A few thousand years ago I stumbled on something. I could change reality. Not change it so much, but steal it, really. Switch a piece of another world with a piece of ours.

The world was like a jigsaw puzzle. Want to live a little longer? Just steal the Fountain of Youth from another universe. Want a nice castle along the shore, there’s one somewhere. Want to upgrade your minivan? Here’s something a little sleek, a low-slung sports car that hugs the road like a second skin.

What you don’t see, what you can’t know, is that after a while the pieces you steal stop fitting so well. You have to jam them in. Sometimes a little corner sticks up. And the jigsaw puzzle, a few thousand years in, might start feeling a little… loose.

So here I am, generations after I stole my first piece of reality, close to the end. In Charleston. A city I had been to many times, even back when it had been Charles Town, and finally, here again. At the end.

An ending of a puzzle with no final piece. An ending to a love lost. An ending of all the mistakes I unknowingly made, along the way.

An ending… finally.