I am two women trapped in something like but not exactly a time loop. They care deeply for one another, but if that care can be called love it is not a thing either would ever say aloud.

  The first woman is small and physically weak. Her mind is deteriorating and she knows it. Early on, she holds up a rge rock that has opened into a giant eye with an iris like blue patterns on cquered porcein. She asks her companion if it is real. It is not. Somehow, this loop is about her.

  The second woman is rge and physically imposing. None of this is about her, yet she cannot leave. She is devoted to her companion for better or worse.

  My perception jumps back and forth between the two women's perspectives and forward and back between iterations of the loop.

  It is easy to tell between early and te iterations. In early iterations the two are dressed fairly normally, but in ter iterations they are garbed in bck robes and - in the second woman's case - a dark leather chestpte and armguards. In early iterations the first woman is clearly in charge - imperious even, outside her rare moments of questioning reality - while the second reluctantly goes along, always working in some quip or barb. In ter iterations the first woman has been reduced to a state of near dependency, her body and mind both deteriorating, while the second woman has grown grim and serious yet carries out her duties as caretaker with gentleness and without compint.

  There are others here, in the loop, but they fully reset every time. As the first woman's mind falls apart, so does reality. Things grow surreal and fantastical, where not outright nightmarish. The old man behind the cash register becomes "The Gnome King" trading in names and favors. Hallways become gothic stone corridors. The ground warps and twists into a starry abyss.

  I experience the iteration in which the loop is broken and the two escape. This terrifies me, because I do not get to experience what comes after as my mind instead continues to jump backwards and forwards in time between iterations. I begin to wonder if that escape was truly the final iteration or just a point that caused a reset. That is if I didn't simply imagine it.