Mom and I were sitting on the couch in the living room, leaning into each other. She was stroking my big fox tail in her lap, her expression vacant.

I wanted to know what she had meant before, but I also understood that she needed a moment to take everything in. Letting her pat my tail wasn’t a bad experience either…

“You said… that you have healing potions…? That they would help with the headaches?” she finally mumbled after a long time of silence.

“Uh, yeah. They should help, I think. They heal any kind of damage universally inside the game, so…”

She nodded.

“Alright… Could I have one, then? I think that if we’re going to have this discussion, I should be as clear-headed as possible.”

I immediately complied and went back to my room to fetch both of the vials from my fanny pack before returning and giving them to Mom.

She eyed them for a second before closing her eyes with a sigh, uncorking one of them, and then carefully putting it to her lips.

She winced when the red liquid entered her mouth. I imagined they didn’t taste all that great. I’d personally only drank one once, and I’d been too busy trying not to die to savor the taste.

Regardless, she powered through the awful taste and gulped the entire potion down in one go. A moment later, she gasped as her free hand flew to her head.

“Oh… Oh, wow.” She blinked several times and then looked at me with wide eyes.

“I’m guessing it worked?” I gave her a small smile.

She chuckled.

“It did…” She shook her head before eyeing my tail. “It just hammers in the fact that this is all real.”

Another sigh.

“You said that the hallucinations… weren’t really hallucinations? And that they are portals?”

“Yeah.” I nodded.

“And there’s one… in your room?”

“Yeah…” I carefully watched her reaction but it remained torn and confused.

“You’ve been inside, then…”

“I have,” I confirmed, feeling a bit guilty.

Her expression tightened again as she absent-mindedly went back to stroking my tail.

After a moment of contemplation, she asked, “How do you open the portals?”

“Well, I just… grab them and pull them open like curtains… It’s like I’m ripping a hole in reality.”

As she gave an idle nod, a thought popped into my head.

“Oh and, uh… You know how I kept passing out at school? It’s because there’s a portal in the gym hall. The thing is, when I get close to one of the portals, they shock me.”

She immediately looked alarmed.

“But! But they don’t shock me when I’m in this form… for some reason.”

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That both calmed her down, but also made her more distressed somehow.

“I see… Makes sense, yeah.” She nodded to herself.

“Makes sense…?” I murmured, looking at her questioningly.

“Ah, well… It’s… How should I put this?” She frowned and pursed her lips.

I waited expectantly as she mulled things over. Finally, she sighed in resignation.

“It’s this very strange thing. See, back when me and your dad first had you… About a month into my pregnancy, I had a very strange but incredibly vivid dream. I’m still not quite sure what to think about it, to be honest.”

A dream…

“What was it about…?” I nudged.

“It’s hard to describe. It was like I was floating in space with galaxies surrounding me in all directions.”

I frowned. Why did that image feel familiar?

“And then there was this… person. Being. Something sentient. It was hard to make out their form, since their body looked just like the galaxies around us. I can vaguely remember they had big ears on top of their head and a tail, though,” she noted, pointedly looking at my tail.

I blinked.

“Uh…? I… see…?”

“They spoke to me. I can still remember exactly what they said, even though it’s been years. ‘I don’t have much left… I’m sorry for placing this burden on you… Please take care of our child,’ and then they faded into the galaxies around them.”

My eyes widened in shock.

“Wait, what? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I… have no idea. I always thought it was just a weird dream, but now…” She continued to stroke my tail.

I had no idea what to say. No idea what to think.

Had some mystical being entered my mom’s dreams and… what? Given me to her? That made no sense, though. Mom had already been pregnant with me when she’d had that dream.

Had I replaced Mom’s real kid? Was I a fake? Was I not supposed to exist?

“Am I really your child…?” I muttered, my voice shaking.

Mom’s eyes snapped up at me in alarm and she quickly pulled me into a hug.

“What are you saying? Of course, you are!”

“But… Didn’t the person in your dream imply that…”

“That doesn’t matter,” she declared as she squeezed me tighter. “Whoever it was, whatever they wanted, it doesn’t matter. You are my daughter, no matter what supernatural being meddled with your birth.”

I closed my eyes and let out a shaky breath.

She was right. It didn’t matter. Whoever that person was… I was still Mom’s child.

But still, with my experience with supernatural dreams, I couldn’t discount Mom’s dream. Especially if she remembered it so vividly even after all these years. It had to have some kind of meaning. Like my precognitive dreams always vividly remembered.

Speaking of which…

“I’ve… also had some extremely vivid dreams. Always after entering a portal for the first time, I would dream of… uh, something very intense,” I informed her as we pulled out of the hug.

“Intense…? Something dangerous…?” she carefully asked.

I swallowed, once again remembering what had happened earlier today.

“Yeah…”

“Renee…”

“After the portal to the game world… I had a dream of me, Casey, and Frank fighting a boss monster. It hasn't happened yet, but…”

“Yet…?” Mom carefully eyed me.

“I… Yesterday, we went to Casey’s place for the first time, and I found out that she has a portal there too. So we entered, explored for a bit, and figured out that the world on the other side is Casey’s novel, and…”

“Her novel?” Mom’s jaw hung open at this point. “How… What…?”

“Oh, uh… Well, we still don’t really know for sure, but we think these portals lead to fictional worlds, and when I open one and enter it, it makes the world real.”

She closed her eyes, put a hand over them, and took a deep breath.

“I… Right… That…” She shook her head. “You did say they lead to fictional worlds. I just didn’t expect…”

“Yeah… We only found out when we entered Casey’s novel, though…”

She nodded, still clearly shocked by all this information.

“What did you say about the dream then?”

I winced.

“Last night, after we entered that portal, I… I had a dream of hiding inside a cave. My arm was bleeding and my ankle was twisted. Then a giant spider walked in, looking for me.”

Once again, Mom looked at me in alarm.

“Then I shouted ‘Now!’ and the cave began to shake, and then… the dream ended.”

Mom’s expression was tight as she nodded. And then she froze, going pale.

“Renee… You said… ‘It hasn't happened yet’ when you talked about the first dream. Are you saying that…”

I screwed my eyes shut, thinking back to it again.

The feeling of being heavily injured, of hiding from a monster, of not knowing whether I would make it out alive.

“I… almost died today. No… I… I did die. But a magical item from the game world revived me. I’m okay now, but… It… I…”

Tears began to flow again. And Mom hugged me once more.

It was alright to cry, right?

I didn’t need to pretend I was fine right now.

Not around Mom.

Not anymore.

“Renee… Please don’t open any more portals… Please… I… If I lost you…” She was sobbing too, at this point.

“I… won’t,” I said, not really thinking about the future much.

At the moment, I didn’t care about making such a promise.

I was just glad to get everything off my chest.