Chapter 9: Suppose I Never Ever Met You

“Now what?” 

“I’m not sure,” Sam said. “I need… to relax, I think.” Her entire upper body had been tensed up for… well, as long as she could remember. But now, disconnected from the eldritch entity that was technically still her, she was much more aware of her entire body. 

That was… technically an improvement, like reaching under the cupboard and hearing — and feeling — the loud SNAP of a closing mouse trap; not having to worry about sticking one’s hand in a mousetrap is an improvement. And it had made the tension in Sam’s body all the more tangible. 

“Like… literally?” Sierra said. “Okay, I have a dumb idea, but you never know.” She stepped off the bed and stretched. “So, this motel has a pool. It should be hot enough to be nice, and late enough for there not to be anyone else around.” She looked at Sam, who tried her best to inform Sierra through arcane eyebrow movements that she was, at best, skeptical. 

“I’m not sure undressing is going to help my physical discomfort, Sierra,” Sam said. “No offense, but I can barely stand to look down as it is, I don’t want to do so when I’m not… covered up.” She looked at her hands and grimaced. 

“No, I — Ugh, I’m so sorry. No, I meant just… sitting by the pool. Listening to the water. I’m sure the mini bar has some beers in it. I promise, it’ll help you loosen up.”

Sam nodded. That made some sense, at least. “If you say so,” she said. Sierra did have a lot more experience being a human than Sam did, after all. And there was a mini fridge in the room, so that was a welcome discovery, although the prices were… extravagant.

A few minutes later they sat by a pool that was remarkably clean for how out-of-the-way the motel was, a cold beer in hand, looking up at the late evening sky. Sam’s shoes and socks were a little off to the side, next to Sierra’s, and their feet gently sloshed in the cool water. 

Nothing needed to be said for a bit. She didn’t particularly enjoy the taste of beer, which was a discovery all on its own. When she’d first slipped into this body, everything had been new and overwhelming and amazing, but now she was developing tastes. 

Beer, she was coming to realize, was not… fantastic. It tasted mostly like unpleasant water. She wondered for a moment why people drank it at all, and then she moved her head. Her brain sort of lazily sloshed into place with a half second delay, and she immediately understood. It wasn’t for everyone, but she was starting to get it now. 

She looked over at Sierra, who was lying on her back with her hands behind her head and looking at the first few stars that were starting to peek through the pink-white-and-blue of the evening sky. Sam smiled.

“This is nice,” she said, leaning back onto her elbows. “Why is this nice?”

“I don’t know,” Sierra said. “Because you’re not doing anything. Because water feels nice. Because there’s no expectations and nothing that needs to be done right now and most people kind of… forget how to do nothing?” She propped herself up as well. “You look like you’re getting the hang of it though.”

“I think I am,” Sam said. “I hope so. I don’t know how much time we have, you know?”

“Try not to think about it,” Sierra said. “Either your plan worked, and we’ll have to figure out what to do with… everything, and then that can wait a day or two. Or it didn’t, and then we die and you wake up in the hospital again, and we try something else.”

“I wouldn’t even know what to try,” Sam said. “Well, nothing short of abandoning ‘Sam’ altogether and swimming away from this little blue planet forever.” She raised her bottle at Sierra. “And I’m not ready to do that yet.” 

She almost dropped the beer when she felt Sierra’s hand on her back. “I’m glad. I’d like to get to know you better.” She sat up. “Speaking of which… what is there to know about the great and terrible Sammaël?”

“I’m… not sure where to start, really,” Sam said. “It all feels so cosmically… insignificant, and yet.”

“And yet, it would blow my tiny mind?”

“Something like that,” Sam chuckled. “I was… terrifying. When I was younger I traumatized more than one young civilization, although I never did go in for any of the world-devouring.” She paused. “I was worshiped as a god, once. That was interesting, although their prayers were a pain.” Sierra stood up and grabbed another beer from the pack they brought outside.

“Well, now you have to tell me more,” she said. “Worshiped? You seem so… down to earth!” Sam couldn’t help but be enamored as Sierra chuckled at her own joke.

“Thanks,” Sam said. “Fun fact, I did actually come down here once before.” That got an interested look from Sierra, who sat back down again. She was sitting pretty close, too. Sam could feel her body heat coming off of her, and she kept looking Sam in the eyes like she was trying to find that touch of the cosmic she’d been shown before. 

Sam found that her cheeks were getting warmer, something she was happy to blame on the beer, as Sierra leaned in close, curiosity writ large on her face. “Well?!”

“It’s how I got the name Sammaël,” Sam said. “I was a lot younger and some… cult-ish types thought I was someone from their holy scripture, but the name kind of stuck with me.”

“Does it… mean, anything?” 

“Plenty, to plenty of different people,” Sam said, shrugging. “It’s supposed to be a boy’s name, but anyone who looks at any of what’s going on in some of your religions and assumes that whatever an angel is will fall into any sort of understandable concept of gender is kidding themselves.” She shook her head. “But it does have meaning to some, yes. ‘Poison of God.’ ‘Heard by God.’ ‘Destroyer.’ ‘Accuser.’ There’s a lot of titles, and none of them were apt, but… I was young.”

“Wait,” Sierra said, and she put her hand on Sam’s back again, sending a shiver up and down her spine, “are you saying you had an edgy phase?!” The unrepentant glee behind her eyes was captivating and unsettling in the best way. 

“I… guess so, yes,” Sam said, a little awkwardly as she put her empty bottle aside. “The problem with being the only one of your kind is that forming an identity is both the easiest and the hardest thing to do. If you are a being of supreme perception, in theory, the only perception that matters is your own. But when others perceive you as something for the first time, there’s something really… seductive about that.” She turned to Sierra. “What about you? Who is Sierra?”

“Well, you must remember a bunch of stuff through Abe, right?” she asked. 

“I suppose so,” Sam said, frowning. “It’s getting harder, honestly. Before, I could flip through his memories like reading a book, looking for what was important or appropriate. But now that I’m me, now that I really exist, here now, not as a cloud hovering over a planet with a little avatar to steer around but me, Sam, here, now, that all feels so much more distant.” 

“I think I can sort of understand that,” Sierra said. “So you don’t remember me then?”

“Oh, I do,” Sam said. “But it’s more dim. Like watching something through frosted glass, or a fogged up-window.” She smirked. “And I don’t mind the fact that this gives me an excuse to get to know you all over again.”

“Well…” Sierra said, and she talked. About her upbringing, living on the fringes of bigger cities, her parents never staying in one place for very long, her father struggling to find work, her mother making ends meet by doing housecleaning for wealthier families they lived near, and how hard that had made going to school. Sam listened with rapt attention. Some of this was familiar, of course, but it all felt like new information now that she heard it as Sam, like something out of a half-remembered dream. And listening to Sierra talk was beyond relaxing. She felt like she could do this all night.

“What did you want to be when you grew up?” she asked.

“Promise not to laugh,” Sierra said, which Sam answered with a solemn nod, followed by a wink. “Well… I thought for a bit there I was going to be a world-famous DJ,” Sierra continued, smiling widely. “Which is what all the records are about. But it’s still just… stuff.” She laid back down and looked up at the now fully-visible night sky, the Milky Way streaked across it. “I’m sort of aimless, really. I think I want to do some good, of course, but like… I don’t know.” Sam laid herself down next to her.

“Still figuring yourself out?” she asked. Sierra nodded. “Well,” Sam continued, “if it’s any consolation, I’m so old that the existence of your species feels like the new hip thing I’m still coming to grips with, and even I’m still trying to figure myself out.” She paused. “Obviously.”

That got a good laugh out of both of them. Sierra rolled her head to look at Sam, and Sam did the same, and then the laughter and the words ran dry. They just… looked at each other. Anyone who has spent a moment like this, under the stars, looking in the eyes of someone you’re only just getting to know, knows exactly how they felt, how hard their thoughts were to hold on to, and how much having had a few drinks had made this moment both monumentally easier to exist in and cosmically harder to come to grips with. 

To anyone who hasn’t, the recommendation is the following. Imagine looking in the eyes of someone you like. You might even fancy them. This is someone who makes you feel comfortable with yourself, who doesn’t judge you for who you are, and who makes you feel… welcome, where previously you might have felt like you had to apologize just for being present. Now imagine that, in that look, in that moment, there was suddenly a rising feeling that they might feel the same way about you. 

That was how Sam felt, and her heart did that thing where it stumbled over the beat like a runner with an untied shoelace, and her stomach felt warm, and her head swam, although that might’ve been the beer. 

“You know…” Sierra said, opened her mouth to say something more, and then closed it, because she realized she didn’t know how to say what she wanted to say and maybe it didn’t need saying at all. 

“I know,” Sam said with a grin. She felt clever, which was new, because before being clever had been a given. She felt good about herself, which was also new because before “herself” hadn’t even been a concept. Sammaël had simply been. But Sam had taken a lot of time and some very hard work to be, and now that she was, she was going to enjoy being, damn it. 

She wanted to stay here all night, although at some point the mosquitoes and the hard floor and the cooling water would cause them to flee the warm safety of the inside, but for now, this moment was the best one Sam had experienced yet. 

One thousand and three miles away, a little light in a cockpit blinked on. It wasn’t supposed to be on, but then again, the plane wasn’t supposed to be flying. The pilot was deeply confused about everything going on, but orders were orders. He flicked the switch back off. After another nine-hundred miles, the light would switch back on on its own again. Even now, the little yellow letters had burned themselves onto the pilot’s retina. 

“PAYLOAD ARMED,” they said.

Elamimax

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