Mara makes a mean mac and cheese dish with big chunks of streaky bacon and a side of sauerkraut. It’s a divine meal.
“I didn’t know you could cook so well,” I say to her.
“You don’t know me at all,” she smirks back.
I cock my head to the side. She can’t possibly remember me entirely. The fact that she has any inkling at all proves that humans do have access to what Alara calls the quantum memory. But I’m certain she does not remember everything. If she did, she’d be doing more blushing and less arch staring.
“Go and tend the counter,” her father says.
She trots off, obedient to him.
* * *
A couple of days later, my lumber is floated down the river and I go and get to work. I’ve been languishing in the position of yearning for my pet for what feels like too long now. I need to get myself busy and get this done for her.
So I get to work. I clear the land. I dig the holes for the piles. I even have bags of cement to stick them in place. Water from the river gives me much of what I need. Simple construction is a beautiful thing, and I would never have been able to experience it if it weren’t for this exile.
As I work, I find myself thinking less and less about the home realm, and more about my pet.
I know she will wait for me. I could tell the moment I laid eyes on her that she had touched nobody other than me. She’s still bearing my mark. I can smell it on her. I can see it in her eyes. No other male will be able to compare to me. No matter how hard they try, they will seem wrong to her. And her father is certainly not going to allow any casual suitors to approach directly.
I’ve got time.
Less time than I used to have, though. I used to have all of it. A vast expansive of existence that went forward and backward and I could step from one place to the other never feeling the sting of aging. I know that will not be the case anymore. I am subject to the same temporal rules as all mortal species.
I am aware now that every moment I do not have with her is a moment I will never get back. It is gone forever. The time we spend apart is a particular kind of brutality.
I want her. Keeping my hands off her is difficult. The way her father monitors her has made getting to her impossible.
This mere mortal form is impatient in ways my previous one was not. The urges are un-tempered by a sense of wise perspective. I am more animal now, and the animal wants to burst in, take her, and claim her for his own.
For the moment, I content myself by carrying more sacks of cement. Doing work is good for my mortal body, and probably good for my mind, though it does not prevent it from bringing up memory after memory of the most filthy acts that are possible to engage in with a human woman.
The ground is slippery and muddy after another good dose of rain. I did well when I ran the simulation for this planet. I solved an innumerable number of problems. These people will never know the suffering they would have encountered in a less, let’s say, designed universe.
I may be a creature of flesh and blood now, subjected to brutal mortality, but I have had a hand in the creation of all of this, and if I were to be called a god it would not be entirely inaccurate. I wouldn’t call myself one, of course. That’s arrogant, but I do enjoy the satisfaction of seeing fertile crops and growing mossand knowing that it was I who tweaked the settings behind the curtain before it was brought down on me.
Her father expects me to build a house, not knowing that it was I who built his entire world. I wonder what he would say to me if he knew that I had saved his life in a dozen timelines and stopped a series of brutally unfortunate events. I wonder if he would kneel…
“Ah, fuck!”
All of that pride comes to an abrupt halt as I slip on the mud and slide unceremoniously down into the stream. Clambering out is messy and harder than I thought it would be, and trying to keep the cement bag out of the water is a whole mission in itself.
A cackle from the tree line accompanies my attempts to get out without getting covered in mud. They fail abysmally. The distraction of hearing feminine laughter does not help at all.
I turn to see who is laughing. It’s her. Mara.
I don’t know how she got here. I almost have the sense she simply appeared, though that cannot possibly be true. She is sitting up in a tree where she has clearly been watching me for quite some time. She looks comfortable up there, wearing a short brown skirt that allows her to move easily, and a tight green top that keeps her agile. Her hair is bound up around her head in a braid. She looks healthy and happy, and very well amused.
“What are you doing?” She laughs the question at me.
I am so pleased to see her, but my palms do itch with the way she is grinning at me.
“How did you get here?”
“I followed you,” she says. “Well, not followed. My father has your address in his files. He knows where everyone is. So I found where you were because I got curious. You said some very weird things on the day we met, and you did even weirder stuff.” She tugs at the hem of her skirt, which is short and gives me a look that makes me think she didn’t hate how I touched her as much as she pretended to.
I have replayed that moment over in my mind, mostly feeling as though it was a mistake. She doesn’t remember me, not properly. I very nearly groped her because I still think of her as being every bit my pet. But she does not know that, not yet anyway.
