Page 159 of Tracking Snow

Her expression wrinkles in confusion. She thinks I’m rejecting her.

I caress her cheek with my thumb, kissing her softly. “As much as I’d love to plow you so deep and hard we leave a permanent mark in this couch right now, I need to tell you something.”

“Okay,” she says, straightening her clothes.

Five minutes later, we sit next to each other in electric silence after I’ve told her everything. The television is muted, but the colorful tropical pictures are still moving inappropriately in the background.

The small potion bottle with the petal in it sits on the coffee table.

I barely let myself look at it before, but now I can see that what I thought was black is more like an impossibly dark blue, tiny sparks popping inside it like bubbles rising through champagne.

Like a dark night of exploding stars, Three muses.

“What should we do?” I finally ask Snow.

She is also staring at the bottle. “What do you guys want to do?”

Our heart stutters, still never getting used to how she addresses us as individuals.

“We are undecided,” I say, leaning forward and clasping my hands tightly. “Two and Six are averse to change, while Three and Five seem optimistic that it would be for the best. Four is scared of dying.”

The last part is hard to get out, nearly catching in my throat, because I share his reservations.

My hands release, then clasp each other so hard this time my knuckles whiten.

“Oh, One.” Snow’s tone is scored with deep empathy as she turns to face me, hearing the thing I won’t admit out loud. “That must be so fucking scary.”

She wraps her arms around me and pulls me to her. I’m stiff in her embrace, unable to reciprocate. Frozen. Frozen in fear.

She doesn’t try to tell me Four and I are wrong. She doesn’t tell me not to think like that. She simply holds me until I soften in her arms, my fingers finding her spine to pull her closer into me until I’m breathing deep and steady again.

“You know I love you, all of you, no matter what you choose, right?” she whispers.

“What if I change?” I whisper back. “What if we are different when we are...whole?”

What if you don’t like us anymore? What if you can’t love us like that?

Snow pulls back a fraction but doesn’t let me go.

“Then I’ll find even more new things to love about you.”

She brushes the curls away from my forehead in a soothing gesture. I close my eyes, leaning into the soft tingling her fingertips leave in their wake, finally feeling my heartbeat calm.

“And you don’t have to decide today⁠—”

“We do,” I say sharply as I stiffen. “The pressure is pressing against the inside of our bones, our brain. We can’t...we can’t walk around with uncertainty like this.”

I didn’t realize it until I reacted to her suggestion.

But it’s true.

We are divided on so many things. We don’t want this mega life-altering decision hanging between us, haunting us, tearing us apart night and day.

“Okay.” She nods with a reassuring smile, brushing through my hair again until my shoulders relax. “Today. Now. You guys can figure this out.”

“How?” I ask, almost desperate for her to just tell us what to do.

She chews on the inside of her cheek for a moment.