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Sometimes, the world shifts between one breath and the next.
Doctor Harvey says it's normal. The fresh country air, the excitement of festivals, the artistic reverie — it's easy to lose track of time. It's normal to be walking through the forest and suddenly find herself up at the farm. It's normal, apparently, to be drinking pumpkin ale in the middle of town and then suddenly be inside her house, one hand against the doorframe.
"Nothing to worry about," Harvey had said, and smiled so soft and genuinely that Leah couldn't stop herself smiling back. "Happens to all of us."
She doesn't let it bother her. Leah paints and forages and works on that one sculpture that never looks quite right, no matter how long she spends on it. She falls in love, a little bit, but it doesn't change her day. She goes to the saloon at the end of the week and passes the time with Elliott, even though he seems preoccupied, these days — his foot tapping staccato rhythms on the hard floor, his thigh never still. The novel is almost finished, apparently.
She breathes out, and the room brightens.
The farmer is always a whirlwind. Leah goes pink before she's even had the wine pressed into her hands, and she wants to make a joke about bringing your own booze, about letting anyone else see — but the farmer has already moved on, saying a little something to everyone, pulling gifts out of their overstuffed backpack like a magician. She's not watching and she's not jealous but she notices, despite herself, the way they linger a moment longer with Emily behind the bar (and who else goes behind the bar?), and the way they don't even look at her as they rush past to the games room.
The music carries on. Marnie is dancing nearby and Elliott's full attention is turned to the window and Leah shifts in her seat, leans over just enough to see the pool table and the arcade machines and the teenagers she's never talked to. She knows their names but not much else. Caroline had once mentioned something about Abigail's studies but Leah was too busy trying out compositions in her mind, a mother and daughter portrait, green and purple and subtle iridescence.
She wouldn't know what to say to any of them, but the farmer flits between them like a butterfly until they're in front of Abigail, and then — pauses. And Leah isn't watching, and it's none of her business what they're saying on the other side of the saloon, but when the farmer is talking to her Abigail unfurls like a fern in spring rain and all Leah can think is, oh, you too.
The saloon seems a little darker, a little quieter after the farmer leaves. Leah doesn't like to think of herself as predictable but she tells herself she's in no rush to leave and stays until it's almost midnight, until the night air is a cold kiss on her flushed cheeks as she pushes open the door and—
—She's standing in a kitchen she's never seen, and she's hurt and angry and this is normal. She's surrounded by people she's never talked to, and she's been talking to them for hours, and this is normal.
Leah takes a deep breath, flattening her palms on the kitchen table.
"I can't believe they'd do this to us..." Penny says, her voice so raw it's almost a whisper. It's the most words Leah has ever heard her say.
"I can," Haley says, magnificent in her anger the way only people with perfect symmetry can be, and for a moment Leah wants to freeze the world and grab her paints and capture the sparks in Haley's hair.
The farmer walks in, and the moment's gone.
All of them — every unmarried woman in town, ugh — take turns to take chunks out the farmer, and then dump them, and that's it.
Leah's chest aches like her chisel slipped and knocked out something vital, but this is normal.
"Well," Haley says, her eyes bright and fierce. "Can I get anyone a drink?"
Leah opens her mouth, her breath still making up its mind, and.
She wakes up, and this is normal. Some days feel like repeats, but finding the same mushroom in the same spot is just luck. Those dishes always need doing. Maybe she dreamt that she added more colour to that painting, but she likes the way it looks in her memory so she does it again.
It's the end of the week, so she goes to the saloon. It's not... it's normal for everyone to be in the same place, because this is a small town and everyone has settled into their routines like grooves carved into wood. It's not surprising that Elliott is staring out the window, wishing he was working on his book instead of sitting here with her.
"You can go back to your desk, you know," Leah says, and smiles as Elliott snaps back to her with a dramatic toss of his head. "I don't mind sitting here by myself."
"Perish the thought! It's good for me to get out. I find the walk to and from here so inspiring," he says, and then his gaze drifts, and Leah is, in all ways but physically, alone. She's never been great at making friends but sometimes, maybe, she thinks should have tried a little harder to get to know some other people in this town.
Although — it occurs to her that it's about the time the farmer should come in, but it's an odd, nonsense thought because the farmer is the one unpredictable element in this valley. The unexpected thrill that sparkles down her spine every time she sees them is half the reason she fell in love with —
Anger floods through her like a spilled can of paint. That cheating bastard, she thinks, and then the rage is gone like it's been snipped away.
She remembers Haley's kitchen, and Maru shaking with anger beside her, and Abigail's pale face.
She knows she's never been inside Haley and Emily's house.
Leah flattens her palms against the tabletop — oak, oil stained, slightly sticky — and breathes. It's like looking at a magic eye illusion: she knows each picture is there even if she can't look at them both at once. Those always made her feel a little sick, if she made herself look at them for too long.
This is normal, she thinks, and covers her mouth to hide the laugh trying to bubble out of her throat.
Elliott, when she glances at him, hasn't noticed a thing. The rest of the saloon regulars are exactly where they always are, doing the things they always do. Except — Emily is staring at her, wide-eyed. Abigail is sitting on the sofa with her knees hugged to her chest. She—
—She's standing in Haley's kitchen.
"Not again," Maru says, which answers that question, even if Leah doesn't know how to word it yet.
"I can't do this again," Penny says. She looks like she's going to be sick. Maru steps closer and wraps an arm around her waist, easy and familiar in a way that sends a shock of loneliness through Leah's stomach.
"It'll be over in a minute," Haley says, looking towards the door, and Leah's still staring at her as the farmer walks in.
She's so angry, and.
Leah wakes up. It's the end of the week so she focuses on her painting, and it's normal to have yesterdays piling up like discarded prints, and all the things she didn't even get to say the last time around are waiting like a still pond under duckweed, deep and treacherous. The paintbrush shakes, the anger soaked into her bones, and she—
—She's standing in Haley's kitchen.
"Oh, good, you guys are back," Haley says, with a laugh that lands light and brittle, snapping like caramel.
Abigail catches her hands against the table, her hair tumbling wine-dark around her face. "I'm going to be sick," she says, quietly.
"Not in here, you're not," Haley says, moving, and Leah hates her for all of a second before she realises Haley's filling a glass with water and handing it to Abigail. "Deep breaths, small sips, okay?"
"I've had dreams like this," Emily says, peering around at all of them like she's seeing colours no one else can, and then the farmer walks in, and all Leah wants to talk about is Marnie and Lewis and whether they know how obvious they're being.
The rest of the day is uneventful.
She wakes up and it's raining. Her painting looks the same as it did yesterday evening, and she finds blackberries on her walk, and the farmer finds her by the river and presses a bottle of wine into her hands and Leah can only find nice words on her tongue.
You gave me this three days ago, Leah wants to say, but the farmer is already halfway across the clearing. She feels warm and hot, heart pounding, cheeks flushed. The anger's still there like an abandoned canvas painted white, the colours secret and clashing underneath.
It's raining, which means the promise of a drink in the saloon shimmers in her mind. Puddles squelch under her boots as she strides into town, past the river and the ranch, past the house she's been inside of precisely once —
"Hey," Haley calls, from the doorway. "Get in here."
Leah stops. Hesitates. Tries to hold two pictures in her mind at once.
"Like, if you want," Haley adds, with a roll of her eyes, and disappears back inside.
Leah doesn't think of how many times she hasn't walked through this door. The kitchen is empty when she glances at it: Maru and Penny are both on the sofa, Abigail sitting cross-legged in front of the coffee table, Emily smoothing her dress over the armchair.
Haley puts her hands on her hips and huffs out a breath like an opening argument. "Right," she says, and looks across them all to make sure she has everyone's attention. "What the fuck is going on?"
"So, the good news is, you're not alone in experiencing whatever this is," Maru says.
"That's the only part I like about it," Penny says, in a small voice that might be the only volume she talks at. Leah hasn't spent enough time with her to know.
Abigail sits back, tossing her hair out of her face with a scowl. "You know, my mom has been saying I should get more female friends. Maybe she set this up."
"Cute," says Haley. "I know missing memories are like, a normal part of living here, but when someone screws me over I want to yell at them and I want the yelling to stick. Is that really too much to ask?"
"It could be quantum entanglement across multiple planes of reality, if you believe in the multiverse theory of everything," Maru starts. "If something is forcing our collective consciousness to persist between different layers —"
"Like rainbows!" Emily says. "They're the same light but different for every person who looks at them, right?"
Maru tilts her head to the side, lips parted. "Er," she starts.
"Mm, hm, no thank you," Haley says, holding up a hand. "Don't try to get on her level. Is there a way to make ourselves like, a fixed point in space and time, or whatever?
"How do we make sure it doesn't happen again? I can't do that again. I was so mad, but it was like someone had locked all my feelings in a box and I couldn't touch them..." Penny says, wrapping her arms around herself.
"Once you get to tomorrow, you're fine," Leah says, offhand and unthinking, and it takes a beat to realise the room is silent. She looks up, meets Haley's wide eyes. "What? Has no one else been caught in a loop before?"
"Er, no. First time trapped in hell," Abigail says. "I mean, I've had days that felt like they were never going to end, but I will never, ever complain about time passing slowly again, as long as it actually passes."
Maru frowns. "I've had days that felt the same, but that's just small town life, you know."
"Deja vu is just your brain telling you to pay attention to something," Emily says.
"What happened the other times?" Haley asks, holding her gaze.
"I don't really remember," Leah says, honestly: there's a hundred days between her and the last false yesterday. "Something kind of awful happened, and then it didn't, and then finally it was tomorrow. I didn't... dwell on it."
She just spent a lot of time talking to Doctor Harvey about anything else, spiralling around it like doodling circles on a page.
"Great. So it's happened before, and it could happen again, and we have no idea how to stop it," Abigail says, leaning back on her hands as she stretches out her legs.
"We could talk to the farmer," Emily suggests, and a chill settles across the room like an early frost, swift and bitter.
"No, thank you," says Penny, quietly.
"Mm, something that doesn't make my brain feel itchy, please," Haley says, looking around. "Science girl, got any ideas?"
Maru frowns, more thoughtful than annoyed. "I can think of a couple of tests I could try, but —"
"I know a book," Penny says, quietly, and everyone looks at her. "I found it in this hidden section of the library... I don't know if anyone else goes in there. I tried to ask Gunther about it but he just pretended not to hear me."
"There's a book on quantum mechanics in our library?" Maru says, eyebrows raised.
"Was it a magic book?" Abigail says, the start of a grin lighting up her face.
Penny tangles her fingers together, flicking her thumbnails one over the other. "I thought I heard it whispering to me," she says.
"Sure, why not," Haley says. "Did the magic book have anything useful to contribute?"
They gather in Leah's cabin, mostly on the rug in front of the fireplace because Leah owns two chairs and only one of them is comfortable. Haley is sitting on Leah's bed like she belongs there, and Leah keeps turning that thought over like a pebble.
The magic book is small enough to fit under Penny's cardigan, and she pulls it out with a shy glance around.
"Your first crime. Congrats!" Abigail says, grinning.
The cover is dark green and shimmering with gold symbols that seem to start crawling if Leah looks at them for more than a second. A warning pulse of a headache throbs behind her eyes.
"I could start working on a programme to crack this, if it's a code," Maru says, turning the book over in her hands.
"Hmm," Emily says, taking it, and then, "Oh, I see. You've just got to clear your mind, and let your eyes slide out of focus, and... Solutions for Non-compliant Practitioners of Crafts," she intones, and lets the book fall open. "Ooh, this one looks promising. Incantation of Cleansing."
"Is there a banishment spell? Or, like, make this the one true reality that no one can fuck with spell?" Haley asks, peering over Emily's shoulder.
"Is this going to be dangerous?" Penny asks, belatedly.
Abigail laughs. "I hope so."
"I think a cleansing is what we need," Emily says, with a firm nod. "Positive vibes only, don't you think? It'll strip out anything that doesn't treat this valley with the respect it deserves."
"That sounds powerful," Leah says, folding her arms.
Emily runs her finger down the page, the words squirming under her touch. The sentences left in her wake are almost legible; she mutters and the sound of it sparkles in the air, glittering like a handful of dust.
"We need a few things," Emily says, looking around at everyone, and her smile gleams. "This is going to be fun!"
Leah already has most of the ingredients: things from deep in the forest, red berries and old wood. A bottle of wine, given at least twice. A desire deep in her heart for change.
"It needs all of us," Emily says, and directs them into a circle on Leah's floor like she's designing patterns, all legs crossed and knees touching, the circle unbroken around the symbols of the valley. Haley sits on Leah's left, straightening her skirt to lay smooth across her thigh. Emily, on her right, places the book in front of her and leans forward, pinning the words with a finger.
"We take this," Emily says, plucking a smooth ball of hardwood from the tableau in the middle. It was one of the first things Leah made after she moved here; something natural and deceptively simple, polished smooth between her palms. "As a symbol of our devotion to the valley. And then we charge it with our collective energies," she says, like it's simple.
Haley frowns. "How in the valley are we supposed to do that?"
"That's easy," Emily says, turning to her right, and sows a kiss on Abigail's unsuspecting mouth. "Pass it on," she says, her eyes glittering.
Abigail blinks, and then wets her lips with a darting flash of tongue, and then turns to Maru with a tentative lift of her chin. "I mean, if this is what it takes," she says, and Maru meets her halfway.
It's a quick peck, and then Maru is turning to Penny and the tension changes: sunlight flooding the room, Penny's hand on Maru's jaw, a press of lips that lingers for one breath, two. Penny pulls away first, but doesn't turn around.
"We can..." she starts, so quietly Leah can barely hear it.
"Later," Maru whispers, and:
"Hey, pass it on," Haley says, catching Penny's attention with a hand on her thigh, and she takes the kiss from Penny's mouth like she was promised something more.
There are sparks in Haley's hair when she turns to Leah, determination in the corners of her mouth, and the kiss comes to her like something multiplied, like an alchemy of colours. She lingers without meaning to, caught in the iridescence of her mouth and her scent and the press of Haley's hand on her shoulder.
She turns to Emily, and passes it on. Something flows through her like a tide.
"You guys must suck at Ferngill Whispers," Abigail says, looking happier than Leah has ever seen her.
"One more thing!" Emily says, after pressing her mouth to the wood and placing it reverently back into the centre of their circle. "Everyone hold hands, and repeat after me..."
The valley settles like an old tree after a storm: changing slowly with the seasons, new leaves unfurling where the dead wood has snapped away. Leah wakes up and it's the end of the week so she spends the day foraging, skirting past the edges of the farm that grows wild and beautiful over cracked pathways and empty barns.
She sees Elliott outside of the saloon. She sees Haley and kisses her up against the table in her kitchen, like laying fresh paint over a ruined picture, and she remembers every step between here and her house.
Her days are unpredictable, and even when they're boring and the rain chases her inside and that sculpture still doesn't look right she knows the next heartbeat will follow the first, straight as a line.
The world turns, slow as a breath.