Liora Wynn watches the sky change colors like a chameleon basking in a zy rainbow. The clouds drip sideways, melting into strange fractals that smile in straight lines and fuzzy edges. A moon hangs low, faintly pink, and humming. No one else seems to notice it. Or if they do, they don’t mind. That’s just how things work here.
Time blends together.
At the corner café, the chairs argue in whispers about who will be sat on next. Liora orders an espresso and a tiny almond tart. The espresso tastes like forgiveness; the tart leaves her lips sticky with nostalgia.
Across from her, her now-ex boyfriend shimmers in his seat. His edges have begun to ripple, as if her mind can no longer be bothered to render him in high-definition. He sips his tea (milk oolong, oversweet), and makes a sound like a sigh trapped in a jar.
"I’m gd we talked," he says, eyes not quite meeting hers. "It feels like closure."
Liora smiles with blurry-edge tears that drift up and off her face. "Mm. Me too." The tears aren’t visible because they don’t want to be seen.
When she walks home, barefoot, the cobblestones have gotten squishy again, like sponge cake. A mppost offers her a compliment in French. Sometimes a flock of dream-birds flies overhead, crooning lulbies backward.
Well-fed strays nudge her gently anytime her thoughts tinge with gloom. Gruff cats and silly dogs, all soft fur and big friendly eyes she can’t say "no" to, even if they ask her to do the impossible, to be happy when she just isn’t. Nothing is impossible here.
The city, as always, is beautiful. Surreal. Liora doesn’t mind that anymore. There was a time she questioned it all—why some people spoke in echoes, why her shadow sometimes went wandering without her—but eventually, her curiosity wore down like the heel of a favorite shoe. The questions became part of the scenery. What else is there to do?
Even her friends and family grow distant. First, they became hazy, intermittent. Their schedules fell out of sync. Their faces glitched, just a little. When she called, they answered with love and static.
Now they are ever-present when she wants them, fuzzy and serene like everything and everyone else.
But it wasn’t always like this. (Right?)
Liora remembers the way people used to argue—real arguments, with furrowed brows and raised voices and long silences that made the reconciliation feel hard-won. She remembers feeling annoyed, feeling uncertain, feeling like love has teeth and cws and can hurt. Now the people in her life are… pleasant. They love, still, but they don’t hate. They bicker and tease, but they don’t argue. No one loses their temper. No one forgets to smile.
It’s like a dream come true. But it feels too fake.
Still, Liora tries to fill her days with meaning. She presses flowers between the pages of unsent letters—to friends she sees often. She keeps them all in a box under her bed, unopened. She’s not sure why, except that writing them feels more real than talking to the people they’re meant for.
In the meantime, she wanders. She reads the same books over and over. She folds letters she won’t send. She watches the clouds flow backward and listens to trees sing in minor keys. She cries and ughs for no reason at all, because she doesn’t need one. Nothing seems to really need a reason to be, in this strange world.
The world is lovely in the way dreams are lovely. That scared her, once upon a time.
Now, she really does appreciate the people she meets, with all the niche interests and personalities that mesh with hers in just the right way. She likes the cheery trees and the strange mps that light up when you need them, but not when you want to watch the stars. She certainly doesn’t miss war and doubt and school and chores that don’t do themselves… but she misses the fwed people she always, always loved.
Sometimes it feels like the world is leaving her behind, someone fwed and human and incomplete. Sometimes it feels like there’s a world real and broken out there that she somehow abandoned without meaning to, stepping into this one in a turning point she can’t quite pce.
Today, Liora wanders further than usual. The cobblestones underfoot shift their patterns, pyful like joy and no regrets. The sky warbles for a moment, like a giggle.
She crests a hill she doesn’t remember being there before, and finds it. The house.
It is modest in size but odd in form, like a sketch of a cottage someone has lovingly misremembered. Its shingles glitter like beetle shells. The windows blink, almost imperceptibly. The door is ajar, yawning softly, like it has just woken up and is waiting for her to come in and say hello.
A warmth pools low in her stomach. Not fear. Not exactly excitement. Something else. Curiosity, tinged with icing and spice.
She approaches.
There is no address, no welcome mat. Just a door, with bated breath, watching without eyes to see.
Liora exhales, presses one hand to her chest—and with the other, reaches forward.
The door swings open.
The house purrs.