Janus looked at the spread before them. Old cards. Old crone dealing. Old lies always sitting underneath old truths.

The sound of a distant glass bell. Janus wondered why they were the only one that could hear the bell. And why that bell never seemed to break.

The crone turned the next card. Hanged man, reversed.

Janus begrudgingly agreed. They were stalling. Being here in this den of incense and coddling didn’t get them anywhere closer to their journey’s end. But at the very least, this space was liminal. Despite the uneasy peace between worlds spaces like this always sat between them. It was the space itself that gave Janus a respite in the chaos that preceded and the chaos to come. A minute from now would see them exiting the door back to the mundane world, the somnambulant world of commerce and transaction.

Janus reached into their pocket and placed a gold coin where the final card would fall. There was no need to see it. They already knew what it would be.

Offering a word of thanks, they stood and strolled out the front door that they’d entered through. The wind had already picked up, and their dress kicked up in the breeze as the bell again sounded.

“Excuse me, miss” said someone in an overly gray trench coat as they bumped her in passing, but in their haste they didn’t check if she was okay. Janus didn’t bother to glare back at the man. She already knew other eyes were on her, and she didn’t want to hesitate long enough for them to get a better look. Turning on a heel, she found her stride in the natural flow of northward foot traffic.

She made the snap decision. If she was lucky with the next crossing light, she’d go on foot. If not, she’d hail a taxi. The light became a simple victory, and her well-traveled pumps carried her across the zebra crossing to a new flow of pedestrians. On she went like this for seven blocks, Janus never having to wait more than a few seconds for another crossing. If the man was trailing her, he was bound to miss one of them, but she dared not look over her shoulder.

She caught sight of a bar to her right. It was already open, this early in the afternoon. She pushed the door in and saw it was nearly empty, save for a bartender and a piano tuner bent, head turned, listening to an open piano.

She was gorgeous. Pressed flat blonde hair and a look of concentration that blurred any accurate guess of her years.

Janus hesitated to distract her, but still she had deftly hooked her attention. Instead, she walked to the bartender and ordered, figuring if the bar was closed the door wouldn’t be open. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the bartender shrug. She ordered Time without thinking about it, and after the bartender said “huh?” she corrected her order “Lime. A daiquiri please”. She wasn’t going to be able to taste the alcohol, but she needed the sands to pour along the hourglass a little faster for a moment. Just a moment. Before the hourglass feels like quicksand.

The piano tuner was efficient, but even an efficient piano tuner isn’t fast. Janus tried not to stare, alternating looks into her glass, small talk with the bartender, and stolen glances over at the now-bare arms of…

“You should just go over and talked to her. You won’t be the first woman who’s hit on her.” The bartender’s voice just loud enough to be audible as they finished sorting their glassware.

Janus stood at the bartender’s urging and made her way over, careful to sit out of the way.

“Your persistence is going to rob us of another Keith Jarrett masterpiece.”

The piano tuner looked up at her interrupter, and on seeing her, smiled. “I’m pretty sure the world only needs one jazz classic on a faulty instrument. Let’s give the next Keith a bit less of a challenge.” The tuner returned to her work, though her nod was not unfriendly.

Janus watched her, swirling the daiquiri in her hand. They would have to continue this conversation in a different time.

The swirling continued, albeit in an unnaturally sluggish pace. Just in earshot, a glass bell rang.

===

He hated this part. Always hated this part. But the curse felt just as much part of him as his own nature.

He looked at what was once a cocktail glass in his hand. Was. Now it had reverted to the sand from which it had formed. Limes no doubt had already rolled their way under what would have been tables. But they were no longer tables. Back they had reverted to the trees that were once felled to craft them, now proud and tall. A renewed forest where once stood a city.

Where people walked, Janus watched shadows phase in and out. Echoes of what would be, a million possibilities offset just enough that they wouldn’t collapse into the inevitable. Janus looked over at where the piano tuner had sat a moment ago, and then turned to walk towards the nexus. Aloft in the sky above, a beam painted the ground below. Janus could not tell how far away it was this time. A few miles perhaps.

It didn’t matter. It was the nexus and always the nexus that was the goal. To leave rather than to live.

Before things became inanimate, they were always animate. Janus looked at the trees to his left and right. To the human, these would appear motionless. Not to Janus. He could see each branch stretching a little further, each trunk reaching ever higher, a fraction of a millimeter at a time. Ever growing until death. But there was no plague in this realm. No lightning to arrest their growth. In this realm, everything breathed until he reached the nexus.

He once considered staying in this realm for an age, perhaps even an eon. One look at his craggily hands reminded him why. A realm surrounded by life where one wishes for the death of his flesh is no heaven at all. He absent-mindedly rubbed the back of his hand, but that image persisted. Maleness, a blessing to so many, and a curse to a few. Janus pushed on, trying to shake the thought. A curse to a few. Including himself.

As long as this realm existed, the curse would persist.

Janus knew of no way to destroy this realm, or what the ramifications would be if he could. This was the beginning. The root. The fulcrum around which all possibility levered into place. Remove that fulcrum and perhaps no future would become.

The moss licked at Janus’ feet as he trod across stick and leaf towards the nexus. Each nexus was seemingly located at random, pointing into nowhere. Janus never could understand why they were placed as they were, nor any correspondence they had to the mundane. The pre-mundane had many mysteries and no mouths to speak answers.

No wind blew here, nor did the trees need its aid to grow big and strong.

The moss path gave way to large pieces of slate. Janus sometimes wondered why slate took this shape here and didn’t revert further. Perhaps, like everything, every stage is part of some cycle that has no beginning. No beginning, that is, unless you count the formation of the planet itself. Of the great darkness before that.

Somehow the pre-mundane was a snapshot unto itself.

An hour later, Janus stood before the nexus. Another few steps, and he’d be free of this place, for now. Each escape always temporary.

He reached out and joined to the nexus and a moment later…

===

The rough valley of the masculine melted away at last.

Janus smiled at the piano tuner in front of her, glad to be back in a time and space with words. In a body she didn’t mind inhabiting.

She looked to have just finished, so not too much time had passed in the mundane. Good.

“Can I buy you a drink?” Janus raised her glass, now empty.

“I would, but I’m honestly more hungry than thirsty.” The piano tuner took her time making sure her tools were all in their proper place. “There’s a burger place down the street. If you’re up for it, I wouldn’t mind the company.”

Janus smiled. “That sounds perfect.” She stood and walked in stride with the tuner. “Janice,” she said.

“Rachel. Nice to meet you.”

Burgers and easy conversation turned into a couple drinks. Rachel, as it turns out, could be made to blush, which Janus was all too happy to stimulate. She didn’t push it, though, and by the end of drinks they were joking amiably as they walked towards Rachel’s apartment.

As Rachel let Janus into the building, she turned with a mischievous look on her face.

“This building has a pool. We could go there first.”

Janus shrugged. “But I don’t have a swimsuit.”

“I didn’t ask you that.”

The piano tuner, it turned out, knew how to tighten the screws.

Minutes later, they walked into a swimming pool lit only by the skylight above. Janus followed Rachel, letting the water lick away the stress as they stepped deeper into the pool. Once they were up to their waists, Rachel turned and put her arms around Janus’ neck.

“I don’t often tell people this, but I’m guessing you already know that I’m trans.”

Janus smiled and put her hands at Rachel’s hips.

Rachel nodded. “You don’t have to talk about it, but just know you’re in good company.” Rachel’s breasts met Janus’ as she pulled a little closer. “Or, we could stop talking.”

Janus let her mind drift for a split second, while looking into Rachel’s eyes. How could her life be explained in human terms? How could the bisected lifeline of god/goddess be described to someone who lives solely in the mundane?

The glass bell tolled.

===

Janus looked up at the skylight. Its sand form poured down into the water around her. The specter of the moment before frozen in Janus’ hands.

Then, Janus found himself in a vast lake. He didn’t understand why the lake was here, as pools are not large enough to create such a lake as this. He struggled to remember the last time he even saw a lake in the pre-mundane.

He looked up. A starless sky. A breeze-less night.

No nexus to be found in any direction.

Janus felt a feeling he had not felt in a long time: panic. Carefully, he turned around in the lake. It now felt like an ocean, with no shore, no island, nothing but water in every direction. And no glowing lights in the sky, only the light of the moon as it galloped its familiar path.

Janus reasoned as he continued to scan a horizon he knew held no clue. Night time was the easiest way to spot a nexus. He’d done it countless times. There was really no use in waiting until sunrise as it would reveal little.

Janus stopped treading and let himself sink below the surface of the water into the depths below.

He could see no nexus below the water’s surface. Fear wound its way under his immortal skin. The curse was never welcome, but it had always at least been fair. It was always something that was overcome with patience. Now, it felt like someone was having a laugh, at his expense no less.

Janus knew the last card to be dealt was always the hermit, reversed. Isolation. Loneliness. To be brought back to the pre-mundane with no exit and left here for eternity would certainly be quite the hand to be dealt. Had he finally reached the last stage of the curse?

He looked up, catching the moon’s reflection in the water above him. In his reverie, he smiled at the prism it created. Almost like a nexus. A nexus he couldn’t touch. A nexus of illusion.

Or was it.

Gently, Janus guided himself back closer to the water’s surface and reached a hand into the splaying rays around him. Each was beautiful in its own right.

===

“I lost you for a moment,” Rachel’s smile held, though her brow read concern. “Do you want to talk about it? We can also just take a break.”

She could feel the pressure Rachel’s lips had left on her own. Janus reached up and touched them and smiled. “Maybe just give me a moment. I think the drinks hit me a little harder than I expected.”

How did she get back here? That wasn’t a nexus. It was just something beautiful she wanted to touch.

“You’re beautiful,” Rachel said, her voice warm like cookies fresh from the oven. She knew it wasn’t the drinks giving Janus pause. Janus could feel her approaching again, slowly, gauging her reaction. “Is it okay if I kiss you again?”

The feeling of her closeness and the warmth of her voice melted away the thoughts twirling in Janus’ mind. These were questions for another time. There were moments here and now that wouldn’t be lived again, and they should be treasured.

By the time Rachel’s face drew close, Janus was ready. Her eyes flashed, drinking in the woman before her. She lifted her hands to frame Rachel’s face and leaned in to meet their lips. Janus gave into Rachel’s lips and tongue, letting the time pass exactly as it may.

“That, was lovely,” Rachel smiled. “Feeling any better?”

Janus gently dragged her thumb along Rachel’s cheek, actually feeling a bit drunk this time. “You’re beautiful, you know?”

“I do indeed,” Rachel’s grin grew wide. “Now, before it gets too late, would you like to come back to my place, or do you want to call it here?”

“After a kiss like that, you didn’t leave me much choice.” Janus followed Rachel as they felt around for their clothes. “They don’t happen to have towels around here, do they?”

===

Janus blinked. She looked over at a contented Rachel sleeping happily beside her. Clothes formed breadcrumbs back to the front door. An entire night without the bell ringing? Janus couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.

Janus eased herself out of the bed, careful to not let the bed shift as she stood. Tiptoeing to the kitchen, she soon found a fridge full of various ingredients, including a healthy supply of bacon and eggs.

“She likes her meat, I see.”

Minutes later she’d navigated finding a pan and using the stove.

“Oh my, and she makes breakfast in the morning, too,” Rachel purred from behind her as the bacon was just finishing.

“Bacon is there, and eggs will be done in a minute. Hope you don’t mind me helping myself to your groceries.”

“Not at all. Not one bit.” Rachel happily bit into a slice of bacon.

As Janus handed the plate of freshly cooked eggs to Rachel, the world froze. There it was.

There it always was.

The glass bell tolled.

===

Janus watched the walls fade, Rachel become a shadow, the table recede, the plates return to clay, and then fade. Everything faded. Everyone became shadows in the penumbra. Soon, all that was left was darkness.

The darkness before everything. Before everyone.

Janus’ eyes told nothing, as there was nothing to be said. Janus’ ears, no matter the strain, found no vibration. Nothing for skin to contact. No air to breathe. No flavor to taste.

Whether the expanse existed at all felt immaterial, as there was no material to form it.

In this emptiness, Janus was. As if cast back before time began, before light itself.

Janus went to move an arm, but there was no feeling in its movement. Perhaps no arm at all existed.

It was just thought and nothing else.

Bereft of anything outward to focus on, Janus focused inward. To the thoughts, and the thoughts underneath the thoughts. To the past and the imagined future. To the texture of the thoughts below this imagination. To the ballast of the self, and its ever-changing nature.

In this inner space, Janus was.

Janus felt the beauty of the beginning. Of the time before time. Of all the strands of possibility that reached out from nothingness towards the vast unknown, towards a future not yet formed. On one of these strands, Janus’ mind rode.

A great light, a great expansion, billions of masses forming, a great exhale following a great tension. Time winding forward.

Inside, Janus felt something new. A bell forming from sand, ringing, and then again becoming sand. Over and over. But its ringing changed nothing. It simply was something Janus carried within.

Janus released the bell, no longer wishing to hold on to it, letting it feed into the countless masses of swirling matter nearby.

A soft, blue planet formed ahead. So familiar and inviting. Then green formed waves on its surface. Life sprung up and grew larger. Life diversified. Eons whipped past.

Everything is in change, becoming what all the moments before it prepared it to be. All that potential loosed into the next moment to be born.

===

Janice smiled at Rachel as she handed over the rest of breakfast, still warm from the stove.

There was no past to hold onto anymore. Only the present moment, filled with smiles and the smell of bacon and eggs.

Janice looked up at the kitchen wall she hadn’t noticed earlier. There, framed as a work of art, was Keith Jarrett’s album The Köln Concert. Janice shook her head and looked over to Rachel, who smiled like a cheshire cat.

“I was wondering when you’d notice that,” she laughed before filling her mouth with a fork full of eggs.

“It is a good album,” Janice said, shaking her head.

Rachel gave a happy sound. “It is indeed. Despite our best efforts, we’re the ones who make the most of the moment we’re in.”