That it has long been our joke that our hair lengths are inversely proportional, and cannot exceed the same cumulative mass it possessed on the day we met;
That our faith was bound by this same Law, your exuberant pantheism balanced against my quiet nihilism;
That this Law does not apply to beards;
That you were the long-haired hippie boy, born too late for Woodstock, and I the butch bisexual with a pixie cut marching beside you in the climate change rally;
That we shared the same celebrity crushes—Michelle Obama and Nicolas Cage—and this surprised and delighted us;
That on our first date, we solemnly swore this vow: If we ever found a wardrobe portal, take it; or a TARDIS, hitch a ride; or a UFO, board it without hesitation;
That for such an act we should forgive each other implicitly and completely, because there would be no time to ask, and you might only get one shot;
That brides traditionally grow their hair long, and mourners shave it;
That I shaved mine anyway;
That you wore tiny white field daisies gathered by your niece in your braids, like faraway stars;
That you wore them in your beard too, except one you plucked for the justice of the peace to press in the pages of her Sufi poetry book;
That though we both had liberal arts degrees and too many strong opinions on Sappho, we loved the stars, and the phases of the Moon, and B-grade sci-fi cheese with rayguns and swamp things;
That we were both the type to volunteer when no one else would;
That when, in the strength of my passions, I rushed headlong into a cause, you would be the sword wielded by the arm of my conviction;
That the best swords are alloyed, and folded many times upon themselves;
That I believed in peace above all else, because life was short, and we were mortal, and once life was lost, it ended;
That you believed in peace too, but for opposite reasons;
That no one had yet survived First Contact, and the ships had been recovered empty and adrift, the astronauts completely vaporized;
That I pointed out how this was an absurd conclusion, because all matter, like hair, has to go somewhere;
That fear is an easier thing than hope;
That the fleet drew nearer each day;
That Earth wanted to launch a nuclear arsenal;
That they were running out of astronauts;
That you didn’t ask me before you signed us up for the mission to babysit the shuttle’s payload;
That I didn’t mind;
That they made you cut your hair before we left Earth so your helmet would fit properly, but I had to grow mine out for the same reason;
That you stopped praying that day, and I quietly started;
That we passed the time on the shuttle to the asteroid belt reading aloud from Carl Sagan;
That we agreed the aliens were surely made of star stuff too, in their flat black triangular fleet falling toward Earth like a cloud of loosed arrows;
That they came upon us while we slept, and we jolted awake in our sleeping bags when the shuttle jerked to a stop;
That when we radioed them, they bathed the cockpit in shimmering blue light which tickled my nose like ginger-ale fizz and made me sneeze;
That instead of hitting the launch button, we waited;
That it was just like on Star Trek when we disintegrated, like Scotty beamed us up, except nobody asked permission first;
That we reappeared on their craft, whole and sound and long of hair;
That they had followed the climate change rally too, and taken pity on our plight, and this was a conservation effort;
That I insisted they send us back to explain;
That when I rematerialized on our shuttle, you didn’t return with me;
That you did it on purpose;
That it was, after all, the deal we made;
That I was angry anyway;
That I blasted Nickelback over every radio frequency as your punishment;
That the fleet answered me with mandolin music, distorted as in a dream;
That every sword is wielded by the arm of a conviction;
That every arrow is loosed toward a bullseye;
That all matter—not just hair—is conserved, neither created nor destroyed;
That it is all the stuff of stars;
That the stardust would love me in any form, and I him;
That we will always expand and diminish ourselves for each other’s sake;
That we will take turns being the rock or the slingshot, so we may fling each other into adventure;
That I jettisoned the payload;
That my shuttle shot homeward in a cloud of arrowheads;
That the arrows arced over the Earth, but did not strike;
That from the ground, it looked like long, dark tresses threading through the night sky;
That the bright white stars above flashed like a field of daisies;
And that when they fetched me dripping from the cold grip of the sea, the first thing I did was shave my head, as if for a wedding.
Rachael K. Jones grew up in various cities across Europe and North America, picked up (and mostly forgot) six languages, an addiction to running, and a couple degrees. Now she writes speculative fiction in Athens, Georgia, where she lives with her husband. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of venues, including Lightspeed, Accessing the Future, Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, Crossed Genres, and Daily Science Fiction. She is an editor, a SFWA member, and a secret android. Follow her on Twitter @RachaelKJones.
