I run my hands through my hair, knotted and damp from the misty spray that leapt and danced joyfully off of the morning waves crashing into the still cold sand. I love looking at the ocean when the sunlight rippled and jumped from crest to valley, but most especially under an inky night sky. I love to watch it meld together under a darkening sky, joining seamlessly, two that becomes one. I breathed in as deeply as my lungs would allow. Willing it deeper, deeper, into every pore, every cell. Willed it deeper still, begged it entrance into my very soul in hopes that if I held it tight enough I could take it with me. Today was my last day here, it was time to go. Go. My throat convulsed around the thought of the word, a knotted cocoon around the pain. No butterflies would be born of this ending, this vicious tearing away of myself from this body, this life. This small, not very much, blip in the endless timeline that I had come to treasure, to depend on, to need in a way I never had in any lifetime before.

In my other transitions, those agreed upon dippings into lives, I had not felt this tearing away. I had always been looking forward to my return to the Core, to wholeness, to meaning, to totality. I had performed these pacts for eons, some slipping in seamlessly, mindlessly, performing my duty to the host without any deep connection. A cunning copy to buy time for the healing of the hosts original soul. Some I had gone in with purposely opened eyes, and lived that life as fully as I could. All of those I was able to exit without much connection, no feeling of undoing, no curious tingling to continue to be. But this one little not much of anything, this one little blip of life called Marlowe Arvid, has done what lifetime after lifetime has not. It has made me feel more whole than the Core, made me love the feel of freckled skin over slightly plump hands, the edges and corners that build her life.

But tonight those plumps hands and those edges and corners will return to Marlowe. There are no renegotiations, no extensions. Tonight at midnight, I will complete my duty and the exchange will be made. It is unavoidable. Tomorrow it will be her plump freckled fingers that ruffle the children’s hair, pull their blankets under sleep slackened chins, bemoan the task of untangling hair, finding lost items, handing out lunches and kisses, and snuggle in next to a boyishly grinning Ted after a full day. I open my mouth to scream the name I possess today to the wind, to the tossing, mindless waves to the infinite universe. It’s caught behind the tears I will not shed, that I’ll leave burning and aching in my throat. Instead I start to sing, looking for distraction, for an easing.

“I go out walkin’ after midnight

Out in the moonlight

Just like we used to do, I’m always walkin’

After midnight, searching for you….”

My throat begins to ease and allows me to catch my emotion in a more comfortable impasse. I turn back to the still house, to the lunches, ruffled hair, kisses and the million things that I did without thinking about for the last 10 years, determined to savor every ticking second, every small action.

Our pact had begun at the temporary destruction of Marlowe’s soul. It had been blow after blow that she had been unprepared for and unable to gather herself up enough to fight through. My kind have heard the pleas for these deals in darkened rooms, on empty streets, in whispers, in screams, in so many scenarios and far flung corners of the universe for so long that even I cannot remember them all. Lives lived and sunk back into shadow. She was newly married then, so she had not experienced the tickle of new life in her growing belly, the million moments that make a mother, a wife, a woman. When she returns those memories will be planted and firmly rooted in her, she will have no knowledge that she didn’t participate in their initial being. When we transition in we have the same slew of building blocks of a life before us, usually we receive the information more like dry text with no emotional attachment. We are, however, able to allow the attachment if we choose. This happens from time to time, but rarely. It’s often easier to do the job without getting mired in the minutiae, as I said we are meant to successfully navigate the experience of living for our hosts while they heal. Nothing more, nothing less. We do our part, make the exchange, and return to the Core to wait for the next cry, the next bargain, the next Walk-In.

After spending my last day sucking in every morsel of this life that I won’t have any part in tomorrow, I tuck my children, her children, our children, into their small comfortable beds, under their small comfortable blankets. Favorite stuffed animals tucked in arms growing heavy under the edge of sleep.

“A lullaby?” Tommy pleads softly.

“Oh, please!” Andy says, voice already dripping with the charm that drips only from sleepy children.

I sigh, pretending frustration with a smile and kiss on unfurrowed foreheads. They know this game and giggle contentedly.

“I stop to see a weepin’ willow

Cryin’ on his pillow

Maybe he’s cryin’ for me

And as the skies turn gloomy

Night winds whisper to me

I’m lonesome as I can be

I go out walkin’ after midnight…” My voice trails off as I see the boys have drifted off into sleep, stifling a cry behind that lump that has haunted me all day.

As I lay next to Ted, sated but full of sorrow, listening to his breathing punctuated by the odd nonsensical grumble I pull my knees up, folding myself in as tight as I can. Freckled forehead pressed to freckled knees, I go over and over the tearing away that is coming, looking for doors, for tunnels, for any way that will lead to me not transferring this life back to Marlowe. There is no avoiding the transfer, it is not possible to prevent her from regaining her body. As strong as my tie may have become, hers by design is stronger. I cannot stay in this body. But…but… there are no definitive rules about returning to the Core. None had been necessary, it was a generally understood part of the process, but it isn’t technically set in stone required, is it? My kind has a long history of quite literally putting the most important bits in stone. I’m a Walk-In, yes, but who’s to say that I must return home immediately? After all, these little nothing lives are really just a blip on the timeline. What’s a few blips before I go back? Nothing. And if I misread my commitments to the Core, would I be willing to face what comes then? Is this unexpected tie that important stretched across the expanse of time, of punishment that may stretch just as far? Yes. If I must pay for this extra time, I will pay.

My decision made, I creep back to the beach where I started preparing for my silent goodbyes this morning. As the transition begins, warm and cold at the same time, a painless entering and exiting of silken essences, swishing past each other with the nearly audible sound of silk caressing itself, I relax into it. When I feel the final twang of my release and the sharp snap of her entrenchment, I ignore the opened path and simply step out and aside from her, our, body. She shakes her head slightly, as though she lost her train of thought, and returns to the sleep warmed bed waiting to ease the cold of the midnight sea from her bones. I follow soundlessly, settling into the new patterns cut from the fabric of a well worn life.

I am content with this new pattern, I think, watching the blending embrace of water and sky in the growing dark. I turn to watch my/her/our family, bundled together under an autumn moon. They are quiet in their contentment, letting the sounds of crackling wood and tossing ocean merge together and drift apart. I can’t help but smile, pulling that silent sense of fullness into myself. I drift past softly, but not silently, letting the song drift from me again. Let it wash over their ears, let it tug gently in them that something, some small unnameable piece is missing.

“I go out walkin’ after midnight

Out in the moonlight

Just hopin’ you may be somewhere a-walkin’

After midnight, searching for me….”