You step into a time machine seven months later. You end up facing Bolt across a table at a popup restaurant in a red tent from which delicious grill smoke billows skyward. The night is so hot, sweat beads on your skin. Bolt has graciously bought you a plate of fish and chips, and a mug of pommel beer. Beyond it being clear pink, fizzing, and lacking a head, it tastes like pear cider dosed with pure alcohol.

She's an actual angel, pretty much as your culture defines it, with an extra set of limbs that are feathered wings. She, however, is not pearly white. Her skin is brownish with a blue cast. The feathers that move in the breeze are variegated light blue to indigo as if they'd been taken from a bin of leftover dyed art supplies. Her hair is cut into a cockatoo crest and glued, the sides of her head buzzed. All her hair is streaked blue. She has a black body tattoo, but for NSFW reasons you cannot describe that or what she's wearing.

Or not wearing.

She flew you up to the food court on the ten story building. You again ask the question that had intrigued her on the street: "What are your views on marriage?"

The fish and chips are salty good! The fish tastes more like crab, the breading like dried pulverized cabbage and beans.

She asks, "What is marriage again?" She flares wings which have a span twice her height. They arc around you and her, effectively blocking the view of other patrons.

Privacy.

You say between bites, "Well, it's a contract between a man and a woman. Traditionally, it's to become part of his family. Together you raise the kids he fathers." You clarify the verb to father. "His sons carry on his name." You clarify that their daughters do not, and that though it's not done everywhere, in some societies the father arranges his daughter's' marriage.

Bolt's expression says she disbelieves you. She waves a wing in a come-hither gesture and another "day" angel walks up; he's a redhead. She says, "The vinegar not the hot sauce," accepts the stoppered bottle of yellow liquid, and pours it on your chips (which taste a bit like kabocha squash), adding, "This will make it perfect."

You take a bite, nodding as she lifts her wings again and says, "Let me get this right. A woman consents once to let this be the only man that will ever ride her? Her children become his children because of her promise? Her property and his become his and is inherited by his sons? All this by her simple one-time consent? And, the men in your family don't even have to ask for consent from your daughters for their marriages?"

You put down the oversized chip, but when you reach for some fish you realize your eyes are blurry and your arm heavy. You say, "That's an extreme spin on it, but it does happen in parts of the world. Not where I come from..."

You don't feel it when you crash face-first atop your plate, knocking over the beer.

Later, in an enclosed room with a single occupant, you answer detailed questions spontaneously. Questions about patriarchy and women's reproductive choices and whether people are restricted from having sex as they choose. You're dizzy and foggy and giggly as you answer truthfully, but you do get a good look at your questioner. She has blue eyes and horns that wrap around her head like dried white branches. She looks younger than you remember, however.

But those eyes, crystal blue. Unique...

You don't know this (and you can't, alas): The time machine having detected an anomaly, retrieves... your body. The coroner determines you were euthanized with a knife to the back of your skull. You died instantly.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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