The next day comes with a heaviness I don't recognize at first - not the cramping, which has mostly eased, but something underneath it. Behind the sternum. In the legs when I stand. I eat breakfast and drink coffee and it doesn't lift the way tiredness lifts with caffeine. Just sits there, systemic, the whole body running slightly below its usual output.

---

The digger was delivered the next morning as planned. Dora was on hand to watch Tom drive it down the narrow drive towards the house.

I. Wycliff

I, Aylesea Wysax, was conceived in the bonds of the slaveowner called Wycliff in the Wystill mountains. Everyone in Wycliff, from the mayor to the field generator workers who kept the town’s AG engines operational, lived to serve the kingdom Tyrian. No one in Wycliff had ever seen the drivers who reigned over us. But what is so important about a town held aloft by rope, steel, and anti-gravity engines? Why keep 20 generations under someone’s thumb?

“Great car,” a voice called out as I opened the driver side door.

I turned to see Andy standing next to his car wearing a white polo shirt and blue jeans. He hoisted his backpack up and walked over to me.

“My parents want me to invite your family over this weekend.”

“I reckon they’re going to be expecting a wedding proposal.”

“Don’t tempt me,” I replied.

Every bump on the drive home lands in the same location. I park in the driveway and sit there for a moment with my hands on the wheel, the cramping still there.

The kitchen light is on when I come through the door. Emily is at the counter, laptop open, case files spread out, reading glasses on. She doesn't look up. I put my bag down quietly and go upstairs.

The bathroom. Stand under the fluorescent light for a moment.

Once Tom had signed a contract that was more of an agreement between the two of them, Dora said,

“I said that I owed you an explanation. Will you please follow me, and I’ll tell you why I’m here.”

I wake to the ache still there, low in the back, radiating forward. Emily's side of the bed is empty and cool - she's been getting up before me lately. I lie there for a moment with my hand on my lower abdomen before I've decided to be awake.

Then the intestines register - a liquid looseness, insistent, making its announcement before I'm ready for it. I get up. Bathroom. Now.

Then the routine. Sit, wipe, flush. Nothing unusual on the tissue. The dark boxer briefs feel slightly damper than normal when I pull them up, the baseline returning after the dry spell. I move on.

Chapter 28 – Quiet Stars

CHAPTER 7
Jenny looked a little surprised at that, and I realised how much of Lil’s problem went both ways. How must a trans woman feel, when so much of the world was shouting that same ‘imposter’ directly into her face? I did a rapid blessings count, giving my wife’s hand a squeeze, before waving in the general direction of our departed arseholes.

Chapter 2

I waited as I was, as the other guy strode away. Drom stood for a few moments and then went to a stall selling coffee. They had some tables and chairs set out. I turned around and watched him get a drink, then he went to sit down.

I went over to the stall and got my own drink. I had been worried what Drom would say if he ever saw me in a skirt, but now that wasn’t what I wanted to talk to him about. I went over to his table.

“Do you mind if I sit here?”

“Make yourself at home, Miss.”

He smirked. “I don’t wear anything.”

Another Country -14-
by Erin Halfelven