To pass through this brief life as nature demands. To give it up without complaint. Like an olive that ripens and falls. Praising its mother, thanking the tree it grew on. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.48.   I sat at my favorite spot on the porch one spring morning, watching the sun paint golden stripes on the trees and amusing myself with the chattering of the wild birds as they fought for seeds from the feeder. Suddenly, I was assaulted by a disquieting thought: how many

My machine works. I input a time and I’m taken there, as the time is now, all abandoned set pieces where the actors have since moved on. Everything continues in the present because that’s where the people are. I came here, twenty years in the past, intending to change it—and of course the present by proxy. But I’m still bleeding out, carrying the present’s fatal wound, and now that I’m here I’m content observing the suspended state of my youth. Or maybe I just want to be. Eve

Dust danced between the sunbeams shining through the front window of the old shop. The smell of lavender and mildew drifted through the small space, which was filled with a maze of bookshelves, many of them pressed at odd angles against each other. The individual shelves were organized in a similar manner, each decorated with random objects—books, jewelry, herbs, vials, clocks—all ranging from magical to ordinary.   Lena had spotted the shop as she roamed the cobblestone st