89 — All that's Within

“Yes mistress. Thank you mistress. Yes, yes everything was perfect. May I stand now, mistress?”

Flo laughed softly and kissed the kneeling girl’s head. “You know, I think I’d rather if you only said mistress once each time you speak, and no, you may not — not until you’ve asked to be unbound.”

The girl, who went by Violet during her sessions with Mistress Ephemeral, was positioned on a large pillow. She nodded, but kept her blindfolded head lowered. “Of course, and thank you for reminding me, mistress. May I be unbound?”

Flo wanted to keep going, but she knew that a structured organization for the sessions best suited this client’s needs. It was time to wrap things up. “Yes, you may unbind yourself, Violet.”

Violet easily tugged her hands free of the ribbon that had kept them behind her back during the entire session. She then undid her blindfold and stood, legs wobbly.

“Steady there, dear,” Flo said, moving close to help the girl up. “You’re dehydrated. Let’s get you some water, okay?”

She nodded. “Yes mistress. May I dress, mis— May I dress?”

Flo grinned. “After the water. One thing at a time.” Flo quickly poured a tall glass from a pitcher. It had been sitting on the windowsill, so it was already chilled. “Be a good girl and drink up,” she said, handing it to the other woman with a kiss on the cheek.

Violette drank the water silently. Flo was silent as well, watching her. Her eyes darted up to a book that Emmett had recommended. She had read it front up back, but reality had quickly proven itself far more complex than the book had let on.

“You may dress now,” Flo said with eyes aglow after seeing that Violet had finished.

Violet reached for her underwear, but hesitated. “Is there anything you need right now, Mistress?”

Flo smiled softly, and thought for a moment. “Maybe a little cuddle. Just a little one,” she admitted.

Violet was to her in an instant, wrapping the smaller woman up in a soft embrace. “I can hold you as long as you desire, mistress.”

Flo kissed Violet’s neck, which was the only place she could reach. “Just for a second. Don’t forget our schedule.” Flo breathed out — she felt like she was good at hiding how nervous she was, but knew she had to be honest with herself about it.

“Okay, clothing,” Flo said, patting the girl. Violet nodded briskly and began to diligently dress. 

While Violet’s back was turned, Flo wished it, and was suddenly fully clothed and in a winter coat and hat.

“Goodness!” Violet said with a start. “I don’t know how you dress so quickly. Uh— Mistress. Sorry.”

Flo laughed. “We’ve run out the clock, dear. You don’t need to call me that outside of our session. Miss, or Ephe, is fine.”

Violet looked crestfallen. “But I enjoy calling you— sorry. Yes, Miss Ephe.”

“I am sorry to rush you off but I have somewhere else to—”

“Miss Ephe, aren’t we forgetting to clean up?”

“Ah!” Flo said, looking around the play area. It was indeed very much in need of a good cleaning.

“Maybe I can do it, if you’re in a rush?” Violet asked, hope in her eyes. “As punishment for spending so much time playing that we didn’t have enough time to clean up together, Miss Ephe.”

Flo laughed. “No, no dear, well— not as punishment. I can deduct some from my fee for your help.”

Violet shook her head. “No, no Miss Ephe, I expect to pay more for the privilege of cleaning up my own mess.”

Flo laughed a hearty laugh. She was still getting used to how all of this would work, and enjoyed having a client who knew what she wanted. “Very well. I’ll check the sum after I’ve returned. I trust you. And I trust you to lock up. Leave the key in the dead-drop — same one you found it in.”

Flo and Violet said their goodbyes. As soon as Flo had closed the door to the space that had, a year ago, been a safe-house she and her family had cooped up in for months, she vanished into thin air.

A second later, she was home. The sun’s first rays had not yet peeked through the window — dawn would come late this time of the year — so the interior of the flat was still very dark.

The faintest of shifting behind a closed door betrayed that Kaite was in Jaegré’s room — alone. Jaegré had set out on his expedition to track the Giant a few weeks ago. He had insisted on going now, in spite of the increasingly heavy snowfall, and by himself. It wasn’t just about tracking the Giant, after all. Jaegré still was trying to figure out who he was when there wasn’t anyone else around.

Kaite had been inconsolable for the first few days, but eventually eased out of it. She threw herself into her new hobbies, and training her apprentice. She had also taken to sleeping in Jaegré’s room, when she felt like she missed him just a little extra.

Much to Flo’s surprise, the flat was otherwise silent. She peeked into her bedroom, and saw it empty — the bed was made. Had Sheam already gotten up and left? Or had she never—

With a wish, Flo was in the Circle.

As was Sheam.

Sheam’s head was on her desk. To her left was an overflowing tray of her work yet to be done. To her right was a set of trays divided between departments — Flo had heard it explained many times, but could never really remember the details. What was important was that the trays were for finished work, and how empty most were.

Flo slid up onto the desk and cautiously stroked Sheam’s hair. It had been happening more and more — a day where Sheam could get nothing done, followed by guilt, followed by her working long into the night still getting nothing done, followed by her collapsing at her desk in exhaustion and never making it home.

Flo’s heart ached.

Gently, Flo renewed their connection. They always severed it when Flo was with a client, for absolute privacy, and rejoining had become easy enough.

The sensation of Flo’s return stirred Sheam. She woke, lifting her eyes, and then head. She wiped at her mouth and chin, blinking. “Hey baby… How long was I—? Oh fuck, it’s almost morning. Fuck.”

Sheam began to try to organize her desk, but Flo took her hand. “It’s okay, my love, you didn’t do anything wrong. But something is hurting you and I hate seeing you let it keep hurting you.”

Sheam looked defeated. She stared at the papers that she held in both of her hands, looking like she was about to cry.

“Would it be easier if we talked in your head?” Flo asked.

I nodded. Words hard right now.

Flo squeezed my hand, and then slid off the desk and was at my side.

“Let’s get you home.”

She wouldn’t let me tidy up at all. I relented, and collected my coat, hat, and cane. We locked up the Circle. Soon other staff would arrive to open the public areas for the day, which I wasn’t needed for.

We slowly trudged through the heavy snowfall to the trolley station, in silence. By the time we got there the rail service was just starting up for the day. We caught the first trolley out, heading home.

Finally, comforted by the steady vibrations of the carriage, I began to speak to her within my head, and it came out in a silent torrent. “Ephie, I am so tired. The Circle was my dream, so why is my work there now so painful? Why do I feel like I am losing myself again? Is this really what I want? Is this all that there is going to be now, forever? But if I am so tired, and feel so empty — if all I am doing is going through the motions — why do I feel like it’s impossible to stop? Why does stopping feel even worse? Like I am failing. Like I am betraying myself.”

“I can’t tell you that, love, but you can. Explore that thought with me. Why does stopping frighten you so much?”

I took a long breath. “Well,” I slowly tried to answer, still silently in my head, "I suppose I was never allowed to. The earliest memory I have is being given my tablet. It was blank. I was to write about myself on it at least every week. My mother demanded I do far more than that. I wasn’t allowed to stop. I had to, every day, until it was taken from me.

“Then there was my architecture studies. I was told I was fated to join the delegation, but it was never guaranteed. I had to achieve. I had to impress. I had to be one of the best in the world.

“I wasn’t just constantly pushed — it was never enough. No matter what I did, no matter how successful I was at performing what was commanded of me, my reward was always more work, and higher expectations. It never ended. It wore me down and broke me. 

“In spite of how harsh it all felt, the fear of failure was even worse. I’d be cast aside, forgotten. I was constantly being reminded that I was always on the verge of being discarded.

“And all of that… lead me here. I wouldn’t be here without all of that. If I had relented, for just one day, just one second, I’d have died a thousand years ago in the old world and never gotten a chance to…”

“Breathe, sweetling, don’t forget to breathe. I’ve got you.”

I took a long and slow breath, and steadied myself. She squeezed my hand. “But then, there was a moment when I did give in. I gave up. I stopped. I lived a quiet, simple life as a girl who sized people for dresses and did alterations.”

“And me. That’s when you dreamed me into being.”

Flo’s joy warmed me. A smile was impossible to suppress. “And then I met Kaite, and Jaegré, and that’s when I started thinking about the Circle. Suddenly, I wanted to push myself again. Suddenly all of the work, the relentless, mind-churning work, had a point… until it didn’t anymore.”

“Is it possible that the Circle was in part an act of defiance against the delegation and Benefactors, and now that it’s become far more than that, and that act of defiance is no longer your chief method of fighting against them, you feel that you don’t understand your role within it any longer?”

“That,” I continued to think to her, “would make a lot of sense, yeah. But — it doesn’t? If that was it, couldn’t I just stop? Shift my attention fully to rooting out dangerous delegates and trying to undo… Why do I feel like I…?”

Flo seemed to be thinking. I let her think, in silence. It was a difficult problem to solve. Finally, as the carriage lumbered to a halt at our stop, she spoke up.

“I think I know how to explore this, but we’ll need to go into the meadow to do it. Or rather, a place deeper than the meadow. A place you, this you, and I have never been together.”

I felt like I understood the place she was talking about. When we got inside Kaite was drying her hair from the shower. “You two go out for a morning stroll or, wait — Sheam, did you—? Again?”

I nodded sheepishly.

Kaite sighed. “Alright, Flo babe, you’ve got this? I have morning drills with Lorne. Got to tame that temper of hers. Then it’s intel review with Emmett and Nat on that fucking banker. Sheam, get some rest, for fuck’s sake.”

“Yeah,” I said, apologetically. “After. Flo and I have a thing to take care of.”

She narrowed her eyes at us. “A thing?’

“It will be therapeutic,” Flo said with a nod.

“Look if you're going to fuck I don't know why you're being so bashful about it.”

Flo laughed. “No, no, I meant it literally. We still may fuck after though.” She winked at me.

I just smiled sleepily at them both. “What she said.”

Flo and I prepared the bedroom as Kaite finished getting ready. We kissed Kaite goodbye, and then both of us sat on the bed that was still neatly made since yesterday. The room was now cleaned and tidy, free of any disorder, with nothing out of place; nothing unexpected.

We sat, legs crossed, knee to knee, hands touching hands. Our eyes were closed. We breathed as one. Flo slipped gently deeper into my mind, but without de-manifesting her body, keeping her hands with mine, keeping our breathing physically synced. 

We were in the meadow.

The meadow was often calm, but today, the lake was so placid that it looked like a solid mirror. There was, however, a heaviness. The boughs of the tree drooped. The grass and flowers wilted slightly. We felt our feet pushing into the soil.

We stepped out of the field of flowers and walked down the boardwalk. It groaned under our every step. Soon we came to a large, even, flat span of wooden flooring. In the center was a pile of pillows, big enough to lose ourselves in. In spite of the apparent disorder of the pile, there was a balance to it, and an art to how they were arranged. It was an intentional, aesthetic disorder.

Yet, the heaviness could still be seen. The pillows were flatter, less fluffy than they should be. As we nestled into place, we found ourselves sinking into them. 

Our fingers laced together as we went deeper still.

We found ourselves standing on a part of a precipice. Below us was a vast city that curved around on all sides like we were in a bowl. Looking up, eyes straining against the haze of the atmosphere, we could see that the city stretched all the way up, encircling us.

At the midway point of the precipice was a doorway, or rather, a doorframe, free-standing, and open. Beyond that was a figure who sat hunched at a drafting table.

Flo and I approached. We walked through the empty doorframe, and moved close to the desk at the tip of the precipice.

“Hey Obs, sweetie,” Flo said, speaking first, her voice devastatingly gentle.

Obs looked up, eyes glowing at the sight of us, but only for an instant before she returned to her work. “Hi Ephie, hi me,” she said.

“Hi me,” I said warmly in reply.

In the eight months since my night with Delphiné, Obs had kept her promise. While her voice rarely cropped up as distinctly hers, the sense of her presence within me had never stopped. Most of the time, we were simply us, simply me.

Still, somewhere deep within my mind, in a sort of hypothetical possibility space, we almost existed as distinct consciousnesses. It was the small gap in the joinery. It was Flo’s point of origin, where I had once tried to sacrifice half of myself in order to create her. The gap that had left had mended, but it would always form a visible line. Not quite a scar — more like a seam where two pieces of wood met at a slightly different angle and the grain didn’t quite match up.

We were in that space.

Flo stood close by Obs’ left shoulder, with me at her right shoulder. We both placed our hands gently onto Obs’ back, connecting through affectionate touch.

“It’s almost finished,” Obs said.

Flo laughed, and said in a slightly teasing tone, “We all know it’s never finished.” She then met my eyes. Obs and I understood that it was meant for both of us, and said with love.

“We do know,” we said in effortless unison. 

My eyes had become captivated by the sight of Obs’ drafting table. The architectural designs were intricate, precise, refined down to the smallest detail. It was breathtaking. I found myself being drawn in. I felt like I was seeing through Ob’s eyes. They were my eyes, after all. “But, we don’t know who we are if we’re not doing the work.” We were mournful as we said it. We felt cursed.

I pulled my gaze away, and pulled myself away from Obs. “We shouldn’t be doing that,” I said harshly. “That work, it’s not against them — it’s for them.”

Obs appearance had subtly changed. She no longer looked like a vaguely younger version of myself, but a very specific version — the me who had worked tirelessly on Project New World. The me who had had a hand in the remaking of Rivton by City Builder.

Obs turned her body, looking up over her shoulder at me, as if to question, then why can't we stop?

 Flo suddenly asked, “How can work this beautiful be for them?”

We both looked up at her.

Flo regarded the intricate work spread before her on the drafting table.

“It doesn’t matter,” Sheam said, eyes unable to meet Flo’s. “They take anything we have to give, and use it. It doesn’t matter if it’s ugly or beautiful. If it’s from us, they take it.”

“But we don’t know who we are without it,” Obs continued the thought. “Sheam, out there, has her Circle. I, in here, continue this work alone. This work sustains us. We need it. So in a sense, there’s a part of us that they’ll always own.”

Flo paused, thinking, a question on the tip of her tongue. She then thought some more, and found her words. “You say that you don’t know who you are without it. I think… I think that is the beginning of a thought.” 

She went on. “First, do you really know what ‘it’ is? The thing that can be ugly or beautiful — the thing they take — the part of you they will always own. What is ‘it’ really? I know what you believe what ‘it’ is, but I want to explore deeper, so that you both can see what I do.”

Obs put down her drafting stylus, and turned in her chair, giving Flo her full attention.

“Why did you begin this work?” Flo asked Sheam and Obs, while indicating the hollow sphere of city that surrounded all three of them.

Sheam and Obs both answered, alternating phrases as they did. “Because we were made to.” 

“My mother.”

“The new world.”

“We were meant to be a delegate.”

Flo looked at Sheam, and then to Obs. “So, you were forced to?”

“Yes,” they both answered as one.

“All of it? Every stroke of your stylus, it was someone else’s hand on yours, pushing it?”

“Yes…”

Flo smiled, but her face was crossed with skepticism, her eyes growing narrow. She let the moment last before continuing. “You don’t sound so sure.”

Both Sheam and Obs turned to look at the drafting table.

“Sheam, Obs, may I have a little control over this space? May I change what’s on the page?”

They both nodded.

Flo deepened her connection with Sheam even more. It became not unlike the way Sheam would inhabit Flo’s body. 

Under Flo’s care, everything on the large sheet of drafting paper washed away except one single detail. It was the way a stair banister wrapped fluidly into a shelf surface. The network of shelves began flat and evenly spaced, but as they crossed to the far wall they flowed into tree-branch like forms, stylized leaves and flowers carved into the wooden surfaces.  

“This,” Flo said. “All of this. It’s not part of the work, is it?”

Obs shook her head. “It is part, but…”

Sheam stared at the drafted image.

Flo continued. “It is part of the work, but you love doing it, don’t you?”

“We do,” Obs said, eyes cast up into the haze of the atmosphere within the hollow sphere of endless city that trapped them.

“It seems to me,” Flo said delicately, “That nothing made with this level of passion could be done by someone who was only being forced to do it.” 

“But we lose ourselves in the work,” Sheam said. “If this is the ‘it’, it is beautiful and good, but is it also good for us to become so lost? Isn’t that what lets them own us?”

Flo tilted her head. “What do you mean when you say you are lost? There’s many ways to feel that feeling.”

“As work, in being forced to do it,” Sheam began slowly, “we lost ourselves. It absorbed us, took control of our being. It decided who we were for us. It obliterated our identity. It turned us into something we hate. It’s repulsive that this passion to create was twisted by everyone who held power over us into something wicked, and empty and soulless.”

“You’re still thinking of ‘it’ as the work, my love,” Flo said, kissing Sheam’s temple. “The ‘it’ still exists as a solid block in your mind. It’s…”

Flo stopped, her eyes wide.

She remembered something. In that instant she was somewhere else, an uncanny space of dimensions yet to be discovered, where time could compress and uncompress in ways that allowed a memory to exist as an infinite web of possibilities. Flo wasn’t sure if she actually remembered the thought, or had just lived an entire new life within that space and had learned it all anew, in the blink of an eye.

Her mouth opened joyfully, but it took a moment to come back to herself, and speak.

“It’s a box.”

“A box?” Obs asked, skeptical.

“When I was in the Giant, with Jaegré, we figured out something,” Flo began to speak quickly. “Since then I found some books, I read some more — there’s ideas about this. Sometimes there’s a concept of who we are, but we base it on what we’re taught. The teaching can be useful, it bundles ideas and concepts of identity together in a neat package. It makes it easier to understand. It’s like a kit you get when you’re just getting started on a new task or hobby, right?”

Obs nodded, and exchanged glances with Sheam. They both seemed to be following.

“But we’re not supposed to keep the box. You need to open it up, take out what’s really yours, and then throw that box out, and allow what you’ve discovered within to grow and flourish without the constraints. Nothing inside can grow if you keep it in the box. And you can’t keep the box itself — it’s not yours.”

“So you’re saying,” Sheam began, looking uncertain, but like she was on the verge of getting it.

Flo continued, unable to help herself. “The ‘it’ that they own — the work that you’re afraid belongs to them — it’s the box. It’s a box they gave you. We need to tear that box open and throw it away. We are going to find out what’s inside. Something good is inside. I know it. Sheam, Obs, as sure as I am alive, I know it.”

It was visualized before us as she said it. A solid shape, hard, rigid, black as a hole in reality itself. It reminded me of the Giant.

Flo laughed. “Oh, my loves, of course you would imagine it as a literal box. You’re perfect.”

“How do we open it?” Obs asked, still looking skeptical.

“I think,” Flo began, and then hesitated, “Okay, I am going to make a big guess here. You love to create. You love bringing new beauty into the world. That’s the thing you’re terrified they own, right?”

I nodded.

Flo put on a serious face. “Do they own me?”

“No of course not!” I insisted.

“Why not? I may have grown into a person, but I started as an act of creation, didn’t I? Your creation. You were just talking about a time when you gave up and stopped. But did you? I seem to remember that time as when I became alive, aware, and myself. Let’s not pretend it happened differently. I didn’t exist until you dreamt me up.”

“Yes, but…”

“Do they own the Circle?”

Obs shook their head. “That’s ours — all of ours.”

“I created it in defiance of them,” I said, as if trying to convince myself that that was the only reason.

“Do they own this,” Flo said, and then poked me gently in the chest. “This body, this you. This entire new life you dreamt up for yourself and are now living. They own that, too?”

I felt my insides churn defiantly. “Fuck no,” I said. “They can never touch any of that.”

Flo grinned, almost the same way she would when she was about to bite me. “How is all of that different from making a beautiful drawing that can be turned into a beautiful place?”

“It…” I hesitated.

“The architectural work arose from our training with the express purpose of serving as a delegate,” Obs explained. “These may all be creative acts, but one is a true expression of ourself, our…”

“And the other is…” I tried to continue, but hesitated again.

Obs and I looked at one another.

Flo looked me deeply in the eyes. “Baby, dearest, both of you, you both know all that’s bullshit.”

“Ah?” we said with a start.

“Obs, as long as I’ve known you, which is my entire life, you always said you didn’t know how to stop creating, I didn’t understand. I was afraid. I thought you were hurting yourself. But now I understand, too. It’s not that you were choosing not to. You literally can’t. You may as well cease to exist. It’s something fundamental to your very being.”

She then looked at me, her face crossed with concern, worry — fear of failure. “You’ve been suffocating. All of my trying to remind you to breathe, and I couldn’t see that you were suffocating. You were denying this part of yourself. Obs was with you, but still locked away deep. You only let her out — your creativity out — in ways you felt were exceptions, ways different enough that they came from outside of the box they gave you, but what’s inside the box is still critical. You still need it to survive.

“These past months, just you and the Circle, the work of a museum curator, day in and day out — you no longer had enough air to live. The act of creating it had sustained you, but maintaining it? It was no longer enough. You had stopped creating and it’s been slowly killing you. Oh fuck, Sheam, I am so sorry, I hadn’t seen it, it was right in front of me and I hadn’t—”

Obs and I looked into one another’s eyes. We knew what Flo was saying was making sense. Then we realized that Flo had stopped mid-sentence.

Flo spoke again, urgently. “Sheam, Obs — look.”

The three of us looked up. Before us, the box was splitting apart. The midnight-black outer shell gave way to bursts of light and colors within, flowing, changing, rearranging, organizing, cascading.

The box itself was revealed to be paper-thin. It peeled away like it was nothing, crumbling, fading, blowing free. It was nothing. It had always been nothing.

Meanwhile, that bright interior, the shape and color and the movement, burst in size, expanding, flourishing. Energies from everywhere around us seemed to be adding and adding to it, until it seemed to fill the entire space around us, and even the hollow globe of city faded to nothing.

Obs and I gazed. “It’s just… me,” we said together, realizing we were staring at our own creative soul. “I… understand. When we said we lost ourselves in it… lost isn’t the right word. Or, it’s close, but it’s somehow the opposite meaning, while still being that word.”

“Tell me,” Flo said, her eyes glowing, tears in them.

I spoke for the two of us. “It’s as you said… the act of creating something new, good, beautiful… it is fundamental. It's inexorable. We love doing it, but it’s deeper than that. We do get lost in it, but that experience is the opposite of having our identity erased and given to them. The act allows us to be fully who we are — completely, absolutely, without compromise.”

Flo stood so close now. One arm was around my back, and her other hand was held tightly in Obs’ hand. “Yes.”

She then paused, and thought for a moment before she continued. “Creating is a state of being for you, just like being a leader is, like being a lover, like being a woman.” Her breath hitched, appearing impossibly excited at the thoughts racing through her. “Sheam, creating isn’t an act for you. It’s not an action.”

“It’s like being a woman,” Obs and I said to ourselves, feeling around the edges of a thought, letting it take shape as we learned its contours. 

I continued, “My gender. Creating is… when I dreamed this body into being, creating it was as much a part of my self-actualization as inhabiting this body was. Creating itself is part of my gender. Then you, then the Circle…”

“I think,” Flo began to say with eyes filled with tears, “that’s where all of this has been headed — understanding that. That’s how you really become you. Fully you.”

In that moment, I realized that I was the one seated at the drafting table. Flo moved quickly, arms wrapped tightly around me. I put down the stylus and held her so close.

I felt afraid for an instant. Was Obs gone? Was she gone forever?

No — no, she was still there, but she wasn’t hidden away in a deep part of myself. She was everywhere. She was all of me now. The last remaining gap between us, that joint in the wood where the grain didn’t match, that I thought would be there forever, was gone. 

But it wasn’t just erasing the joint. I felt like we were now more than the sum of the both of us. We had pulled something precious out of the deathgrip of the trauma that still held purchase within me, and reclaimed it; made it beautiful again.

I also realized that we were back in the meadow. The drafting table, along with the previously freestanding doorframe, were now part of a beautiful pavilion. The pile of pillows that Obs had loved so much was just beside the desk, looking as light and fluffy as ever.

It was no longer a liminal space of endless work situated on a precipice. Creativity had been married with comfort and tranquility.

We looked around. More things within the meadow had changed. The gentle hills that spread out in the opposite direction of the lake were now dotted with imaginative structures. 

The designs were all mine. Some I had drafted as a youth, in secret, far from the greedy eyes that would take everything I had offered from my soul. Others were newer, designs Obs had secretly been toiling away on. I could let myself have them again.

I focused on the nearest hill, and a new one began to appear. It formed as I imagined it, new thoughts, new dreams, flowing effortlessly from me. Just like that, it was real.

Flo clasped my hand and ran to it, her breath taken away. She moved from room to room, running her hands over the furniture. She then saw the way the banister flowed into shelving and then branched out like a tree. Her eyes were wide, and overflowing with joy. 

It was more than just collections of details, flooring, walls, beams, tables, and shelves. As we walked through it, feeling it, the architecture became a place. One day it would have a history. Memories would be built here.

“Sheam, it’s gorgeous,” Flo said.

“Thank you, Ephie,” I replied with a gentle smile, allowing myself to accept the compliment without protest.

Still, I knew I could do better. To my surprise, that nagging sensation no longer felt painful. It didn’t come from a place of needing to be flawless out of a survival instinct. It came from a delighted curiosity. I wanted to know what else I could do.

She slipped her arms around my torso and squeezed me very tightly. We were quiet for a long moment.

“It will take time, I think,” I admitted. “It still won’t always be easy to detangle the creativity from them. But now, I understand why it’s worth it. I understand why it isn’t something to be afraid of. I can… I can remember to breathe.”

She got on her toes, and kissed me, and then took a long breath herself. I only then realized how stressed she had been — she had wanted desperately to help me, but wasn’t sure how. Her body was tense, but trying to relax. This had been a journey for her, too.

“You're quite the doctor, you know,” I whispered to her.

She beamed. “Oh. Huh. Am I?”

“Oh yeah.” I squeezed her, I rubbed her back and peppered the side of her face with kisses. “Flo, thank you. Thank you. You were tremendous. You helped so much. You did so well. You’re amazing.”

Flo squeaked, and seemed to shrink into my embrace. It hit me how badly she had needed to hear that.

I then thought aloud, “I think I just realized something else. It’s about something you said before. The Circle wasn’t just an act of defiance. I recognized that this world needed something like it. Moreover, I needed something like it. I see now that it’s a starting point, not a destination. Its very concept is meant to foster new things. It’s meant to bring people together; teach them, inspire them. It doesn’t exist for its own sake and I do not have to exist for its sake.

“The Circle was my dream, but it doesn’t have to be my only dream. I can explore, try new things; create. None of it has to be successful or good enough or meet anyone’s standards. I can do them because I want to. I love doing it.

“It’s part of who I am. I am being myself when I am creating. It can still be scary when I lose myself in it, but being alive is scary. Loving is scary. Being loved is scary.”

She kissed me again, for a good long while. Our cheeks were wet with tears. My heart swelled inside with warmth.

Always another threshold, I thought to myself. 

That’s one more down — infinity to go.