“Do tell me, girl”—the lemur cleared his throat—“why you have come back here, if you loved him so much?”

“It didn’t go well,” Poire muttered as whatever remained from her head of wilted petals disappeared between the crook of her elbows. “He wasn’t what he had seemed to be,” she said.

“But neither are you, girl,” the lemur said as he sunk a little deeper into the sand.

She sighed. “I know. I know I’m not,” she told him, “but I don’t tell big lies to anyone.”

“You mean to say he lied to you?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” she cried. “Why in the world would I have returned if everything was just?”

“Oh.” The lemur rubbed his paws together and cackled. “I believe it is because everything is right that you have made it back.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Poire scoffed. “Care to explain how that makes any sense at all, Mister Lemur?” Her shoulders trembled. Her voice was weak. “And what is that horrible clicking noise?” she asked him.

The lemur bared his teeth and walked circles around her. “You know the answer to that better than anyone else,” he said.

“But how can I be at the police station and here at the same time?” she asked as she rose to her feet once more and looked around. The sky had turned a disgusting shade of garbage-green. The ground was red, and the two goldfish she had previously killed swam around in circles in front of her, in the middle of the ocean. They were the size of whales, and their googly eyes stared into a void Poire could relate to. The water was dark. She could not see the end nor the beginning of it. She gasped. “What happened to this place?”

The lemur climbed up her shoulder. “You forgot about us,” he said as he pointed out to sea. “It is what happens when we are abandoned.”

“I’m sorry,” Poire said. “I’m sorry,” she echoed. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”

Poire’s sister wrapped an arm around her shoulder.

The lemur disappeared.

The lights hung above them were blinding.

“It’s okay,” Annabelle said. “You didn’t know. I should have been more careful.”

An officer walked into the station’s waiting room. “Annabelle? Poire?” he asked. “We have some news about the Marnon boy. Care to follow me so that we may discuss it in private?”