There was a buzzing in the air. You looked at me and I knew it was happening: an ending. Not a grand finale concluding some story but one heralding a great changing of the ways they are to the ways they were and the ways that is to be to the ways of now. A vibration shook my core, so deeply that even my already orbiting atoms were touched and started shaking along a different axis. I felt light in that moment, as if the split microsecond of their pause broke the hold of gravity on me. I was as if air.

But then came the sinking. Those microscopic particles’ reorientation made me drop and I knew the way it is to be was superseding the now. We never broke eye contact. I could feel from the force of your gaze you experienced it too, that ethereal high and bottoming low. My foot moved forward, my body towards yours. The reorientation made me misstep; the directions have all changed, gravity too. You caught yourself doing the same. We are mirrored and mirroring.

Our steps in sync brought us closer. We reached out to embrace, to grasp the other in hope we could find an anchor; just a moment to stabilize ourselves and process what was happening. But, as our hands touched tip to tip, we felt it: the shaking of our cores. Much like our contacted fingers, our vibrations were not the same but unique. Different pattern, different rhythm, different orientation, different intensity; yet still familiar.

We managed to wrap our arms around each other pressing ourselves close together. What did I think would happen? That our quaking would cancel the other’s out? That my atoms knocking into yours would somehow make it all right, like it used to be? No, the laws as they were are no more; the logic of now itself was out the window. The old ways were gone, only the new unknown existed. Despite this, we had one another, regardless of how different we felt entwined together.

Our vibrating did not cancel out. In fact, they seemed to amplify each other, as if instead of being opposite forces they were complimentary ones. The buzzing grew louder, our grips tighter. Was it reflexive, a response to what was at hand, or responsive, reacting to our climbing score?

My vision blurred, I’m sure yours did as well. I was shaking, my head was shaking, my eyes were shaking, and you were too. I saw a multitude of you yet knew I was touching each one. An infinite number of my eyes were locked with an equal amount of yours. We were entangled, existing in a myriad of places simultaneously. Existing within and without each other simultaneously.

What would an outside, unshaken observer see; the same as you and I? Relatively speaking, they could never glimpse either of our gaze, save for the two moments where we exist superimposed on them: the moment they replace me and the moment they replace you. Yet even so, looking in this stranger’s eyes, I know I would still see you. Would you see me too?

Or would they just see us there, holding each other; no vibrations, no buzzing, no quaking of the world, just the embrace of two momentarily existing as one? Would their heart quiver, breaking its daily rhythm at the sight? Would there be gasp of air as their breath flutters and shakes? Could our experience resonate despite the sensation being entirely unobserved? Perhaps I’m hoping for too much.

“Ah, but this one, this is a unique one.”

Sylvio’s fingers quickly flicked through an old book. Thankfully, despite its age, the pages were not brittle from time or surely they would’ve turned to dust under his hurried touch.

In between the moving planes were a variety of pressed flowers, some recognizable like the pansy or clematis. Others I had never seen before and would probably never again given the sheer size of the tome and speed at which Sylvio flipped through. The strangest were the recognizable ones presented in – well, the easiest way to say it is in the most peculiar ways.

I caught a glimpse of a rose which was not just compressed in space and time like the others but was somehow perfectly bisected before the pressing, showing off the interior in addition to its exterior. It was as if the paper was actually a window and I was looking into the three-dimensional space of this cut flower. But, before I could ask how that was possibly done, we were on to the next page.

Another presented the roots of a flower whose name I couldn’t catch. Not only were those roots perfectly flattened against the page, but the soil was too. I thought it surely was an illustration, a perfect mimicry of not only the root system and its environment but an imagination of what it would look like flattened as well. Sylvio, even moving as quickly as he was, never once looking up from the book, seemed to read my mind.

“Thin as the paper it rests on. It is not a model of the artist’s skill of reproduction, but rather of their skill in flattening.”

A natural response to that eerie feeling your thoughts are not entirely your own would be to stare questioningly at the individual who somehow lifted them from your mind. However, the book was too captivating. I could only stare at it lest I miss some new discovery; whether it be an unknown plant or a novel way of displaying a known one.

“Ah here we are,” Sylvio said despite still flipping through the book, as if possessing not only the ability to invade my thoughts but also see into the future as well, “this is what I wanted to show you.”

As he ended his sentence, his fingers ceased their movement and instead pointed to the page. On it was a flower with pitch black petals, so impossibly dark that I questioned the legitimacy of it. It had to be black ink drawn on the surface, though the white specks dotting the petals I could not explain.

“Almost like the night sky,” Sylvio remarked, again stealing my private thoughts. “Which makes sense as they say this flower does not grow or even bloom during the day, but under the cover of night.”

How does that make any sense, I sarcastically thought; both because it felt a little too rude to say aloud with such a tone but also in the hopes to confirm whether he was truly reading my mind or if it was merely a series of coincidences.

“Of course, that’s what I’ve heard. The truth is: no one has actually seen it grow before. There are no recordings of any stages beyond it being in full bloom. It just appears, fully formed. So, I guess it’s better to say people assume it grows at night because it’s not there one day and then there the next.”

Alright Sylvio, now you’re just bullshitting me. Not only does it apparently grow at night – though that itself is in question – no one has seen it outside of being in bloom? This must be some prank. And now, I’m questioning whether the whole book, with all its prior pages, actually contained fake flowers intricately assembled and reproduced as an elaborate ruse to make a fool of me.

“But even more remarkable isn’t that it grows at night fully formed, but this,” and his finger, in contrast to how it moved before, slowly traced over the flower’s petals before stopping on a spot. “Do you see it?”

I was unsure of what was to be seen. He seemed to be gesturing at an arbitrary point in a myriad of points. I did not say anything as I knew he already knew my response.

“Does this not look familiar to you?” he asked while moving his finger from one white speck, to another, and then another; seven times total. He made the gesture again, and again. Yet each time he repeated, I could not get any closer to what he was trying to show me. Before I could even think of the question, he answered.

“It’s the Big Dipper! Here,” and he walked over to a shelf, picked up another equally ancient tome, and flipped it open. This time, by some sort of miracle or yet a third supernatural ability, the book opened to the page he needed.

“See? Let me show you,” and he traced the constellations in both books simultaneously. Rather unsurprisingly at this point, his hands in perfect sync.

They were a perfect match, each point the same relative distance from the next, as if one was simply a scaled iteration of the other. But it had to be a coincidence. If you looked at hundreds or thousands of this flower, you’d be bound to find a pattern of white dots in a similar position and configuration as to a few stars in the sky.

“Now look at this,” and his hands, still in sync, traced more of the map, starting with the Big Dipper and then continuing to neighboring stars, and then he repeated. I watched him move over the actual map first before looking at the flower, then back to the map, then the flower.

“There! Don’t you see it? It’s right there!”

My finger is outstretched, pointing towards a spot in the cloudless blue sky. Jo and I are lying on our backs in a field of grass. I’m trying to show them something, but they just aren’t seeing it; this shouldn’t be so difficult. If only they didn’t need to rely on my directions – though, how can one accurately describe where a singular point is in a sea of nothingness, a sea of infinite points. If only they could see through my eyes.

They look at my raised arm, follow it up to my finger, and try to extrapolate the line outward into the azure abyss.

“Yup, nope, I don’t see it.”

“Come on, Jo, you aren’t even trying. I don’t even have to look at you to know.”

Good thing too. My view can’t leave that fixed point; it requires unblinking focus to maintain. Water collects in the corners of my eyes as their surface dries up. That sensation returns, it feels like I’m about to cry. Jo is going to make me cry again. How do they do it without fail, without even trying, without even intending to? I know they get a kick out of it. That’s what they’re doing, isn’t it? They’re fucking with me; they have to be.

“Look Jo, stop screwing around. The spot is right there, how can you keep missing it?”

My body is telling me to blink, to give my eyes a reprieve. But I can’t risk it, or I’d be just as lost as Jo. We’d have to start all over.

“We’ve been at this for almost ten minutes. I’m pretty sure you aren’t supposed to keep your eyes open for so long or – “

Jo stops mid-sentence. I can feel it and I know they can too. It’s that same sensation as locking eyes with someone, though here our gazes are reflected and entwined via that spot in the sky.

“What exactly am I looking at? All I see is blue.”

“Just give it a second. Focus on it and don’t blink.”

It’s hard to describe, but it’s something I’ve always been able to do. If I stare at a spot, unblinking, unwavering, it’ll eventually start to change. It undulates, vibrates, shimmers, moves towards and away from me, turns itself inside out and back again. The feeling isn’t that of looking through or past something but almost like pushing through it, as if there’s a veil that transforms and contorts from a steady wind projected by my gaze. And the longer I look, the harder it pushes. I chose the sky because patterns are too chaotic, there’s too much to take in at once to focus on a single spot without enough practice. At least that’s what I tell myself, I’ve never been able to get someone else to see it, but I know if anyone can catch a glimpse of it, it’d be Jo.

“Well?”

Fall was Louis’s favorite time of year. It wasn’t the anticipation of Halloween and all the sweets that came with it or the carving of pumpkins with goofy, messy faces. It was the falling leaves; he absolutely adored the shifting hues and downpour that followed when the temperature and sunlight shifted with the Earth’s axis. He’d wait for me to rake the yard up before diving headfirst into the pile, disappearing completely. The warning of spiders or other creepy crawlies never deterred him. In fact, the mystery of what lay underneath was part of the fun.

He was also a fan of magic, and the fall leaves were his material and subject of choice. One trick involved holding up a bright red leaf by its stem to me, turning it slowly so I could take in every inch of it. He then twirled it around and clapped it between his hands, it concealed from my view. Then, with the biggest, toothiest grin, he slowly parted his palms to reveal a green leaf.

All the tricks were variations of this. I would tear up a leaf and count the pieces, keeping track of the number. With the same clap of and reveal in his hands, he matched that number with an equal amount of identically colored, full leaves. Another involved crumbling up and crushing a dried leaf between his palms, bringing it up to his mouth, and blowing the pieces out of his hand leaving an intact, green leaf behind.

I never knew where Louis learned these magic acts; I certainly didn’t teach them to him. He almost seemed born with it, as if it was something innate in him. Or perhaps his real father was a woodland nymph who came to me in a dream and gifted me a part fey child. Louis claimed the trees told him how to do it, but that seemed as ridiculous as my immaculate conception theory.

I only had one rule though: no leaves in the house. It was hard enough keeping it tidy with a growing boy, the addition of them stuffed under the couch or into pillows or left in his pockets for the laundry was too much. However, he never fussed about it. He never pouted or even tried to convince me with teary eyes or honeyed words. The leaves were always left just outside the door before coming in and, strangely, seemed to wait for his return, unmoving from the spot they were dropped. Though, part of me imagined he simply magicked them into and out of his room whenever he pleased. If I never saw them, does it really matter?

He did have a faux leaf cape we crafted on a Halloween a few years ago. Well, cape isn’t entirely accurate, it was really more of a blanket that functioned as both. Some days, he’d march around with it on, part of it dragging along on the floor behind him. Others, he’d curl up with it near a window where he’d watch the leaves fall from the tree line. And yet, on other days, Louis tried to perform tricks with it, though it seemed whatever power he possessed only worked on the real ones and not their silken, dyed counterparts.

His favorite indoor act was to run up to me, arms outstretched with a corner of the blanket in each hand and throw it over himself as he crouched to the floor. The idea was that I wouldn’t be able to see him, that the only thing that would be left in front of me was the blanket and nothing else. I played along not wanting him to start questioning his other magic tricks. Deep down though, I think he knew it wasn’t really working. There was always a slight tinge of disappointment on his face after the blanket was removed. It didn’t stop him from practicing almost daily.

One day, I caught him outside with his bed sheet ripped from the mattress. He was attaching leaves from a pile onto it, though how I couldn’t figure out. There was no glue, no thread and needle, no tape; nothing that would bond the two together. He simply placed a leaf and it stayed in place. After a bit, a full, real, leaf cape was formed, appearing eerily like the faux one inside. Louis ran around holding it above his head, it trailing and waving behind him. None of the leaves fell off, they were more secure there then on the trees.