Her gaze shifted and then, with the very flick of her eyeball, everything was starkly different. The dog hadn't been there before. And neither the giraffe.
And the man. The man made her brain tingle with faint recognition. With a recognition so faint and fleeting that it may have been a miniature brain freeze, but was not. She knew him: with his surly grimace and ginger growth and big dinner-plate hands.
He was approaching, idly. He was wandering in her general vicinity.
She said: "Hello"
She said: "Do I know you?"
He seemed startled by the sound of her voice. It was thin and reedy and sounded like a child. (A prepubescent child.)
The giraffe, which had been grazing inconspicuously in the background, make the noise that giraffes tend to make, and trotted over for a pat.
But the girl only had eyes for the man.
Her brain was buzzing with greater buzz than before.
He said:
"If you had been born a man, and in 1980: I am you."
She blinked with slow comprehension.
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