While they slept, the fog rolled in around them, and when they woke, the world had become invisible.
Trust it’s out there, he said. Weather always changes.
She had seen enough bad weather to stay skeptical. She rubbed her eyes.
He took her hand in his. Don’t worry, he said. It’s only a matter of time.
She had told him she would remember him always, but there came a day when she realized he had stopped inhabiting all the stories. As if he were a hermit crab, he had scuttled away and left her talking about empty shells.
If she held them to her ear, she could hear something that sounded like breathing, but in her hand, they were as cold as the sea before dawn.
She had once been a woman with faith in directions, in paths worn down by hundreds of feet, but she searched so long, she ran out of maps.
What you’re looking for will find you, said her friend. Just wait.
Though she was much better at traveling, she waited as she was told, holding her compass tight to her heart, no matter how wrong it had steered her. She hoped her hands would convert it to some strange beacon, marking true North on her heart in a way only recognized by the one on the right itinerary.
He had just about given up on her. She wandered away from him on the shore, turning over sand dollars as if there was treasure underneath them.
It’s just sand, he hissed. It doesn’t mean anything.
Maybe she didn’t hear him, her ears filled instead with the sound of the waves, the scurrying of hermit crabs, the wind in the sea grass. Maybe she had just decided not to listen anymore. No matter the story, she was walking away, leaving footprints behind her shaped like small, gasping fish.
That week, food turned to dust in my mouth. Ravenous, I sat in front of plate after plate and found my appetite disappearing three, four, five bites in.
“That’s all yours,” she said, gesturing with one chopstick.
“Take it,” I said. And then, “This has never happened to me. Ever.”
For years, I’d felt like I was starving to death. Now, running on a steady diet of adrenaline and hope, it felt like just the charged air around me was enough fuel for the journey.
How are you? she asked.
It all seeped through the cracks then, as uncontrollable as mercury loosed, and I tried to bring it back in like breath. The last time such an escape happened, I nearly drowned in all the liquid, struggling for air, blinded by salt. The last time, I required rescue.
This time, I forced the retreat, dammed it back behind my fissured heart.
I’m doing OK, I said. This day, there was no time for floods.
I hope this won’t change anything, he said.
She thought about it for a moment. No, she said. It won’t change anything. And it wasn’t a lie, not even a little bit, because the status quo had ignited hours before—all that was left of it was embers and ash.
We probably should have started this earlier, she said. We wasted all that time.
Things happen when they’re meant to, he said. Things happen when they should.
100 Proof 