself hugging your arms and shrinking down in your chair.
Gaia pulls the string up and east and pins it down on an island off the Canadian coast. Newfoundland. “First thing I’m wantin’ to do with my freedom is go home, see me relations!” she says. “Can’t imagine the looks on their tropics! I’m after livin’ here so long they’ll think I’m the come from away.
“Straight from there to Mexico. I wanna see every locale your Traveler friends brought me, and Miranda and Mateo had some great things to say! Then…” She drags the string far to the right, landing in Asia. “Not this way, but west to Singapore. Darn two dimensions…”
This itinerary has obviously been spinning around in her head for a while now. You wonder for how long exactly. Did this start as a fantasy, an aspiration she cooked up for fun to spice up all the time spent rooted to one spot? Or maybe she only started conceptualizing it once you made the promise of Realization. Maybe you should have kept your plans closer to your chest.
“Now, the question: what tattoo do I get when I’m in England?”
“Tattoo?” you interject into Gaia’s contemplative monologue.
“I know I’ll miss bein’ covered in places, so I plan to cover me human body in ink every place I go! A key for Gibraltar, a finch for Nigeria, and on it goes. Oh, I hope you don’t minds, with the talk about marking me up.”
You could be down for a woman with tattoos. “As long as I can still see some of your freckles!” you say, as if you expect to see any of her ever again after she leaves.
The string zig-zags across the map in a frenzy of wanderlust. Short drives across Europe, long flights to Africa, legs of a singular endless journey crossing over themselves. Gaia accounts for the minutest details, even using differently colored thumbtacks to denote layovers. The thought of what these abstract lines represent in the tangible world makes you itch.
The noises and dangers of the outside.
Gaia leaving you alone.
You and your home only ever having been a second choice to her.
“It’ll be odd, you know, not havin’ Skips hangin’ offa me all the time. I thought of askin’ him to join us, but I know how he gets on.”
Against your arms, your palms start to sweat. “What do you mean, ‘join us?’” you say. “You don’t mean… us as in you and me?”
“Course I do, m’dear!” says Gaia. She hovers near North America, surely planning a stop somewhere terrifying, like the Grand Canyon.
“Gaia… I can’t travel.” It occurs to you suddenly that you might have never told her about your agoraphobia, so swept up you were in her own flights of fancy. Daydreaming about the world with Gaia had been so fun that it never occurred to you to mention how afraid you were of it in real life. It never seemed relevant. Even as you ordered this huge map, the thought of her leaving seemed far away. But she’s so close now to making it a reality. A reality you can’t join. “I struggle to even leave my house.”
Gaia grins. “You think I don’t know, b’y! I’m not askin’ you to fly to Antarctica with me.” She points at the board, at the very first pin she placed, in Coolsville. “First thing I’m doin’ once I’m Realized, even before the homeland, is to take you to that park two blocks away. If that’s as far as you can travel, then that’s as far as I’ll travel with you!”
It sounds amazing. It sounds horrible. You feel your comfort zone constricting around you as she speaks. “I wish I could even do that. Gaia, you don’t have to worry about including me in your plans. I love you so much, but we don’t have the same dream, and that’s okay.”
When Gaia turns back around to look at the map, without a word, it feels like you thought it would. She fiddles with the thumbtack in Coolsville, and you brace yourself for the sting of abandonment, of being excluded from her future. But she leaves the thumbtack in and takes a step back from the board. “Well, ain’t I warped ‘round the axis…” she mutters to herself as she takes the whole thing in. “I forgot to factor in me returns!” She spins back around to face you. “I thought it goes without saying that I’ll be comin’ back to this house once a month at least!”
This strikes you as an idea that’s only coming to her now, but you tear up in relief besides. You lift yourself from the desk chair and embrace Gaia. “I’m so glad.”
“Oh, m’dear, you know I’d stay here forever if that’s what it took not to leave you behind.”
“You don’t mean that,” you say, pulling back to look at her. She is beaming.
“Aye b’y, maybe I’m exaggeratin’ a little,” says Gaia, blushing. “But the dream wouldn’t right be the dream without you in the plan.”
“Maybe I’ll make it to that park one day.” With time and therapy, of course.
“It’ll be an adventure just for us!”