Inconvenient? Definitely. At least compared to the day routine. They pay parking (everyone got vouchers), and commuting on the train was still cheaper than the pittance paid as a day rate. Beat sitting in morning traffic to downtown, too. Coffee’s good. There’s that. And hey, a day away from the office and his petty tyrant of a boss.

Caro started up the giant fan on the back and took off into the viscous afternoon. They sped down winding waterways, the long tall grasses going for miles to the horizon, punctuated by chubby mangroves. They went 30 minutes without speaking. Then Caro cut the engine as they pulled into a lagoon.

Her hands gripped hard to the textured plastic of the airline seats. The airplane moved forward, slowly, towards the runway. No way to tell how close they were.

“You could still try to make a scene,” Chloe offered. “Get kicked off, maybe.”

Shannon shook her head. “I’ll see it through.”

Finally, his angel broke the kiss and pulled away from him. He opened his eyes and screamed noiselessly. Bubbles rose from his mouth as he realized it wasn’t wind, but water rushing past him. He had to calm down before he drowned.

It begins with a colossal UFO in the sky. Next, a Swedish big box store suddenly vanishes. Poof. Into thin air. It’s hard to believe. "Fake news," exclaim millions, as they settle in for another evening with Hannity.

The principal challenge of human shadowing, the challenge that separates the great from the good, is that human shadows are not allowed to follow the movements of their assigned people, called their “principals”. Rather, human shadows are required to anticipate, to fore-shadow, their principals’ movements. This skill is reputed to be the most difficult to attain among all inanimates, yet evolution has lofted the shadow community into such an advanced state that an estimated ten percent have the ability to foreshadow.