Tim Chawaga (he/him) lives in Brooklyn, New York. His debut novel, SALVAGIA, a sci-fi mystery about a diver searching for nostalgic salvage along the flooded Florida coast, is out now from Diversion Books. This is his first appearance in F&SF. Fantasy is the genre of imagination and yet in practice its stories often adhere to a pre-ordained structure. Here you’ll find a halfway house on the fantasy side of a portal, populated by lingering post-quest people, poking at that structure to see what might give. 1. At the end of my journey, I return to the place where I’d emerged,