The whims of fate are mercurial.

I'd been at home for the weekend, and I could feel The Conversation coming on as I snacked in the kitchen. I wasn't wrong.

Mom sighed. "You know," she started, and I was already cringing inside. "I bet you could find yourself a nice girl if you cleaned yourself up. You're so handsome, Alex."

At least, that's how I imagined she was spelling it, in my mind.

"I would like to find a nice girl," I said patiently, trying to seem nonchalant. "Preferably one who will like me for who I am."

Who I am. You know, not a man. Not a woman. Just me: Alyx. They/them Alyx.

"You know your father and I love having you around," she said. "It's just... life passes you by. And you could live closer in together with someone else."

Unspoken this time: we'd love to have some grandchildren to spoil!

I knew that she wasn't doing it to upset me; that just made it harder. She came from a family that had different ideas about who people were and how they should live their lives.

I'd tried, but the saving throw against depression failed.

"I think I'm going to go hike a bit," I responded to her.

"All right dear, be careful. Where are you planning to go?"

"Up the North Shore? Maybe Eagle Bluffs or something?"

Mom nodded. "Sounds like fun. Call us if you're going to be late?"

I gave her a thumbs up and headed to my room to put together a day pack.

Driving through the mountains raised my spirits immediately. The air was a cool, clean 25 degrees towards the end of the summer, and it breezed in through the slightly lowered window. The sun shone from overhead. The ocean sometimes gleamed blue-green from the side, and evergreens whisked by at other times.

Tunes drifted from the radio, my streaming reception somehow still working. I sang along with the full male vocals, with the soft emo ballads, and, pinching my vocal cords from inside, with the lower-mid female vocals. A trans-girl friend had helped me learn that one.

I loved my parents; Mom was the one always trying to be proper and presentable, Dad was the one who would stand behind her back and gesture not to worry about it. My sister, five years older than me, had already moved out, but we always had a nice, chill time when she visited.

I was at a point in my life where I really needed to be out on my own, figuring out who I wanted to be as I went to university, but yeah... Vancouver. Who could afford that?

I nabbed the last space in the free parking area, to the chagrin of some poor person circling behind me. I opened my door and savoured the relative quiet, this far from Vancouver, the absurdly clean air. I grabbed my pack, locked up, and headed to the trailhead.

It wasn't remotely as crowded as it would be during the height of the ski season, but there were still plenty of people wandering around for a bit of the great outdoors. As I walked on down the trail, though, there were fewer and fewer.

I knew that if someone saw me at a distance, they'd probably read me as a girl. In spite of not really feeling like either "camp" was right for me, it somehow made me a little happier. Things would get dicier if someone got close, or we talked.

It all would've driven Mom nuts; she couldn't figure out what others were seeing that she didn't.

I'd been walking for an hour when I ...felt... something. A short shiver up the spine, a feeling of someone walking on your grave, that sort of thing. Like I was being watched. For trans people, that can be a death flag. Why didn't I ask a friend to come with me?

I paused and listened, and all I could hear was the whoosh of the trees in the light wind, a few birds singing, perhaps a little stream gurgling.

Nothing.

I shrugged it off, thinking that it was time for a granola bar break, anyway. A tiny side path forked from the main trail, little more than a game trail, really. To either side of it, craggy and cracked boulders held watch. I brushed the top of one off with my hand and sat on it. I smiled as the brushing revealed a formation of cracks that looked almost like spirals.

I drank some water, ate my granola bar, and wondered at the sudden loss of peace I'd just felt. It wasn't fear so much as a rumbling of something momentous, something that you might not run from, but you'd want to get a good look at it before deciding. What a weird feeling. Maybe it was time to cut my losses and head back for the day; at least I'd gotten some endorphins in.

I didn't remember having seen the side path from past hikes, though. Even as small as it was, I didn't think it could've formed that quickly without human help. I sat staring at it, still on the rock next to the path, with all sorts of crazy things going through my mind: forest drug cookers, bandits, a secret hideout, a witch's hut... who knew? Of course, I knew it was just a trail I hadn't noticed the last time I was there. What else could it be?

I was feeling more curious than scared at that point. If I didn't go have a little look, my mind would be distracted dwelling on it for the next week. Just a few minutes' side trip. In and back out when it turns out to be boring.

In spite of my bravado, I stared at the path for a long minute or two, listening to the silence and the rustling trees, before I headed in. It was like the path had a presence.

"Pay attention to your intuition, man," my friend MacKenzie the witch had said, wincing at her own choice of words. "Sorry, bad habits. Anyway, if you feel something, it's worth listening to. Especially if it's that, like, hair on the back of your neck feeling. There's stuff out there."

I had run into MacKenzie in an English Lit class, and she got me hanging around the university campus pagan club. I wasn't as interested in the "woo" and religion parts of it as I was in finding sympathetic friends.

But I knew exactly what she meant, right then. I had no idea why, as nothing looked particularly weird or out of place. Nothing much had changed since I left the main path. One force was drawing me in, another telling me to run.

At last, I saw it, the source of both feelings: an old stone arch. The tiny path ran right up to it and then stopped abruptly.

Now, I know what you'd be saying to me, and in some versions of reality, I'm sure you would be right. But it just had this really fun kind of whimsy to it, a gateway to the faerie realm or something. Why was the arch there? Why did a path lead up to it, and why did I not remember that path? Why wasn't this arch on guides for that trail?

I'm not sure what would've happened in those other versions of reality, but they were not my version. I figured I'd just top off this little side trip by doing the obvious thing, then head back. One more failed saving throw and I let my whimsy take me, walking to the end of the path, and through the arch.

As I walked through, I felt a moment of dizziness. I reached out my hand to hold onto the arch, slowly shaking my head to clear it.

The small path stretched out ahead of me. Huh? Did I get turned around in my dizzy moment?

I looked behind me, expecting to see the stone arch with the forest stretching out beyond it, as I did a minute ago. But there was no forest.

Instead, the sheer face of a large boulder sat behind the arch. Rough, dark stone with veins of lighter rock, like granite, stood there obstinately, even as I walked around the arch to push my hands against it.

I turned around again to look down the path. Nothing looked too different, all in all, but the trees were a little greener, and I could swear that it was much later in the day, winding its way down toward sunset. If it really was that late, I needed to get back to the car quick as I could.

And then I looked up at the sky. Much like the faint, hazy shape of the Moon could be seen during the day, there were two spheres up there. Large shapes, much too large to be the Moon as I knew it.

The place the arch stood in this forest was on a slight rise; the path continued down a little way and then stretched out into the distance, meandering slightly as it went.

"Yeeaaah," I said under my breath. I turned around and headed back to the arch.

The moment I walked under it, I felt dizzy again, and I was back to my familiar Eagle Bluff forest. The sun was higher in the sky, which was simply clear, pale blue.

I squinted, trying to puzzle out what was going on.

...Surely not?

I turned around and walked back through the arch. The momentary dizziness again, then the path that stretched out toward the hazy orbs in the late afternoon sky.

I knew enough stories about this sort of thing to know that it was foolish to linger on that side unless I was sure. You know, ready for a full-on adventure.

I headed back through the Gate, which now rated an upper case letter in my mind, almost able to keep my balance and open eyes as I blurred confusingly between the two places. Standing on the Eagle Bluff path again, I found that I was shaking from adrenalin. Fight? Flight? Excitement? Maybe a bit of all three...

My phone's hiking app couldn't seem to figure out GPS coordinates for where I stood. Sometimes the numbers would shift all over the range, sometimes it would simply change to dashes, like it had no idea. It wasn't an issue, though. This trail didn't really fork anywhere else before this path; I could find it again.

I hiked briskly back toward the car, trying my best to shake off the jitters with exercise. I had another weekend day left, and I intended to make good use of it.