My days settle into a simple rhythm: wake up, shower, and—because the universe has a sick sense of humor—shave from the neck down. Back home, the nanobots kept us sleek by default. Here? Razors are mandatory, and I’m suddenly mastering the fine art of grooming everywhere. Although… it does make the “homework” for my intimacy tutoring more fun.

  Dress, eat, teach or attend classes, grab a midday meal, head outside for field training, dinner, and finally home for more lessons—or whatever domestic duties haven’t magically done themselves.

  I pause on the path to admire a high-blue sky veiled with mare’s-tail cirrus. Thicker cloud banks gather over the pine-dotted mountains on the horizon. Good hunting grounds—deer, elk, even boar—flavors that still bring Dad back to me even after… I don’t know…

  “Hey, Mira, how long has it been since we left?”

  “VR or Earth time?”

  “Both?”

  “You have experienced one year, six months, and sixteen days in the virtual world. Four thousand five hundred fifty-six years have elapsed on Earth since our departure.”

  A hollow ache opens in my chest. Daddy is gone. Even the extended lifespan of a Host wouldn’t keep him alive that long. “Damn…”

  Then the two numbers click together in my mind. “That can’t be right.”

  “I assure you both numbers are accurate within human approximations—would you like the precise figure to the second?”

  “What you’re saying doesn’t add up. Even at the speed of light—”

  “Ah,” Mira interrupts, gentle as a scalpel. “This is a common misconception. There are one million two hundred thousand human soul cores aboard, along with billions of animal and creature cores. I only have the processor power to maintain this reality for a fraction of you at once.”

  “We timeshare this world?”

  “Yes. It appears you missed that orientation class.”

  “It’s not my fault they scheduled most of them during the Summer Games. So how much time passes for each of my waking days?”

  “I cannot give you an exact number because individual wake durations vary.”

  “I don’t need it down to the second—just a rough.”

  “For you, it works out to about eleven Earth years per waking day.”

  “Mo thruaighe…” I whisper. The Gaelic tastes like ash.

  I drift from shop to shop under honey-warm sunlight. The baker’s doorway exhales cinnamon and yeast. Then I step into Greta’s House of Inter-dimensional Arts and Crafts. The sign says Greta’s, but of course, it’s Grettaluna behind the counter. The beautiful blonde always finds a way to make herself the center of any room. The place smells of lanolin and fresh-cut flax, warm with human craft and effort. Bolts of wool and linen crowd the walls. Fine lace hangs like frost in the light. She presides like a queen bee while her students feed looms and spin thread.

  I squeeze my coins in my palm. A gold chip, three silver, a scatter of copper. Enough for supplies, not enough for dreams. My gaze strays across the square to Garrett the bowyer and Tiffany the fletcher. My gaze sticks to the compound bow on the back wall, its cams and polished limbs catching the light. I swallow. I carved the simple bow I’ve used this past year, but that beauty is calling my name. I still need five more gold chips.

  I’d earned my first coins teaching archery and hunting, then spent most of them on sewing supplies. Fabric and thread from the weaving students, needles from blacksmithing apprentices, buttons and lace from the crafters. My first attempts were… humbling. No worse than anyone else’s, except a long skirt shouldn’t fall off in front of a roomful of green archery students. Three extra buttons fixed that—until my rough stitches split on a hunt.

  Textile Management ticked up a level as a pity prize for surviving the wardrobe mishaps, but the real reward came after a dozen lopsided creations—skirts with uneven hems, tunics with mismatched sleeves, shirts gaping from badly placed buttons.

  Election debates drone from the wall monitor while the fake sun sinks toward the horizon outside our third-floor window. I set down my needle and study my latest creation—a short-sleeved pullover. My pulse quickens as I check the seams, hems, sleeves, collar. It’s… actually good.

  A soft chime taps my inner ear. A translucent golden panel blinks into existence, letters crisp as if etched in glass.

  Congratulations!

  You have advanced to Novice Seamstress 10.

  “Oh, thank God,” I breathe. The panel shimmers and dissolves, the new skill gliding into my growing list—swimming, running, acrobatics, cooking, hunting, and a dozen more—but this one feels different. The others are just acknowledgments of what I already knew. Sewing? I’d never even threaded a needle before this world. This one is mine.

  Tucked among the other numbers is the quiet proof of eighteen months’ work:

  Advanced Archery: 43.

  Bowyer: 21.

  Fletcher: 21.

  Kissing: 7.

  Intimate Arts: 8.

  The first three, steady progress. The last two… that’s Tess’s doing. Her “class” every night has pushed me out of my awkward disaster zone. But that’s the problem. Seven in Kissing, eight in Intimacy—Tess insists I’ve outgrown practice drills. “You need a study partner,” she says, like it’s homework. Easy for her. For me, it feels like standing at the edge of a cliff with no rope. Stats or not, I can’t imagine fumbling through that with anyone—especially not him.

  I grin. Will Lenard like how my new shirt looks on me?

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  “Jenny! Tess! I got it right!”

  “Really!?!” Jenny rolls out of a handstand, strawberry-blonde curls bouncing over her shoulders. A heartbeat later, my shirt vanishes from my hands.

  “Hey! That’s mine,” I huff.

  Too late. She’s already pulling it on, checking the mirror. It hugs perfectly above, drapes loose at her dancer’s waist, and skims her hips. “It’s a little longer than I like, but it’ll do. Thank you!”

  “Jenny, I made that for me!”

  Tess snickers. “Forget it, Bluebell.”

  “But—”

  “All it needs is a little glitter—”

  “No! Please…” My voice dies as she smears glitter paste over the chest.

  “Perfect! Can you make shorts or a skirt to match?”

  “Sure,” I sigh. “But you’re buying the supplies. And no pouting.”

  “Grettaluna doesn’t like me,” Jenny moans, dabbing the leftover glitter into her hair.

  I cock an eyebrow.

  “Tess, will you buy the stuff—please?”

  “Teach me that backflip from martial arts class, and you’ve got a deal.”

  “Okay!”

  “Hey, what do I get out of this?” I glance between them.

  Jenny rubs her chin, leaving a comet-tail of glitter along her lip. “I’ll set you up on a date with Doc.”

  Heat rushes into my cheeks. Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch Me kicks on in my skull.

  Now… now I can make my own clothes. And with a bit more practice, I’ll hit novice–intermediate. Then I can work leather—craft custom finger tabs, a bracer, maybe a quiver, a pouch for bowstring wax, even a sleeve guard. And… maybe later… something more fitted. Like form-hugging pants. And a matching pair for Doc.

  I shift in my seat, pressing my thighs together. Um, wow… The thought of Doc—Lenard Richmond—wearing leathers I’ve made with my own hands sends my pulse racing.

  “My oh my,” Tess snickers.

  “Lizzy! You’re blushing—everywhere,” Jenny giggles.

  I yank my scraggly auburn hair forward to hide my face, folding my arms over my chest, suddenly too aware of my threadbare white chemise. “No I’m not…”

  Jenny glances up. “Mira, play her song, please!”

  “Oh, no, no, no—” I stare at the fireplace, avoiding their eyes. The flames loop… then stutter… then resume.

  “Which one, Miss Kelly?”

  “Creature from the Love Lagoon?”

  “Or,” Tess offers, “Teenage Mutant Lover?”

  I bury my face in my hands.

  “I am unaware of either title,” Mira says. “Shall I suggest them to the Music Composition classes?”

  “Sure,” Jenny snickers. “But what’s the one she actually plays in her room—you know, the one she dances to—”

  “Please no,” I groan, but my toes are already tapping.

  “Ah, yes,” Mira says, smug as a DJ whose most-requested track is about to spin.

  The electric guitar riff hits—just slightly off-key—and a smile creeps across my lips. Memories rush in—my first midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Toast and rice flying. The sticky scent of old popcorn ground into the carpet. Friends bouncing like lunatics, shouting lines we weren’t supposed to know.

  And then—my parents stepping onto the stage. Dad in gold underpants. Mom in… well… something I can’t unsee. Their best friend Rhea playing Janet. Weird. Fun. Weeks later, I take the stage as Magenta. Mom, Dad, and Rhea cheer. I’m hooked. For three years we keep the tradition alive—until Ishtar melts the polar ice caps, the Atlantic swallows the theater, and the world changes.

  Even now, those opening bars pull me into the dance. I leap to my feet. “Come on, you two!”

  “Hell yeah,” Jenny cries, her lithe body scattering glitter with every spin and kick.

  Tess moves like a blade—sharp, elegant, martial grace in motion.

  The music fades and we collapse in a giggling heap. I spring up as the next track starts; my hips and shoulders sway in a slow, teasing rhythm. I sing along with the male vocalist.

  “Oh, my god,” Jenny giggles, wiping sweat—and glitter—across her brow with my stolen shirt.

  Tess quirks an eyebrow. “Jenny, is our little Bluebell a transvestite?”

  “A sugary one, from the looks of it. Should we warn the good doctor?”

  “Nope,” Tess says with mock gravity. “But you might want to start locking your door at night.”

  I waggle my eyebrows and let muscle memory take over—blowing kisses, licking my lips, drinking in Tess’s glow and Jenny’s fake moans. The song ends.

  “That’s enough, Mira.” I head for the shower.

  A pop-up window flickers across my vision, letterspacing uneven, the font a weird cursive I can barely read:

  Congratulations!

  Performance Dance +1

  Roommate Logistics +1

  I squint. Since when is Basic Roommate Diplomacy called Roommate Logistics?

  “Wait for me!” Jenny calls.

  I shiver. Yes, there’s plenty of space for all three of us. No, they don’t have anything naughty in mind. But growing up textile means privacy in the bathroom—alien to Jenny and Tess.

  I sigh under my breath, turn the dial to waterfall, toss my sweaty chamois into the laundry bin, and step into the warm cascade. Steam blooms. The smell of soap and hot stone rises. Sweat and glitter swirl away into the ankle-deep pool.

  Half an hour later, I slip into bed and close my eyes.

  A deep male voice, followed by a klaxon, thunders into my head:

  [SHIP WARNING] Velocity Envelope Exceeded. Debris flux +183%. Forward Whipple ablator at 62%. Radiator A-Ring perforation rate rising. Primary and secondary repair crew cores corrupted. Tertiary crew, prepare for revival sequence.

  Jenny groans.

  “Saints preserve us…” Tess stammers.

  “Dia linn…” I whisper.

  The VR world goes dark.