Under the swinging zero, Peter seemed part of the platform, bolted in and rooted. A man-plant, suddenly Pacific in features. "I've met you before?" Stan asked. It might not have been a question. "Have I!" exclaimed Joy, right in Stan's ear, from across the tracks, right next to him. Oddly, he hadn't moved, but was somewhere else nonetheless. The station building receded in importance, filling a gap, the leaning Peter mute and stoic and somehow retaining more permanence than his situation.
A strange spring was bubbling up inside Houndspay's chest, yearning and mirth and a bit of impatience all mixed together. Joy leant back on a volcano and seemed to fill the sky. She smiled at Stan. This was the realest thing.
"Killer whale. You remember. Three years ago." She placed a garland of the purple flowers around his neck and Stan didn't question how the train tracks had become a canal filled with sparkling blue water, or why there was an Orca in a grass skirt swimming past them.