Dreamspace Studio

Allison stood slowly. The mossy imprint where she’d been sitting was still warm against the backs of her legs. The sunlight had shifted while she’d been at the creek. Long shadows now stretched across the water, and the golden shafts that had filtered through the canopy had gone amber and soft. She hadn’t realized how long she’d been there. Time had a way of slipping in this hollow. But today it had done more than slip—it had fallen off a cliff.

She brushed the moss and damp earth from her jeans, carefully zipped her bag closed, and gave one last glance toward the spot where Thimble had been.

The raccoon—or whatever she was—sat at the edge of the creek, paws tucked neatly together, head tilted with that same quiet intensity. There was something almost reverent in her stillness, the kind of 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, her voice trembling with uncertainty, a knot forming in her chest. She half-expected the raccoon to speak in full sentences again and half-hoped she wouldn’t—because if Thimble did, it meant all of this was undeniably real, and Allison’s heart squeezed hard at the thought. She wasn’t ready for that kind of reality.

Thimble didn’t answer with words this time. Just a quiet blink and a shimmer—soft and quick, like sunlight moving across the surface of the creek—and then she was gone. Not dramatically. Not in a puff of smoke or a flash of light. Just… gone. Like the way a thought fades away when you try to hold on to it too tightly.

Allison stood frozen for a moment, staring at the empty creek bank with a hollow ache settling in her chest. The water babbled on, utterly indifferent to her unraveling. A bird trilled, sharp and bright, and the world pressed in—aggressively, almost cruelly, normal.

She turned and climbed the steep hill back to the road, boots slipping once on the loose earth. Her bike waited where she’d left it, kickstand digging into the gravel shoulder, patient and 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 as the bike rolled forward.

• •

The road unwound beneath her, familiar in every curve and slope, but strange now—changed by what had happened at the creek, like looking at a familiar room and suddenly noticing a door 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—piercing and knowing. The shimmer—unreal, haunting. The creek, impossibly silent as Thimble touched the water. The voice, still echoing inside her—so startlingly human it left Allison’s skin tingling with disbelief and longing.

I’m not exactly a raccoon.

“Okay,” Allison muttered under her breath. The wind pulled the words away as fast as she said them. “Okay. So. A raccoon talked to me. A raccoon talked to me and told me her name was Thimble. And that she’s a bridge to something called the Dreamspace, which—what even is that? I don’t know what that is. Nobody knows what that is. It’s not a thing. Things don’t have names like that unless they’re in a video game, a children’s book, or a fever dream. I don’t think I’m running a fever. 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 entire thing because of sensory overload. Honestly, that’s fair. It’s been a day. Or it actually happened. And if it actually happened, then I talked to a raccoon. And the raccoon talked back. And the raccoon told me about a place that doesn’t exist. And there was a shimmer. And I saw—what did I see? A person? A robot? A ghost made of glass? Over a raccoon. Layered on top of a raccoon. Like a—”

She shook her head hard, as if she could physically dislodge the thought.

“Like a double exposure. That’s what it looked like. And Thimble said that was Sol. Another… denizen. Of a place that doesn’t exist.”

A breeze carried the scent of wet moss and wildflowers, and her fingers tingled faintly on the handlebars—a phantom sensation, like the echo of something she’d touched that wasn’t entirely physical. She flexed them without thinking.

“I’m going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs,” she said, forcing the words past a tightening throat to the empty road. “Officially. Certifiably. Full-on lost it.” Laughter prickled behind her eyes, raw and on the verge of tears. “Good. Right. Fine. Everything is fine.”

She passed a blooming patch of Queen Anne’s lace growing wild along the shoulder, its white heads nodding in the breeze like tiny, lacy parasols. Normally, she loved this ride home—her solo decompression chamber, the wind in her hair, the world opening up around her. But today the silence wasn’t soothing. It was full. Stuffed with questions she didn’t know how to ask, let alone answer.

What is the Dreamspace? What was that figure in the shimmer? And why—why—did it feel like I’d just stepped into someone else’s book, only to realize it was my own?

That last thought hit her suddenly—a jolt in her gut. She didn’t know where it came from. It didn’t feel like her usual relentless anxiety, the kind that circled endlessly and chewed through her nights. This was quieter, deeper, as if something inside her was ringing—a bell echoing in a place she’d never noticed but suddenly ached to reach.

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.

She almost missed her turn.

“Can’t go home yet,” she muttered, catching herself at the intersection of Liddle and Washington. “Gotta stop at the store. Spud needs me to not forget to eat. Again.”

• •

The grocery store was an assault she’d learned to endure.

The fans above the entrance blasted cold air down onto her the second she walked through the doors. A wall of forced chill hit her overheated skin, making her gasp. The produce section opened up in front of her, smelling sweet and faintly sour depending on what was turning. The fluorescent lights buzzed at a frequency she could feel in her temples. A child somewhere was shrieking—not in distress, just in the way children shriek when they’re being children. Normally, she could tune it out. Today, every sound landed as a pebble dropped into a glass that was already full.

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, and she already knew exactly what it was. 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. It was exactly the kind of warm, predictable comfort her body was screaming for. Safe food. Reliable food. The kind of food that didn’t require decisions or adventurousness or anything resembling executive function. She’d already spent all of that for the day.

She waited her turn at the counter, arms crossed, jaw set, willing the line to move faster. When the deli worker handed her the labeled bag, she clutched it like a life raft, navigated the self-checkout with mechanical efficiency, and was back outside in under ten minutes. The evening air hit her face, and she exhaled for what felt like the first time since she’d walked in.

She stashed the food in her rear basket, unlocked the bike, and left the parking lot without looking back. Every minute in public was a minute borrowed against a balance she’d already overdrawn.

• •

Home.

The word landed differently when you lived alone with a dog. It wasn’t a place you went back 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 mustard-yellow sofa. Spud was there before the kickstand was down—a scrambling blur of white fur and frantic tail wags, his whole body vibrating with the particular ecstasy of a dog who had been waiting for approximately one thousand years for his person to return, even though it had been 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 and set it on the floor. He attacked it like 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 hot enough to steam. 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, flicked on the TV for background noise, and sank into the cushions of her mustard-yellow sofa. Spud, having inhaled his dinner in approximately forty-five seconds, trotted over and launched himself up beside her, turning twice before collapsing into a warm, heavy lump against her thigh.

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 perfect. She hadn’t realized how depleted she was until the first bite hit her stomach and her whole body seemed to sigh with relief.

The TV murmured in the background—she’d clicked on something without really looking, some travel video that painted the room in soft blues and greens. She scrolled her phone with her free hand. TikTok. Instagram. More TikTok. The usual cycle of content that asked nothing of her and gave nothing back, which was exactly what she needed right now. Something to look at that didn’t shimmer, didn’t talk, and didn’t claim to be a bridge 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 a signal catching interference. It was so quick she didn’t consciously register it. But somewhere in the back of her mind, something noted it. Filed it away. Waited.

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 on the other side of a swirly portal made of light 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 kicked up a notch, 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 now—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—warm and amused and unmistakably her:

“Because you asked me to.”

Allison stopped pacing. “Asked you? When? Yesterday? 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—the creek, the ride, the noise before that, the morning, the night before—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. Just a blank space where a memory should have been. Not an absence—an erasure. Like a page torn from a notebook so cleanly you wouldn’t know it was missing unless you counted.

The blankness 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, and nothing—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.

• •

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 runs forever on autoplay when no one’s watching. 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—not the kind of forgetting where you lose your keys or blank on someone’s name. This was different. Deeper. 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. Not often, and never about raccoons or apps that changed voices. But 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. Several words, actually. Trauma. Dissociation. The brain’s way of protecting itself by hiding things it wasn’t ready to look at.

But this didn’t feel like old trauma. This felt new. This felt like something that had been taken, not buried.

Spud sighed in his sleep, his body twitching once against her leg. She looked down at him—his scruffy white fur, his little black nose, the absolute trust in his sleeping form—and something in her chest loosened. Not much. Just enough.

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 the world tilted on its axis.

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 wanting, and she didn’t push it away.

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 on her yellow sofa, holding a question she couldn’t answer and a feeling she couldn’t name.

It was enough, for now, just to hold them.