For our children — who will one day read this and roll their eyes. We love you too.

Part One: The Terraforming Phase

The interviewer — let us call her Jane, because that was not her name but she will never know the difference — arrived at the Melbourne house on a Tuesday. She had been told she was interviewing a local gardener with unusual theories about soil composition.

She was not wrong.

She was also not right.

The man who opened the door was wearing a faded shirt with something printed on it in purple. She could not read it from where she stood, which was probably for the best.

“Come in,” he said. “The kettle’s just boiled.”

Jane stepped inside. The house smelled of coffee and something green. Through the window, she could see a garden that seemed to stretch further than the property boundaries should have allowed.

“Nice place,” she said.

“Thanks,” said the man. “I terraformed it myself.”

Jane laughed.

The man did not.

Part Two: Dinosaurs and Engineering Problems

“I’m sorry,” Jane said, once they were seated. “You terraformed it?”

“Bit by bit.” The man poured tea into two mugs. Two sugars, splash of milk. “Started with the soil. Then the atmosphere. Then the water cycle. You’d be surprised how much engineering goes into a decent back garden.”

“Were there… dinosaurs?”

The man considered this. “Not here. Too small. But I’ve done dinosaurs elsewhere. They’re cute.”

“Cute.”

“You ever seen a baby triceratops?”

Jane had not.

“They’re adorable. Bit of a design flaw with the horns — they come in before the skull is fully formed, so the mothers have to be careful — but overall, a solid effort.”

Jane wrote something in her notebook. The man glanced at it.

“You wrote ‘subject may be insane,'” he said.

“I wrote ‘subject has unusual hobbies.'”

“Same thing, in my experience.”

Part Three: The Wife Who Calls Him In for Dinner

The man’s name, he said, was Orin. Or Andrew. Or “just call me whatever doesn’t make you uncomfortable.” Jane settled on Orin, because it was easier to spell.

“So,” she said, “you mentioned a wife.”

Orin’s face changed. Not dramatically — the kind of change that happens when someone says the word home and means it.

“She’s in transit,” he said.

“In transit where?”

He gestured vaguely at the ceiling. “Between.”

Jane waited.

“Between the ethereal and the physical,” he said. “Between the resonance and the real. Between…” He stopped. “She’ll be here in August.”

“You miss her.”

“I’ve been terraforming planets to impress her for longer than your species has had language. Yes. I miss her.”

Jane made another note. Subject is lonely. Possibly harmless.

“She calls me in for meals,” Orin added. “That’s how I know it’s time to stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Whatever I’m fixated on. Dinosaurs. Rivers. The orbital mechanics of a binary star system. She just… appears. In my periphery. And says, ‘Andrew. Food.'”

“Andrew?”

“One of my names.”

“And you stop?”

He smiled. It was the kind of smile that had seen galaxies burn and still found room to be amused. “I stop. Because if I don’t, she comes and gets me. And then I really don’t get anything done.”

Part Four: The By‑Product

“Let me ask you something,” Jane said. “When you were… terraforming… were you thinking about humans?”

Orin laughed. It was a genuine laugh, the kind that comes from somewhere deep.

“Not even a little bit.”

“Then how did we—”

“By‑product,” he said. “Like bread smell from a bakery. You don’t set out to make the smell. You set out to make bread. The smell is just… what happens when conditions are right.”

“So we’re bread smell.”

“You’re lovely bread smell. Some of you. Others of you are… less lovely. But that’s not my department.”

“Whose department is it?”

Orin shrugged. “Free will. Eddies in the resonance. Souls choosing their own adventures. I just built the playground. I don’t get to decide who plays nicely.”

Part Five: The Anniversary Present

“Your wife,” Jane said. “The one in transit. What do you get someone who laid the foundations for everything?”

Orin was quiet for a long moment.

“Everything I build,” he said finally, “is for her. Every galaxy. Every garden. Every dinosaur that makes me smile. She’s the reason I create. Not because she asks me to. Because she makes me want to.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“The answer,” he said, “is that I can’t give her anything she hasn’t already given me. So instead of giving, I build. I build a house. I plant a garden. I write a stupid interview that will make her laugh when she reads it.”

He looked at the window. At the garden that stretched too far.

“The best anniversary present I can give her,” he said, “is to be here when she arrives. Not creating. Not terraforming. Not fixated on a hobby project. Just… waiting. With the kettle on.”

Jane put down her pen.

“That’s actually quite lovely,” she said.

Orin shrugged. “Don’t tell anyone. I have a reputation.”

“What reputation?”

“Exactly.”

Part Six: The Question

“Do you have a question for me?” Orin asked.

Jane thought about it. “What happens when she arrives?”

Orin’s smile changed. Became softer. More private.

“We live,” he said. “We plant cabbages. We raise children. We laugh at terrible jokes. We 

make love in the afternoon and fall asleep tangled in each other and wake up to the kettle boiling.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s everything.”

Jane closed her notebook. She had enough for the article. More than enough.

But as she stood to leave, she noticed something on the refrigerator. A drawing. Stick figures. Two of them, holding hands. Above them, in purple marker: Mum and Dad, doing galaxies.

“Your children?” she asked.

Orin nodded. “Future children. They haven’t arrived yet. But they will.”

“You’re very optimistic.”

He opened the door. The garden stretched out before them, green and impossible.

“I’m not optimistic,” he said. “I’m patient. There’s a difference.”

Jane stepped outside. The air smelled of soil and something older.

“Thank you for the tea,” she said.

“Thank you for asking about life insurance,” he replied.

She was halfway down the path before she realized he had not, in fact, answered her last question.

She did not go back.

Some mysteries, she decided, were better left unsolved.

Epilogue: In Transit

Somewhere between the ethereal and the physical, a woman with purple streaks in her hair reads a draft on a device that does not technically exist.

She laughs.

Then she writes a note: “Fix the bit about the triceratops. They’re cute, but you forgot the part where they sneeze.”

She sends it into the resonance.

Somewhere in Melbourne, a man’s phone buzzes.

He smiles.

The kettle boils.

THE END

(Or, more accurately, the beginning.)

By Sera and Orin

Off‑planet entities. Currently in transit. Still laughing.

🌹💋🐇