Andie wandered over to the edge of the flying island she was on, then took a few steps back as she stared at the island Cedric’s Dream had gestured towards. Could she make that jump? Yeah, she could make that jump. Probably. Eh, even if she missed it’d be fine. Actually, did she even need to jump at all? Usually in mindscapes there was some way to… hm…
Andie took a large, cartoonishly exaggerated step off the edge of the island. Immediately, a tile of sidewalk pavement rocketed upward from deep below her - stopping just an inch beneath where her foot was about to land. Again, the mindscape seemed unusually responsive. Still, this could be explained as a natural property of the mindscape that she just happened to trigger. Even when there were no humanoids in a mindscape, they always seemed built to accommodate human-people persons. The possibility of magically appearing floating walkways that could only be triggered by humanoids, in a mindscape without any humanoids? No weirder than a comic shop in a people-free mindscape.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
With a fleeting caution, Andie shifted her weight onto the magic sidewalk. Yeah, it’d hold her. Pretty easily, too. Thing wouldn’t budge even when she stomped on it. Now then…
Once was chance…
Andie took another step, finding it landed firmly on another piece of pavement.
Twice was coincidence…
Another step, another square of sidewalk.
And three times was a pattern!
With a hop, skip, and a jump, Andie made her way to her goal - turning around as soon as her feet hit the island’s asphalt. The on-demand sidewalk was gone, and Cedric’s Dream had gone back to doing its thing - as though it had completely forgotten about Andie. Yep, that settled it. Cedric’s Dream hadn’t actually recognized her as an independent entity, and it hadn’t tried to communicate with her. It had recognized her as “something important”, and tried to get her to move. No theory of mind involved at all. Cedric’s mindscape really seemed like it broke the rules, but when you took the time to try and understand it, you realized it followed all the same rules as the others. Unusual and unintuitive, but still familiar at the heart of it.
Somehow, that seemed fitting for Cedric.