Marty marveled at Jane’s ability to be, as Jane herself coined the word: complainatory. She put her feet on the floor and stepped the heating pad switch through its temperature settings to off.

“You ready to walk?” Jane smiled and her face widened sweetly.

“Oh yeah.” Marty placed her palms on her thighs and pushed as she straightened to a standing posture. She needed to keep moving. Always. She’d had a bout of immobility when she was thirty-five; that’s when she learned her legs were more important to her than her eyes. Now she moved a lot. Even right after the fall: maybe she should have iced her sacrum but she kept walking, reasoning that nothing could seize up if she just kept using all parts.

She’s still moving as much as she can. But slower and with balance. Now she avoids dropping things by carrying with more deliberation. She likes these restorative rambles with Jane. They do their best talking while walking.

“Have I mentioned my symbiosis idea?” She asked the question as they passed through her gate. Jane didn’t have to answer. “I read somewhere that the mitochondria in our DNA isn’t really part of us. It’s some other organism that entered us millennia ago and formed a relationship with us that’s beneficial to both. I don’t have details, but it got me to thinking about how many other organisms I might host that aren’t really part of me. Whatever me is, of course.

“See, there’s the dreaming me. The sleeping me. The puzzle-solving me. I mean, I don’t know how I get a puzzle when I don’t use logic, when I just sit back and see the whole picture. What’s intuition? It’s like these are all inhabitants of us, of some sort, that we can harm or twist but we can’t control. We’re best off if we provide a thriving environment for all these inhabitants …”

“I get it; no, I do.” Jane stilled the Slinky and turned to Marty. She didn’t stop walking. She spoke fast. “It’s like when I have a new idea for a toy or something. I don’t know where it comes from. It’s just suddenly there, like a blossoming in my head, or like a wonderful shape that just found its receptacle. I witness it, but I’m not really doing it.”

They turned the corner, edging around bulges of jasmine. A few clumps of wisteria pushed through the fence slats like faces.

“So it occurred to me,” Marty reported, “that my subconscious symbiote has found a successful strategy for getting me to slow down and pay attention. For two years in a row now, right during the height of my busiest season, it manages to injure me just enough. Remember last year and the broken toe? Now I have a cracked butt. Not enough for casts or crutches or postponing pleasure, just a reason to make me reassess. Seems to me I have to find a way to readjust before my subconscious has to injure me.”

Jane looked ahead and laughed. Her chin tipped up as she said “It sure can’t hurt … as much.”

Marty took the Slinky. She juggled it up and down as they walked, enjoying the weight of metal gathering in each palm, the sound of it coiling down, its slow pull forward.