Chapter Text
one
They are in a campus gallery looking at a bland exhibition on the history of solar calendars. Even dimmed the fluorescent lights are so flaming hot, and the didactics and displays are so overcrowded, that the pristine white paint performs more like an outline than a wall.
“There isn’t any evidence that our universe is affected by the gravitational pull of another,” Ellana Laverly mumbled under her breath.
She silences as Jack approaches. She’s trying not to ignite the same argument they’ve passed back and forth over the past decade. It’s not because Ellana lacks conviction, but because she wants a glass of sauvignon blanc to toast its revival. A glass Jack will pay for in boast given that her institution is less prestigious and didn’t send her with a generous stipend like his.
Jack shakes his head in pretend disapproval, “Are we really going to have this argument? Here? Now?”
Ellana knows he wants the opportunity to be right. Especially here, in this space, where others from the conference might also happen to be passing through. It’s been their habit for him to be right, and for her to let him be right since undergrad orientation.
“Isn’t that why you brought us here?”
“If you spent less time thinking about telescope mechanics you might understand–”
Ellana immediately stops listening. She hasn’t advanced very far in the field of astrophysics, but the momentum she’s gained has been enabled by her ability to ignore the drawl of male voices subtly undermining her interests.
Instead, her attention drifts back to the display in front of her. It’s a gigantic xerox copy of an ancient Egyptian manuscript. Ellana doesn’t know how to interpret the iconography, but recognizes the unmistakable ordering of figures in stiff profile. The skyline is a woman’s nude body tenderly curves over rows of marching figures with varying degrees of ornamentation. None are looking upwards.
Ellana counts out exactly five stars on the woman’s belly as Jack’s conversation turns back to his posting in Switzerland. How, he’s been struggling in his search for an apartment given that he wants a furnished one-bedroom in a city of studios.
"The Book of Nut, originally called The Fundamentals of the Course of the Stars, focuses on the cycles of stars of the decans, the phases of the moon, the revolutions of the sun and the known planets.”
“Ellana? Are you listening?”
“Yes, Jack.” Always.
She doesn’t say the half truth out loud. Despite her anticipation to meet him that morning, Ellana is having a hard time concentrating. There is something about Jack’s presence that is redundant. He’s as handsome as he always has been, but the repetition of their sexual tension–the game of will they or won’t they–makes her feel distinctly claustrophobic.
As if Ellana’s unknowingly caught in a revolving door incapable of stopping.
“–you would think that your own research would make you more open to the idea of multiple dimensions given the recent findings about the possibility of bubble collisions.”
“–the egyptian text examines how different astrological tools were used to promote the idea that the sunrise was a source of mythological rebirth.”
Ellana steps forward to another wall display. It’s a detailed didactic of the Egyptian calendar and a reconstruction of a sundial. She’s starting to see why Jack insisted they visit while they met up for the colloquia. There’s a small favor in it that quickly turns into a perversion.
Ellana’s never had any interest in the solar calendar, only the movements of its cousins in the night sky. The presence of one precludes the other and she thinks Jack should be more sensitive to that fact given how low his voice got when he called her the month prior after immediately changing his facebook status from “in a relationship” to “single”.
“What is the paper you are presenting on?”
“I’m not,” Ellana says decisively. “I’m here to consult on–”
“Wow, check this out,” Jack breaks off to go look at a collection of reconstructed models of metal sundials laid out on a plinth.
Ellana doesn’t follow in soft refusal.Instead she continues on in the curator’s intended sequence, gazing on a chart of Egyptian calendar norms. The hieroglyphs demarcating each month congeal together and she’s reminded of how strange her dreams have been lately.
How in them space, time, matter, energy, and the physical laws are regularly undermined.
If Jack wants to claim a territory of parallel worlds or alternate worlds, Ellana thinks he might consider the weight of dreams. Something a scientist would never do; something, Ellana as a scientist would never do.
Ellana glances again at Jack in her periphery.
His toned form subverts many of the stereotypes of theoretical physicists. His artful stubble and maroon shirt are stylish instead of dumpy. She supposes his skill to bring out the warm brown of his eyes has made her lust after him the moment they met at freshman orientation.
Not for the first time, Ellana wonders if they’ll cross the Rubicon from the hotel bar to her room. She smooths down her hair as she catches him looking back at her. There isn’t any passion in the gaze, only hazy acceptance.
Maybe she’ll visit him in Switzerland.
A flash of gold and a sudden clang–
Ellana’s attention is captured by the object at the center of the room. It’s an orb on a brass stand no larger than a clenched hand. She’s never seen light refract the way it does as it hits its oily surface. Almost as if the beam is absorbed and recapitulated like a chewed up prism; almost as if it can morph a reflection into a hum.
“What is that?”
“The label says it is a map of the sun made out of a magma—”
Ellana goes to the display as if it asked her politely to do so. She’s aware of Jack grinning stupidly in the periphery and that she doesn’t want him to think the joy of what’s in front of her belongs to him in any small way.
It will be her turn to tease and refuse him.
Break his heart and pretend not to notice.
“I’m glad you are enjoying the exhibition–”
There is an obscenity to the object.
The surface is so dense to appear fleshy like the inside of a tangerine except it floats over the ring of brass.
Almost as if it is pretending to conform to gravity to escape any firm placement within it.
Ellana lowers her face to be even closer.
She wants to touch it.
“What are you doing?” Jack snaps, as he pulls Ellana’s hand urgently back.
She blinks once. The alarms begin to flash. A small part of her consciousness registers that she shouldn’t touch the artifact, while another argues that if the curators didn’t want anyone to, they would have placed the orb under glass.
Ellana hadn’t been certain of much in her twenty-eight years. She had merely made choices based on the whims of funding and employment. She had moved from the East Coast to the West Coast. It didn’t particularly matter; however, given that she calibrated telescopes remotely. The coaxial cable that connects her mind to the machine isn’t so much umbilical cord, but a leash that pulls her along.
There is certainty in her gesture that makes it clear: Ellana chose to pick up the orb.
_______________________
First, there is fog.
Ellana panics when it doesn’t separate from the horizon.
Then there are shadows that dance in the cloudy smoke.
She finds herself on her knees. Her long blonde braid clutched in claw-like fingers that pull her forward until she whimpers. A chuckle follows.
“Jack?” Ellana knows it’s not him, but there isn’t a logical alternative.
A woman with lips painted blood-red looks down at her with great disinterest. Her red eyebrows are arched upwards. Ellana has never seen a face like this; skin pale as a fairytale. She turns and Ellana gasps when she sots pointed ears. No matter how she scans their surface, there is no evidence of glue lines or plastic.
Ellana insists to herself this is some elaborate prank.
That Jack has hired a retinue of Renaissance Fair enthusiasts.
A voice speaks in a lulling tone in a language that Ellana has never heard before. Another pull of her hair prevents her from determining its source, so instead she focuses on the indistinct ground. She can’t tell if she’s below ground or high up. The discombobulation makes her shake uncontrollably.
“Wha–” A finger is jammed in Ellana’s mouth. She clenches her teeth down until a yelp erupts.
A honeyed voice laughs as the woman yells at the figure clutching the waist-long braid. It’s male in sound, low and baritone.
A new face suddenly enters Ellana’s sight line. It’s a man, with more angles than curves. She feels some untraceable sadness when his piercing blue eyes are not turned in her direction, rather the sphere cradled in her hands. There is a clarity to the hue that makes her want their full attention, even if her gut twists when she realizes the possible darkness of that desire.
She pulls the orb back towards her chest, but the man touches it with a grin.
“I thought I lost that years ago,” There is an accent to the words. Almost as if they are too heavy, “So very kind of you to personally return it to me.”
Another heartbeat, and then the stranger’s expression shifts from ruthlessness to curiosity. He reaches out a single finger and–despite her protests–traces it over the slope of Ellana’s ears.
She trembles when he speaks in a voice that brokers no disobedience. The question mirroring Ellana’s own in painful symmetry: “What are you?”