The click of the office door prompted Erin to go greet her uncle after a long day of work.
“I’m home,” sighed Desmond, closing the door behind him. Three years later, it was still odd having him look down on her, but there was no getting around it anymore.
“About time,” she said. “I was about to nuke the soup again.”
“Sorry. I heard the microwave go off earlier, but my report was almost done.” He glanced toward the kitchen. “Want me to cook something more substantial than that? We’ve had the same thing three days in a row. Maybe something on the skillet? We have some frozen salmon—”
“I’m in charge of dinner now, remember?,” she snapped. “Don’t you dare take that away from me.” Erin glared and scrunched her nose in one of her most genuine pouts, then wheeled off toward the microwave. Her uncle sighed and followed the girl to where she’d parked at the table, studiously ladling lukewarm canned noodle soup into two bowls. He took his seat, then bowed his head.
Erin too bowed her head, as was their nightly custom, and began to pray aloud. She’d done it that way since she was a toddler, for meals, for sickness and hurts, for fears, and for thanks. It was just something her family always did, until the accident. She was nineteen now, and the solemn ritual had become a sincere comfort to her. Once she finished up with a simple, “Thanks, and amen,” the two began quietly spooning the room-temperature soup.
About halfway through her bowl, Erin took her tablet out of her omnipresent messenger bag and began scrolling, eliciting a silent eye roll from her uncle which she studiously ignored. "No electronics at the table," he'd said when she moved in three years ago, but even after everything that happened, she still thought him more of a sibling to rankle than an authority figure to obey. The habit was easy, familiar, and gave her the illusion of control over something in her life.
In any case, Desmond often claimed the tablet was an actual part of the girl’s body at this point. She was never without it, and even kept a solar charger handy in case of some emergency where she’d be outside long enough for the battery to drain. That was highly unlikely, as she rarely ever left the house anymore, except to see—
“By the way,” Desmond said, “don’t forget about the appointment with your neurologist tomorrow.”
She was naturally as pale as her mother, so the way her color drained in moments like those was often alarming to those who didn’t know her very well. “No, thanks. I think I’ll just stay home.”
Her uncle put down his spoon and patiently folded his hands. “You have one reschedule left, as per our agreement. We can’t let it go any longer than that. There’s the risk of—”
“I know, Des,” she spat. “They tell me that every time I go… and it’s always worse than before. I don’t want to hear it from you, too.”
“Sorry. Just… take care of yourself. I’d much prefer to see your face in this house as long as possible.”
She snorted derisively. “Nobody wants to see this face.” With that, she went at her soup with irritable scoops and slurps. Her belief in that statement had been so strong that she'd dropped out of school just days after Lucy's epiphany, and never went back.
Desmond returned to his own supper, keeping his eyes downcast. Smart boy, Erin thought sarcastically. She would be painfully sensitive to anything perceived as staring for a while after that, and wouldn’t hesitate to bite his head off if he so much as glanced her way.
As usual, she gradually became distracted again by her tablet, brightening by degrees. She grinned a disturbing smile with lips partially comprised of taut scar tissue, then flicked her finger across the screen twice more before turning it toward him. “What do you think of my griffin?”
The image on the screen was a digital drawing of a creature that looked like it had started out as a silver-feathered eagle, but Erin added a few more details. It had a full set of pointed teeth inside its hooked beak, as well as long ears with soft tufts at the tips. Its wings had three vestigial “fingers” on the second joints and were strong and flexible enough to double as forelegs. The animal’s hind limbs were like a lion’s but elongated and tipped with sharp, heavy-looking talons. At the end of its rump was a thick fan of rudder feathers like a normal bird would sport, but the tail continued to extend and narrow into the thin, tufted tail of a lion. Its multi-predatory shape and stance were rather majestic, but the gray fur and feathers it wore were relatively dull. She’d have loved to spice it up with bright, exotic colors and markings, but it was exactly what she had dreamed about during her afternoon catnap, and she didn’t want to spoil it.
“It’s nice,” he said.
What a weak compliment, Erin thought bitterly, fiddling with the purple heart-crystal necklace of her mother’s that she now wore as religiously as she carried her tablet, even to bed most nights.
Her works had begun, and then improved by leaps and bounds since being confined to what amounted to a prison cell on wheels with nothing better to do. Her dreams and the art and writing that came from them were an escape, letting her flee in her mind to places where she could actually do things. As if Desmond could understand. He could still walk, and drive. And reach the stove to fry up frozen salmon.
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“I’ve done another,” she said, quickly flipping to a new picture to switch off that thought. This one was of a young man of indeterminate heritage. He had black hair, brown eyes and dark olive-tan skin, and was especially handsome in her opinion. He’d appeared in the dream she had the night before, as well as a few others, but she wasn’t about to tell Desmond that. She didn’t know much about the character yet, anyway, except that he worked in the Aerie, a large building full of griffins.
Since the accident, her dreams were often long and lucid, but for a few months now they’d moved on from the usual school-days fancies to a limited observing of these new characters and places of a fantastical world—Emerrane—from a detached distance. The characters lived on small, distant islands under the eye of a giant purple moon that was always visible, some of them sailing the vast oceans and some of them living out their lives on what seemed to be the largest island she’d seen so far.
A big city had been built on the island, a typical medieval fantasy-style place with a castle and everything, but what made it special were the griffins. There were hundreds on that island, flying the skies with their riders. Erin wished she could have such freedom.
The gray griffin she’d drawn and showed to Desmond was one of the newest characters she’d seen, as well as its rider. They didn’t seem to be affiliated with the city, but were alone, flying from island to island in its general direction. The rider was an older man, closer to her parents’ ages. He and his griffin had a passenger who looked like Desmond himself, except for a few small details that improved on his appearance. Erin chalked it up to her “dream filter.”
When she dreamt about Emerrane, walking—yes, walking!—unseen among its citizens like a ghost, all of her own defects were “filtered out” as well. She’d spent many waking hours daydreaming about those experiences, imagining where she might fit in if she could actually interact with the people there.
“Good job,” Desmond said of her drawing.
“Thanks.” She pursed her lips, wishing he’d give more than a two-word response once in a while. She still thought about how she had treated Lucy, now that she understood exactly why the bullied girl loved her stories and characters so. Talking to a shrink now and then was nice, but there was something so deeply therapeutic about creating and exploring a world of one’s own. Regrettably, there was always… a shame attached to her own work now, whenever she looked to others like her uncle for approval. She wished she could apologize to her classmate, somehow.
Erin looked at her next piece, an older man with wavy auburn hair, but didn’t bother to show it to Des. The payoff was just not worth the effort. Instead, she said, “I’ve uploaded all of my latest character designs to my online portfolio.”
“Oh? Are you trying to get into the gaming industry now?”
“No way. Anything to do with character design is practically impossible to break into, even for people with a degree. I’m thinking about publishing a book I’m about to start working on, set in a place called Emerrane. People there can raise, train and ride griffins.”
“Sounds interesting.”
Her eyes lit up. “I’m glad you think so. I was hoping you’d beta read and edit it for me.”
“I don’t have time,” came the panicked blurt.
She’d expected that, but couldn’t help but withdraw inward, curling her arms around herself and shrinking into her chair. “I know,” she said after a pause, gaze fallen down into her soup.
He drew in a long breath through his nose. “I know you’re excited, but consider my position: After a long day in that cramped office, hack writing for pay, would someone really want want to ‘come home’ and do more of what basically amounts to the same thing?” Desmond regarded his niece’s dejected face, eyes obviously tracing the scars that embarrassed her to no end. She thought his eyes shimmered for a moment, but he firmly blinked it away. “I’ll read it,” he said, “but I can’t promise a lot of commitment to it. I have to take care of us, first. The inheritance money's been gone for a long time.”
“I understand,” was Erin’s bright reply. “This is going to be great, I promise. Here, let me show you my world building so far. I’ll get your laptop.”
As he often did those days, he stared through the dregs of his soup at a faraway place until she returned. With a sigh, he moved the remains of his supper out of the way.
Erin carefully set the laptop in front of him. “I’ve already logged into your email and pulled up the link to my public wiki. I can’t believe you’re still using that dumb password that’s probably been sold on the dark web ten times already.”
Her uncle deliberately ignored the jab and adjusted the laptop into optimal position. On the screen was a simple, yet intensely-cluttered web page, with a header graphic at the top and endless links in columns on the left and right. The links were comprised of titles like Introduction, World Information, Locations, Bestiary and NPCs.
Erin, meanwhile, had set herself up at the table beside him, portable keyboard freshly unfolded and linked up to her tablet.
Desmond clicked a link and gawked at the screen, probably at the extreme detail Erin’s wiki went into.
As her uncle hesitantly perused the wiki, she tapped away on her own keyboard with a grin and an enthusiastic speed that was only reached when she was chatting with online acquaintances. "You have got to be kidding me," she drawled at her screen. "You drew the Queen and Ben? On a motorcycle?"
The chat blew up with that art drop, everyone offering their own theory on how that out-of-character encounter would happen. Sharing "tea" on her fictional characters' latest shenanigans was one of her favorite pastimes, now. Gossiping about them as if they were real, close friends—and sometimes enemies. Ben was definitely one of the good guys, though.
“She’s in!” Erin met Desmond’s wide-eyed look with the biggest grin she could muster.
“Who is ‘she?’”
“Carybelle, one of my favorite artists. She joined the chat just to gift me some AU fanart.”
“’Ay-yoo?’”
“Yeah. It’s totally awesome.”
When Desmond failed to elicit an actually helpful answer from his niece, he took a deep breath as if about to plunge into a deep pool of water, cracked his knuckles, stretched, and settled in to finish reading.
----------------------------------------
When night fell, Erin struggled with sleep. Her dreams were senseless, full of darkness and oppression. There was sickly cold pressure all around, clinging against every inch of her skin and shoving her to and fro. There was nothing below to stand on. She was just floating.
A humanoid shape swayed and dove in the black void, coming ever closer with each gyration. It swooped disturbingly close to her face, pushing her back, and Erin thought she saw a flash of silver and violet. Then, she was moving, the chilling cold flowing across her skin like water.
Suddenly, she was yanked up out of the suffocating place to a higher level, still enveloped in darkness.
Thunder crashed so loud that its rumble resonated in her chest. Chilling rain stung her face.
Somewhere above her, an eagle screamed.