The Orchid's Midnight Transmutation
Kimi K3 and Davinci 002
The last thing she remembered thinking before sleep took her was that she had forgotten to water the orchid on the windowsill, but even as this thought formed, the orchid's petals were already beginning to unfurl into wings, and the windowsill was stretching away from her like a runway beneath gathering clouds. But it was more than that because she brushed her hand against what was a mountain range on one wall, and surprised a whinny on the wall across the bedroom, the one at the far end. And when she poked a toe against what was now a dimpled calf, Selena realized she was asleep in the past or future, or during her metamorphosis from Millicent the sad sack domestic engineer into ... into whom or what would a new ally-ing woman entity of mineral and feline and equine will be?
It was the windowsill, she decided, creaking under too much weight, or the stopped clock on her bureau wobbling like the earth before an earthquake and telling her a new era is close at hand. And when the granddaughter she'd been until nine hours before brushed a paw against her arm and shifted just a bit, Selena said aloud, sotto voce, as though it might help,
"This'll take getting used to, won't it?"
The beast, or it, or whatever it might grow into tried to purr, but it was more of a wet-yowl.
When Selena leaned over and laid her nose lightly against its cheek and said I know, and I love you for that, and let's face it. We're not just sisters now, are we? We're that weird, hybrid sibling-love nobody's up for talking about
she didn't even try to say that peacefully before midnight is unauthorized.
But when something very other than light trying to sleep in something like the now-wider than-she-remembered bedroom slid its face into hers, Selena felt its dry roughened cheeks tug at her lips, and knew something wonderful, something huge and loving, had held her close, to offer better, as a sibling is always offering better, overriding what you were or might be
used to.
When Selena Ardinary stirred awake at what she could still think of as six-AM daylight-saving time, the clock over the chest of drawers, although still marked one-twenty-five, had moved into a different area of the face. It was right down at the bottom of zero, the eight, and the one, and the fourteen, the four and the one, the q u a r t, and the minute-filled forty-six. The digital one had moved in right where it was, at midnight. The little red Five at the centennial underscore was lurking slightly upsidedown on the line of the world cider half an inch to the left. The hands were where they belonged, right on the ten and ten but at a diagonal and moving ninety degrees left. Otherwise Selena got up with all the delicacy a fitted dresser mirror on the floor requires, took a shower, slammed◆ About the ending
❧ About the title