Seer, he tells me. The Barrier is where our differences show. I am a seer, Allie.
I lift a hand, even as I stumble along after him, trying to keep up with his long legs. I must look like I’m tripping out on drugs, I think. Like an acid freak.
Well, I’m in the right city for it.
I laugh at the thought, but still, I am fascinated as I look at my hand. I am not like the sheep, after all. Rather than being a puff of indeterminate smoke, I am like him, made of crisscrossing white and gold and fire-colored light. It weaves into complex patterns under my gauzy skin. I turn my hand over in wonder, see veins and light structured as bone.
Am I not human? I ask.
My companion is silent.
Hey, I say to him. Hey. What am I...?
Later, he says. We don’t have time for Seer 101 right now, Allie.
I remember that he is nervous. I try to focus, to do as he says.
But it is so easy to get distracted here.
Wind whispers by; it goes through me, a soft pulse of warmth. I rise higher, higher still...until I seem to be looking out over Earth itself. Ghosts vie with one another from that much higher place. They dive and screech, sightless between stars.
Above them stands the Pyramid.
It is made of bright silver light, a hard metal umbrella of jarring, precise lines. Anger drives it, a determination to impose its own rhythm, to control...
He grips my hand, tighter. It hurts.
I find myself with him once more, though, after he does it. I am walking over the ground, on the sidewalk, using my strangely clumsy body and its odd, jerking movements. My legs never stop flexing back and forth. We are walking fast, and I almost recognize where we are as we climb a rising sidewalk towards another row of buildings.
I click between realities like changing channels, negative to positive.
We approach another of those sky people, a being of bright gold light, like the man holding my hand. I feel my companion react. The new being with the chiseled face and body grows nearer with every step.
Unlike us, he does not walk, but sits.
The negative clicks to positive.
I see a flash of the street through my physical eyes...
...and a homeless man blinked back at me from the sidewalk, a broken cardboard box over his legs for warmth. A puppy lay curled at his feet, a dirty white color with chocolate brown spots. The homeless man wore a gray beard and tie-dyed shirt over jeans stiff with dirt and sweat. His eyes shone dark, intense.
My mind reacted, pulled briefly from that feeling of peace.
They are everywhere, I think. They look just like us...
...then I am back in the place of no time.
There, the homeless man’s eyes glow as pale white stars, reflecting a quiet joy that lives in kindness and warmth. I feel my companion’s relief as he looks at this man. He shows me, in another flash of layered and complicated thought, the proper means of greeting the other in this place. The other person...
Seer, my friend whispers.
I flinch from the word.
But the old man is smiling. He bows to me, and to the man with me; a whisper of warmth flows from him to us, a soft, liquid light. My companion sends a similar pulse back. He shows me how to do the same, mixing his light with mine, and I smile, unable to help it.
The homeless man smiles back.
We are all everything, sister, he tells me. All the time.
Time passes.
I am somewhere else now.
He pulls me across an endless sea of green grass. He won’t let me slow. I want only to enjoy the feel of animals and plants, watch clouds whisper around the faint auras of trees...
...when suddenly, the image righted itself. The night sky flattened, turning back to the one I’d known since childhood, covered in pinprick stars.
Auras evaporated like smoke from around living trees, grass, water, even rocks.
I held up a hand as I stumbled after the tall shadow of a tall stranger who held onto my other arm. I watched the light fade until my fingers grew back into the same opaque skin and bone I’d always known.
Once it had, I shivered, suddenly freezing cold.
I found myself walking in my waitressing uniform, a white blouse and a short, black miniskirt, without a jacket. We were making our way along the edge of a long line of trees overlooking a sloped pasture, one that I vaguely recognized.
Then I saw them—hulking dark forms with shaggy humps, black horns and low, twitching tails. We were all the way to the buffalo paddock in Golden Gate Park.
Fighting fear, I wracked my brain for how I’d gotten there.
I glanced up at the trees, then towards the road.
I stumbled when I stared too long, fought to regain my footing when the man holding onto me didn’t slow his pace. I was still being pulled along, despite my faltering steps, and I realized he gripped my hand like iron, and that he was taking me somewhere forcibly.
In the same set of seconds, I remembered that I didn’t know him.
“Hey,” I managed. I tried to pull on my arm, to retrieve it, but he only yanked me after him harder, exuding impatience. “Hey...wait. Wait up! Stop!”