Filter House by Nisi Shawl

my bird, but went on in the direction it had taken, out of the city. I stayed focused on it, even when I couldn’t see it anymore.
    I heard the soft beating of its wings and knew it flew on before me.
    A stream joined me, running alongside the road. Daffodils joined the stream. Together, we left the houses behind.
    I kept walking. I couldn’t see my bird anywhere. I closed my eyes. The stream murmured to itself. The only beating I heard was my heart.
    How could I catch up? Without wings, how could I fly?
    I opened my eyes again and looked around. Where was I? Maybe this was where my bird had been bringing me. Maybe it had left me where I was supposed to be.
    Tall trees with their leaves just beginning arched over the road. It was really more a wide path than a road, now. It moved among the tall trees slowly, one way, then another, quite casually. As if it knew where it was going, but felt no rush to get there.
    This didn’t seem like a place to stop at, an end.
    Maybe my bird had left me because I would be able to figure out everything on my own from here.
    I saw sky through the trees. I went at the path’s pace till I came to their edge.
    It was quite an edge. Only clouds beyond. Very beautiful clouds, with popcorn-colored crests and sunken rifts full of shadows like grey milk.
    It was evening already. I could tell by the light. I had been following my bird all day. How had that happened? I had lost track of the time.
    That didn’t matter, though.
    My bird did matter. And its message for me.
    It had to be around here somewhere.
    The clouds’ lighter parts changed and became the color of the insides of unripe peaches. Against them rose black flecks, the flocks of birds flying away from us. Away once more, until next year.
    Silence stirred the hairs on the nape of my neck. Silence and a small wind fanned them so they extended upward. And outward. Up and out. Above my head, my bird flew forward, over the edge.
    I went with it.

Maggies

    Tata’s skin was golden. Sometimes she let me help her feed and brush it. She showed me how my first worlday on New Bahama.
    I was way off schedule. After a couple of hours I couldn’t stand to stay in my room, let alone in bed, pretending to sleep. I had masturbated all I wanted. My desk was on, but empty. No matter what my father said, I had to get up, run the small circuit of the station’s corridors.
    Some were smoothly familiar, plasteen walls like any ship or tube. Others, where the station’s prefab had burrowed into New Bahama’s unpolished bedrock, seemed sullen in their unreflectiveness.
    I wasn’t going to think about things, about my mother, whether my father really wanted me to come here and live with him, would she ever get better, if I could have done anything to help. I just wanted to walk. One flight down, generators, locks, stores, vats. Big, smelly objects I’d already been warned to keep away from. The opposite flight of steps back up, kitchen lab, private rooms, all with curtains closed.
    On my third go-round, though, Tata’s curtain hung to one side, offering a glimpse of her tiny living space. Her skin gleamed in its frame. She stood behind it, fussing with one of the securing ties. When she saw me, she signed a welcome. I hesitated, and she signed again. I was pretty sure she was the same one who’d helped me with my luggage, so I went in.
    She showed me the port where the nutrient bulb fitted into the skin, and the way to squeeze it—slowly, steadily.
    Her skin’s thick, retracted facemask repulsed me—maybe because I’d seen pictures of how the things flattened and brutalized their wearer’s features. And of course I knew not to touch the skin’s underside. Even though I hadn’t been taught all the history of its abuse, I understood that I could hurt Tata there. I didn’t want to do that.
    But I fell in love with the alveolocks, her skin’s fur. They rippled so softly beneath my brush. Later, I learned that these rhythmic contractions aided a