Have you ever transmigrated?
Great - that makes two of us.
The day started off normal enough. I had breakfast, unlocked the café doors, and flipped the chalkboard sign that swung gently in the breeze. The air was already thick with salt and the distant scent of kelp, carried in from the shoreline.
My café, The Salty Siren, sat between Tammy's surf shop and an ancient bait-and-tackle place, the windows dusted with permanent salt stains no matter how hard I scrubbed. Inside, the air smelled of coffee, fresh bread, and a faint undercurrent of ocean. Floorboards creaked lazily underfoot, worn smooth by decades of sand-streaked customers.
From the big front windows, I could see the beach stretching out - soft yellow sand that shimmered under the morning sun, seabirds hopping between rocks slick with seaweed.
The ocean itself was a living mirror, dazzling and bright, kissing the sky at the horizon.
Life here was simple. Surf, fish, gossip, repeat.
Around noon, Tammy's daughter Grace breezed in for her shift, pink and blonde hair messy from the wind. She tied on her apron while I handled the first wave of lunch customers - including the usual suspects, a group of elderly locals who claimed their favorite table as if by birthright.
Their voices blended with the steady background hum of the waves outside, filling the café with the sort of warm, lived-in noise that made it feel less like a business and more like a second home.
"I'm telling you, Jackie, that boy's no good," Gerald grumbled, thumping his rolled-up newspaper onto the worn wooden table. "No brains, no brawn, and yet Ollie's head over heels for him. Forgotten her dear old dad."
Peter, wiry as a fishing net and twice as scrappy, scratched his scraggly beard and leaned forward. "You're still young enough to wipe your own arse, Ger. Why stress?"
"What's me arse got to do with anything?" Gerald barked, swinging an arm at him.
Peter ducked with a grin.
Jackie, stretched out with her dog napping in her lap, rolled her eyes. "Let the girl live her life,
Ger. She's old enough to choose her own mistakes."
I slipped in with a tray, setting down their bagels - warm and homemade, the scent of toasted sesame seeds mingling with the sea air leaking through the door cracks.
"Chow time, lovelies," I said.
"Thanks, darling," Peter said, smacking his lips. He pointed a gnarled finger at me. "No Tabasco today, is there?"
"Tucked under the ham," I winked.
Peter sighed dramatically. "You're a bloody angel, you are."
Gerald thumped the table with one broad hand. "Gigi, you know Henry - Ollie's new partner?"
"I know of him," I said as I refilled his water glass.
"You agree with me, aye? Boy's got nothing in his head, don't he?"
I hesitated, glancing briefly out the window where a few fishing boats bobbed lazily in the sun-warmed bay.
Honestly? He was a bit daft.
Emergency services practically knew him by name — every school holiday he turned up with a broken bone or a mystery rash. It was almost a local tradition.
He was also my cousin.
"See? Even Gigi agrees!" Gerald crowed, taking my hesitation as agreement, thumping the table again for good measure.
Jackie shook her head and turned her gaze — and her dog's lazy stare — on me. "Gigi, darling, found yourself a boyfriend yet?"
I froze, the teapot halfway to the table.
A boyfriend? In this town?
Hardly.
Besides, my romantic life - what little there was of it - wasn't exactly sailing a straight course. I'd made a quiet vow to stay single until I was eighty.
Safer that way.
"Not in my cards yet," I said, eyes drifting back toward the water. The waves glittered like scattered silver coins under the noon sun, endless and wild.
"Oh, leave the girl alone," Peter said. "Thirty-two and single's nothing. Roger's thirty-five."
"He's got erectile dysfunction, Pete."
Some things, I truly did not need to know before I had my own lunch. Especially about our towns only tax accountant.
"What about my-" Gerald began.
I made a tactical retreat back into the café before the conversation could spiral any further.
Inside, the ceiling fan whirred lazily, and the screen door gave a soft slap as a tourist wandered out into the sun.
Grace was manning the coffee machine, saluting me with a grin as I passed.
"Boss lady," she chirped.
I nodded, heading for the sink and the stack of dirty dishes that smelled faintly of syrup and cinnamon.
"So I finished that book," Grace said, wiping steam off her glasses.
"The one with all the princes fawning over the main character?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah," she said brightly. She wiggled her brow suggestively. "The smutty one."
I tapped her lightly on the back, moving around her to dig through the shelves for the honey jar.
"You're seventeen, Grey. You shouldn't be reading that type of stuff."
"You don't understand," she huffed, placing a hand on her chest. "Anyway, she's from our world. And she knows everyone's past and stuff through a magic touch power, so it's kinda cool - not creepy at all. Though she's got this major savior complex."
I nodded absently, gathering a tray.
"And my favorite character?" Grace said, sliding a coffee across to a tourist. "Cassius. He's the only one who doesn't fall for her. Turns out he's a secret villain - you know, blowing stuff up, sabotaging the crown prince, running secret organizations."
I shot her a sideways glance. Teenagers and their dramatic reading tastes...
"And get this," she added with a little finger snap. "His evil stepmother's name? Giovanna!"
That was my first given name.
"Wow. Wild coincidence," I said in a monotone, stacking a fresh teapot on the tray. "Grace?"
"Yeah, boss?"
"Start on the dishes."
"On it, boss!"
I carried the tray back out into the sunlit café, the wind rattling the windows slightly.
The sea whispered steadily beyond the walls - endless, patient, waiting.
Grace had strange tastes in books.
I usually tuned them out.
How I would to deeply come to regret that.