Amy was exhausted after an hour of intermittent lovemaking. Alex had luckily not been called back to work, so they were able to celebrate their engagement without interruption at his house.

“That’ll keep us in shape,” Alex said as she rested her head on his chest.

She propped herself up. “I hope so. I don’t think I could do a workout too.”

“You might surprise yourself,” he said. “I heard you can run pretty fast.”

“Different muscles,” she said. The comment reminded her of the fire at the restaurant. “Speaking of which, how did you like my message?”

“You mean ‘heading home, it’s all connected to how we feel about each other’?”

“That’s the one. You haven’t asked what it meant.”

“Some other things came up,” he said, grinning.

“They sure did,” she agreed, and slid her chest against his for emphasis. Proof of what he meant greeted her immediately.

“Are you interested now?” she asked.

“In what?”

“I’m serious,” she said, moving to his side, “though I take full responsibility for that.”

“Fair enough.” He turned and looked into her eyes. “It’s hard, I mean tough, changing gears. Tell me what you meant.”

She forced herself to focus. “I believe… the closer we’ve felt to each other, the more we’ve been guided to get closer. Bad things happened when we were distant, and they corrected themselves when we felt closer to each other.”

He held the same expression for several seconds. She imagined his mind churning through all the possibilities, testing what she said against what he knew. “There are some match-ups,” he conceded finally, “though there’s one I don’t see. The election attack started before Cathy woke us up this morning.”

She had anticipated that. “I woke up a while before the doorbell and went back to sleep. I was pretty sure we weren’t going to finish what we started.”

“Interesting,” he said. She couldn’t tell how sincere he was. “If you’re right, then that puts a lot of pressure on us.”

She kissed him. “I’m good with that.”

He smiled at her. “Yeah, me too.”

One year later…

Amy woke up disoriented, and suddenly felt like she was flying. Ahead of her was a large dark blue river of stars, which she was approaching without any control over her direction or speed. The stars grew to the size of small bubbles, and the river had dimension to it that made it resemble a large tube.

She felt curiosity and no fear as she realized that this was a dream rather than reality. Looking around her, she saw that the tube of stars was actually bent slightly, and curved into a snake-like form on either side of her. Above, a shimmering string of light grew bright as it dangled closer to the snake of stars.

Abruptly, the string wrapped itself around the snake right in front of her, and she saw that they were very similar to each other. A feeling of ecstasy grew within her as she was drawn within its sea of bright bubbles.

She flew toward one bubble in particular, which resolved into fluffy white cloud. As she entered, she saw a younger woman suspended at its center, eyes closed as if in a trance, with flowing dark hair and more than and a passing resemblance to Amy herself.

Amy slowed and then stopped when they were close enough to touch. Happiness spiked within her as if every cell in her body was dancing with joy. She reached out to embrace the woman, knowing it was the right thing to do and the only thing she wanted to do.

And then the woman’s eyes opened. In her bed, beside the man she loved more than anyone until then, Amy’s eyes opened too.