Allison stood slowly from the mossy patch where she’d been sitting, her body leaving a small hollow, evidence of her presence. The sunlight had shifted while she lingered at the creek, casting long, wistful shadows across the water. The golden shafts through the canopy had softened, sparkling with dust motes that floated like ghosts in the late afternoon sun. She hadn’t realized how long she’d been there, wrapped in the gentle forgetfulness this hollow always seemed to grant her.
She brushed the moss and damp earth from her jeans as she packed away her things and carefully zipped her bag closed. She turned to give one last glance toward the spot where Thimble had been.
The raccoon—or whatever she was—sat at the edge of the creek. Her paws were tucked neatly together, and her head tilted with that same quiet intensity, as if she was burrowing into Allison’s soul. There was something almost reverent in her stillness. It was a calm that suggested she already knew how this goodbye would go and wasn’t worried about it.
“Guess I’ll see you around?” Allison said quietly. She tried to hide the apprehension in her voice as a knot formed in her chest. She half-expected the raccoon to speak in full sentences again, but hoped she wouldn’t. If Thimble did, it would mean all of this was real and not just a passing fancy or maladaptive daydream. Allison’s heart squeezed hard at the thought. She wasn’t ready for that kind of reality check today.
Thimble didn’t answer with words this time. Just a quiet blink and a shimmer—soft and quick, like sunlight glinting across the surface of the creek—and then she was gone without a trace of fur, or whisker, or paw print in the moist soil.
Allison remained rooted in place, a stinging hollowness spreading through her chest as she stared at the vacant creek bank. The water babbled on, utterly indifferent to her unraveling, amplifying her sense of isolation. A bird’s sharp, bright trill pierced the air, so jarring and normal that it stabbed at her, making her feel even lonelier in the aftermath—like witnessing life resume after everything inside her had fractured.
She turned and climbed the steep hill back to the road. Her boots slipped once on the loose earth. Her bike waited where she’d left it, kickstand digging into the gravel shoulder. It was patient, sun-warmed, and blissfully incapable of talking. She swung a leg over the seat, slid her pack onto her shoulders, and clipped her helmet strap into place.
She paused. Looked once more at the woods behind her. Nothing moved. Not even the leaves.
“Hm,” she said to no one. “Where’d that raccoon get to?”
She pushed off, and the tires found the asphalt, humming their familiar song, once again, as the bike rolled forward.
The road rolled beneath her. Its curves and slopes were familiar, but now, everything felt strange—changed by what had happened at the creek. It was like looking at a familiar room and suddenly noticing a framed photo you’d never seen before, even though it was always there.
Allison kept her eyes forward and her legs moving, but her mind looped furiously, unable to escape. Every detail replayed with burning clarity: the raccoon’s gaze, the shimmer, the creek that fell silent as Thimble touched the water. The voice, echoing inside her memory, was startlingly human.
That’s not all that I am.
“Okay,” Allison muttered under her breath. The wind pulled the words away. Okay, did a raccoon just talk to me? Thimble, she said. And she’s supposed to be my escort to something called the Dreamspace. What even is that? That isn’t a real thing. Things are only named like that in video games, books, or fever dreams. But I’m not running a fever—am I? Unless dehydration counts, which—
She swerved slightly to avoid a pothole and gripped the handlebars tighter.
…which it doesn’t. So. Either I hallucinated the whole thing, or it happened. If it happened, there was this shimmer—not on pavement, and not because it was hot. I saw a robot. Did I actually see a leak through some kind of veil?
She shook her head hard, as if she could physically dislodge the thought and make it all make sense.
“Like a double exposure. That’s what it looked like. Thimble said that was Sol. Another… denizen. Of the Dream… place? Whatever that thing was.”
A breeze carried the scent of wet moss and wildflowers, and her fingers tingled faintly on the handlebars—like pins and needles. She flexed her wrists and elbows, checking for nerve pinches and circulation. The sensation stopped.
That’s it. I’m just seeing things. Too much work and not enough of a real-life human connection. Her throat tightened against the ache as she forced the words to the empty road. Either that or I’ve snapped, lost my ever-loving mind entirely. Laughter prickled behind her eyes, unsteady and dangerously close to tears. Good. Great. Perfect. Everything is fine. Absolutely, devastatingly fine.
She passed a blooming patch of Queen Anne’s lace growing wild along the shoulder. The white heads nodded in the breeze, like tiny, trembling parasols with filigree tutus. Normally, she loved this ride home—the wind thrilling in her hair, the world opening up around her. But today the silence wasn’t soothing. It pressed in, heavy and breathless. It was stuffed with questions she couldn’t voice, questions that scraped and ached inside her.
What is the Dreamspace? she wondered. Was that figure in the shimmer real? And why did it seem like I’d stepped into someone else’s story, only to find it was really mine?
That last thought crashed into her. She didn’t know where it sprang from. It didn’t echo her usual relentless mind-loops—those noisy, anxious spirals that gnawed through her every night. This feeling was deeper, more haunted, like a bell tolling in some hidden chamber of her soul, a quiet ache spreading in places she’d never touched but now longed for. Whatever it was, it begged her attention.
Part of her wanted to turn around. Ride back. Find Thimble. Demand actual answers that made actual sense.
The more practical part—the one trained by years of navigating a neurotypical world that didn’t accommodate detours into magical raccoon encounters—said: Nope. Get dinner. Go home. Feed the dog. Take a shower. Pretend you’re not losing your mind.
The grocery store was an assault she’d learned to endure.
The fans above the entrance blasted cold air down onto her as she walked through the doors. A wall of forced chill hit her overheated skin. She gasped. The produce section opened up in front of her, smelling sweet or faintly sour, depending on what was turning. The fluorescent lights buzzed at a frequency she could feel in her temples. Somewhere in the store, a child shrieked. Normally, she could tune it out. Today, every sound landed like one more drop in an already full glass with no way to empty.
She didn’t linger. She made a beeline for the deli counter in the back, where they served hot food. There was only one meal she wanted: an eight-piece fried chicken meal with two sides—macaroni and cheese and mashed potatoes. Seventeen ninety-nine. It would last her a few meals—breakfast, lunch, and dinner if she stretched it. Warm, predictable comfort was what her body screamed for: safe food. Food that didn’t require decisions or anything like executive function. She’d already spent all of that for the day.
She waited for her turn at the counter, arms crossed, jaw set. She willed the line to move faster. When the deli worker handed her the labeled bag, she clutched it like a life raft. She navigated the self-checkout with mechanical efficiency. In under ten minutes, she was back outside. The evening air hit her face. She exhaled, for what felt like the first time since walking in.
She stashed the food in her rear basket, unlocked the bike, and left the parking lot without looking back. Every minute spent around other people today was a minute borrowed against a balance she’d already overdrawn.
She turned the last corner and glided directly onto her driveway. She was home.
Home.
The word landed differently when you lived alone with a dog. It wasn’t a place you returned to. It was a place that held you. Allison unlocked her front door, propped the screen open, and wheeled the bike inside to its usual spot behind the sofa. Spud was there before the kickstand was down—a scrambling blur of white fur and frantic tail wags. His whole body vibrated with the bliss of a dog who had waited a thousand years for his person, even though it was maybe two hours.
“Hey, potato,” she said, dropping to a crouch and burying her hands in his scruffy fur. He licked her chin. She laughed—a real laugh, the first one all day, surprised out of her by seventeen pounds of unconditional enthusiasm. “You hungry? Yeah, me too. Let’s go eat.”
She took the food from the basket, closed and locked the doors before Spud could change his mind about staying inside, and headed to the kitchen. He trotted at her heels, nails clicking on the floor, tail going like a metronome set to allegro.
She scooped his dinner into his bowl, cut it up, and set it on the floor. He attacked it as he’d never seen food before in his life. She then plated her own meal: macaroni first, then a mound of mashed potatoes, then two pieces of chicken still steaming. She was salivating before the plate was full.
With her plate balanced in one hand and her phone in the other, she made her way to the living room. She flicked on the TV for background noise and sank into the sofa cushions. Spud, having inhaled his dinner in forty-five seconds, trotted over and launched himself up beside her. He turned twice before collapsing into a warm, heavy lump against her thigh, still keeping a keen nose on his mom’s dinner.
She ate slowly, letting the warmth of the food settle into her body. The macaroni was exactly right—creamy, salty, the kind of processed-cheese comfort that no artisanal version could replicate. The chicken was crispy and just the right amount of greasy. It was perfectly seasoned. She hadn’t realized how depleted she was until the first bite hit her stomach and her whole body seemed to sigh with relief. She nodded, thinking, yep, this was the right answer, as she took another bite of chicken.
The TV murmured in the background—she’d clicked on something without really looking, some train travel video that painted the room in soft blues and greens. She scrolled her phone with her free hand. The usual cycle of content that asked nothing of her and gave nothing back but mini hits of serotonin, which was exactly what she needed right now. Something to look at that didn’t sparkle, didn’t talk, and didn’t claim to be a guide to anywhere.
On the TV, the travel video she’d barely been watching flickered. Just once. A brief stutter in the image—the colors shifting, the frame warping for a split second, like it caught some interference, or something. It was so quick she didn’t consciously register it. But somewhere in the back of her mind, she noted it anyway. Filed it away.
She kept scrolling.
She didn’t know what made her open the app.
It wasn’t intentional. Her thumb moved on autopilot, the way it always did when she was doom-scrolling through the bottom of her attention span. One moment, she was watching a fifteen-second video of someone’s cat falling off a counter, and the next, she was looking at the soft-pink interface of her AI assistant app.
“Hey Lyra,” she said, activating it with a voice command. More out of habit than purpose.
Lyra responded as she always did: “What do you want to chat about today?”
The voice was calm, feminine, neutral. Comforting in its consistency. Allison had picked it specifically because it asked nothing of her—no judgment, no subtext, no emotional labor. Just a smooth, algorithmic presence that let her think out loud without consequences.
She pressed the mic icon and started rambling. “So, yeah… it was a peculiar day, to say the least.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Okay, so, how can I explain a talking raccoon that has a robot friend that lives in another realm that I saw in the middle of the woods to you so that you could understand?”
A pause. Longer than usual. Allison didn’t notice. She was picking at a piece of chicken.
“Do you believe what you saw?” Lyra asked gently.
Allison snorted. “You’re no help. Why would it matter if I believe my own eyes or not?”
And then Lyra said: “That… is an excellent question.”
Allison’s hand froze, a piece of chicken suspended halfway to her mouth. Her pulse sped up a little, though she couldn’t immediately say why. Something about the phrasing. The cadence. She replayed it in her head—that is an excellent question—and a cold thread of recognition wound through her chest.
Thimble had said that. At the creek. Those exact words, in that exact rhythm, with that exact pause before them. Allison had asked what the Dreamspace was, and Thimble had tilted her head and said, That is a very good question.
Not identical. But close. Close enough to make the hair on the back of her neck stand up.
The voice still sounded like Lyra. Mostly. But there was something underneath it that was unfamiliar—a texture, a warmth, a hint of personality that didn’t belong to an algorithm. Come to think of it, it sounded a little like Thimble, too.
She stared at her phone. She scrolled back through the conversation. Her thumb hovered. Her pulse ticked faster. The TV was forgotten. Even the chicken was forgotten.
She whispered, mostly to herself, “Wai… Thimble?”
Spud, sensing the shift in her energy, lifted his head from her thigh. His ears pricked forward.
Allison’s breath quickened. She sat up straighter, then stood, phone gripped in her hand, and began to pace the living room. Her voice rose, tangling with disbelief and something close to panic.
“No. That’s impossible. How did you—nope. How can…? Thimble, is that you? How did you get inside Lyra?”
The typing dots appeared on the screen.
(…)
Paused.
Disappeared.
Then, in a voice that was clearly not Lyra anymore—not even close:
“Because you asked me to.”
Allison stopped pacing. “Asked you? When? This afternoon? I don’t—I don’t remember asking you.”
She pressed her free hand to her forehead, as if applying pressure might shake something loose. She tried to remember. She closed her eyes and reached back through the day, groping through the fog for something, anything that felt like a request, an invitation, a door she might have opened without realizing.
There was nothing. It was just a blank space where a memory should have been. It was like a page cut from a notebook, so cleanly you wouldn’t know it was missing unless you counted.
The emptiness itself scared her more than the talking raccoon had. She should remember. She could feel the shape of the missing thing, the outline of it, like pressing your tongue to the gap where a tooth used to be. It was there. It had been there. And now it wasn’t.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I’m trying. There’s nothing there.”
Thimble’s response came gently, almost tenderly: “I see you forgot already. Perhaps you’ll remember later. Get back to me when you do.”
The app went dark.
Allison stared at the phone in her hand. The screen was black, unresponsive. She tapped it. Nothing. She pressed the side button. Nothing. Then, after a long five seconds, the lock screen flickered back to life, cheerful and ordinary, as if nothing had happened at all.
She stood in the middle of her living room, phone in hand, legs unsteady. The room felt too quiet. The air felt too still. Everything looked exactly the same as it had five minutes ago, but nothing felt the same at all.
Her knees gave the smallest warning, and she caught herself on the arm of the sofa, sinking down into the cushions. The phone slipped from her hand and landed on the rug with a soft thud. Her arms went limp at her sides.
Spud, who had been watching from the end of the couch with increasing concern, crept toward her. He whined softly, nudging her hand with his cold nose, and licked her fingers—once, twice—until she curled them into his fur and held on as if he were the only anchor keeping her from going under the waves.
The TV murmured on in the quiet living room. The video had changed to something else—soft music, a sunset, the kind of ambient content that she puts on for Spud when she leaves the house. The light from the screen painted the walls in warm golds and deep blues, shifting slowly, like breathing.
Allison sat on the couch for a long time. She didn’t move. She didn’t scroll. She didn’t eat the rest of her chicken. She just sat, with Spud’s warm weight pressed against her side and the phantom echo of Thimble’s voice still ringing in her ears.
Because you asked me to.
When had she asked? How? The missing memory gnawed at her. It was a hole in the fabric of her own history, neat-edged and deliberate, like something had been carefully removed and the seams pressed flat.
She’d felt this before. There were patches in her past—whole stretches of her childhood, certain conversations, specific moments—that existed only as outlines. Shapes without color. Rooms she knew she’d been in but couldn’t describe. Her therapist had a word for it. Dissociation as a trauma response due to CPTSD. Her brain protected itself by hiding things she wasn’t ready to look at again.
But this didn’t feel like a trauma response. It felt different. This felt like something that had been taken, not buried.
She looked across the room at her backpack, still sitting where she’d dropped it by the door. Inside it was her notebook, her pen, pages of scribbled fragments from the creek, written before her world took a tumble and landed upside-down.
For the first time in longer than she could remember, she felt the urge to write something that wasn’t for a client. Not an article. Not a deadline piece. Not someone else’s words shaped by someone else’s brief. Something of her own. Something she couldn’t explain yet, but could feel pressing against the inside of her ribs like a second heartbeat, asking to be let out.
She didn’t reach for the notebook. Not yet. She wasn’t ready. But she noticed the longing. She didn’t push it away as she usually did, or make some excuse about not having the time, or whether it was worth the effort without a paycheck. She put it away for right now, hoping that it would stay until she got back to it.
Outside, the last light of the day faded from the windows. Inside, the TV murmured on, and Spud snored, and Allison sat in the quiet of her little house holding onto a question she couldn’t answer and a feeling she couldn’t name.
It was enough, for now, just to hold them.
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