Everything started spinning as I unpacked her awkward sentence, and I stared in shock. It was her face. Her voice, her hair, her freckles, her everything-that-was-still-growing.

“You… she… how does that even work?!”

“We’re complicated. I don’t really understand it very well myself, but I think there are about a dozen of us. It varies from time to time, and I’m certain that at least two of the ones I’ve known were the same person at different ages, but I don’t know if they were also her, or me, or…”

She shrugged apologetically. Oddly enough, that gesture gave me the confidence to say, “you’re not her; you’re… more grown up.”

I’d surprised a smile out of her. “Thanks. When I say it in my head, it sounds like wishful thinking, but for what it’s worth, you’ve seen us both from the outside, without all the complications.”

“Can you at least tell me if it was all bullshit? I know this is isn’t the world I’m from, but did I really die there, and am I really supposed to become some kind of hero and save this world?”

She closed her eyes and sighed, and when she opened them again she looked much, much older. “I’m sorry, but yeah, it’s probably true, at least in broad strokes. It’s hard to move between worlds. Moving someone else must have been a lot harder, even with a solid connection, and she wouldn’t have tried something like that without a good reason.”

“And I think she screwed up.”