Lavinia still looked embarrassed. “Ok, so remember, whatzit, day before yesterday, when I couldn’t get going? And I’m oomphing and umphing like I’m on the pot and all stopped up?”

“Thank you for that image, and yeah?”

“Ok, so I don’t know where this comes from but out of nowhere, I hear ‘Ladybug Ladybug, fly away home.’”

“I know where it came from.” Tears welled in Sally’s eyes. “I heard you say ‘Fliegt heim, ihr Raben. Fly away home,’ and I knew you’d heard the same thing I’d heard and that it reminded you of Odin’s ravens flying home in the opera. And somehow it gave you what you needed to fly us where we needed to go. That was a parting gift from,” and her voice choked, “from my little sister.”

“Poor kid’s really gone this time, yeah?”

Sally closed her eyes and nodded but she felt sweet relief. “She’s really gone and she died well somehow. I felt her go and I heard the same words you did. She used to cry for the poor ladybug when she was a little girl.”

“Mmm. Okay, so I hear that ‘fly away home,’ and yeah I make the connection, that Götterdämmerung shit.” Sally smiled at how even through her palooka front Lavinia pronounced the opera title correctly. “And boom, I get how the flying thing works. I can fly to someplace if it’s where my home with you is. So, alls I gotta do to get us to the Black Forest is make the commitment, um…” She said it quickly: “Make the commitment that you and me’ll live there.”

Sally knew she ought to be angry. When Lavinia had driven the old camper into the teeth of the vampires because she’d decided on her own that it would be their home, Sally had yelled, “Never again!”

But she felt nothing but peace as they flew over fields traced with ancient stone walls and tiny farmhouses. This was the traveling together she’d hoped for. “You did right, love,” she said simply. “I’ll live with you there, if we get through this.”

Lavinia’s cheeks gleamed when she smiled. She looked calmer and happier than she’d looked for a long time. The silence stretched. Beneath them, ripples of dark rock alternated with green farms and hangars of trees.

“Hey,” Sally asked, “How come you can talk normal? Aren’t you supposed to be coming and shouting whatever atheists shout, ‘Oh Infinite Nothingness?’” (Lavinia had smilingly told her months ago that the hardest thing about being an atheist was no one to talk to during orgasm.)

“Think you’re the only one can change the rules? I was part of it, babe. When I saw you dropping, I knew I gotta save you or die. We both of us thought this ain’t right at the same time.”

Lavinia grinned wide. “I feel the sun now and it feels damn fucking good, but it don’t own me no more. And shit, I just thought of this, I didn’t lose my oomph even when I was down there in the mist rescuing you! Fuck, I’m a superhero now. SuperJew, that’s me, Judy Maccabee, just gotta find my hammer. We’ll be in Germany before sunset but I got a feeling I could fly in the night now if I had to. Or at least for a while after sunset.”

The reminder of their somber goal quieted Sally. One more day stood between her and the waiting horror. But she was afraid to dwell on it for fear she would accidentally change the world again so that Lavinia couldn’t fly. “So, we’re heading southeast to Germany now,” she said lightly.

“Actually, I think it’s due east; sun’s way north of east this time of year, so it looks like we’re flying southeast.”

“As long as we’re going the right way.” The image of the dead hiker made Sally shiver. She focused on the happiest fact: “This is the kind of flying together I hoped for yesterday. We can talk and share good times for a while.”

“And you can finally tell me to fuck off, you know you want to, c’mon tiger.”

“Fuck off, get out of my house, get lost you bitch,” Sally laughed, the words spitting merrily from her tongue as bright and perky as Lavinia always said her butt was.

“Wups, almost dropped ya,” Lavinia teased, but didn’t actually let her hands jerk or anything.

Sally knew that the rules for the rest of the world wouldn’t change until she posted a viral video or something but for now she relaxed as the last tip of the island where their lives had changed disappeared behind the western horizon.