Isabelle's call was late.

From the moment that I emerged into the room of Happy Homeroom at Lottie and Lyle's lead, stepping into the atmosphere of soft, classical piano music at three in the afternoon, the reminder that Isabelle was about to call me wedged into my mind and refused to move. After four entire years, we would finally initiate full contact again, or at least work out something around that. I tried to distract myself by making a point to offer any constructive criticism that I could form to the participant that we were first visited by, but as the minute hand crept further and further through the third hour, I knew that she was meant to have called by now.

I'm not working my second job that day, so it should be about three thirty at the very latest. Around there is when you should expect a call from me.

The first participant was a black and white spotted husky dog called Chase, soon proving to be a particularly cautious and thoughtful animal in his work. He'd chosen the interior of a sort of sci-fi laboratory, selecting and reselecting details with precision and careful thought. My eyes repeatedly flicked to and from the clock hanging from the left wall and the phone in the crevice of the right, untouched and silent with every ticking second as a single question fired through my mind. What was going on? The activity endured, the uncertainty swelled, and I thought of Isabelle as my eyes followed the wafting bubbles from neon-green liquid in a triangular test tube on the side of the screen.

The expected time threshold of three thirty came around—And went. At this point, Mr. Chase still stood before the massive screen, but every detail but two remained decided on. He finished up shortly after at a couple minutes after quarter to, leaving the time for critique and evaluation. He earned ninety-five points from Lottie at my left, seventy points from me as I was too absorbed in the lack of communication to complete a deep evaluation, and fifty-five from Lyle at my right. He passed his evaluations and was invited back to Happy Homeroom for a more difficult challenge. Lottie offered to provide extra feedback to assist in his preparation for the next challenge, something that she had taken to more frequently this year, and the two of them dismissed themselves to chat at the screen.

There's a ton of really strong fighters at Smash and I told Mario I wanted a challenge. I'll bet I'm going to be paired up with one of them.

It was ten minutes to four, as displayed by the hanging clock. Twenty minutes after the last time to expect a call from Isabelle. Technically, my work for the hour had ended and left me to simply wait until the next hour rolled around, but I blinked and found myself standing in the middle of the room to keep an eye on all that happened around me. A sort of grinding like nails on a chalkboard rammed into my chest, my stomach knotting with such a squeeze that I couldn't stifle the stress it transcribed into the features of my face.

I stood alone, attentively alert for the sound of the phone ringing, eyes bouncing restlessly between the results plastered across the scoreboard, the ever-shifting clock hands, Lyle seated with his back to me at the evaluation table, and Lottie striking up a discussion with Mr. Chase at the screen illuminated by the self-designed laboratory, waving her paw to gesture at each aspect she mentioned. It was stupid how tense I was allowing myself to become at this. There were a million different reasons that Isabelle wouldn't have been calling right now. She might have gotten held up at work. There might have been a mix-up with the timing. I might have even been the one with the wrong day. Who knew for sure? But because of my stupid overthinking and the stupid worry that followed it around like a shadow, a tugging feeling made me wonder if something was wrong.

SUCCESS

Excess of 10 points

"You see, I quite admire your approach here," Lottie told Mr. Chase at the screen as he nodded along respectfully. "But the thing about what..."

Three fifty-five. Thirty five minutes late.

Could I have slipped out? Taken a breather? Would I have missed the call? Nervous. Nervous. Nervous. Something wasn't right.

My paws fidgeted with my sleeves, tugging them over the padding. One, then the other. One, then the other. Was this a reason to call home? No, because I could have missed the call. Maybe that was it, maybe I'd missed the call already. I fixedly searched every face in the room, actively entertaining the possibility that I would find a hint of trouble somewhere. Someone might have known something that I didn't. Lyle was not facing me—I could not see his face. The husky was still nodding, a calmness in his face that told of no such distress as mine. There was a polite smile on Lottie's face and nothing concealed behind it.

I took in Lottie's face from across the room, the way it turned away and towards my sight as she spoke of the contents on the screen in front of her. She was not nervous. Actually, the relaxed movements as she casually shifted her weight here and there, motioning to the screen, assured me that she grasped a sturdy sense of control. My mind slowed, my stomach softening, if only just a little, and I watched her.

"Oh, right. I see what you mean now," Chase pointed out. "Thank you for that. I'll keep that in mind for the next time."

The words thank you first pricked up my attention. It was the gratitude at the end of a meeting. They were wrapping up. It was time to wrap up already. My eyes found their way back to the clock positioned high on the left wall. Three fifty-seven. Where was she?

It should be about three thirty at the very latest.

Tension gripped my chest again. Lottie was shaking Chase's paw, thanking him for his time. Chase was heading off to leave through the door where he had arrived from. It was about to start all over again. Lyle's stir from his chair yanked my focus over to him as he eased his weight back, nonchalantly tossing a glance over his shoulder at me as if to check where I was. I met his eyes with a stillness of invisible pleas. Whether he liked me or not wasn't a priority right now. I just needed him to notice that something was wrong.

And it seemed that he did. He only returned my gaze for a moment before he was shifting in his seat, climbing up to a stand as Lottie clicked her way across the polished floor to reach her seat again. He was going to say something to me. Lyle stepped aside from his chair, starting off in a shuffle to cross the room and join me, but the sound of the phone bursting into a ring halted him. Isabelle.

"Oh, just a second," Lyle mumbled tiredly before I could even utter a single word, altering his path to instead head for the ringing phone. I swallowed my words, giving up on stopping him as my stress loosened again. Once Isabelle introduced herself on the phone, he would have known to beckon me to the phone instead.

A hasty modification to the broad screen at the front of the room before Lyle had even reached the phone jolted me, once again pulling away my focus. Instead of the display of the laboratory's interior, the same words from the very beginning of the activity etched across a white glow in the revisited loop of the program.

Welcome to

Happy Homeroom

Lyle plucked the phone from the receiver, holding it to his ear as he casually leaned against the wall to answer the call.

"Happy Homeroom, this is Lyle," he greeted into the phone. Even from where I stood in the middle of the room, the muffled sound of a panicked voice sputtered out faintly from the other line, prattling on from the moment Lyle had finished speaking. Lyle instantly tensed at the sound, leaping from the wall in the startling situation and turning his back towards me to engage in a more serious discussion. "Slow down, Maisie. Talk to me."

"I accidentally overbooked for today," Lottie confessed, nearly rattling me again. In the time that I was watching Lyle answer the phone, she had picked up a clipboard from her side of the table and walked to join me in my lonesome place in the room. She now stood with the keyboard in her arms, tilting it to read the contents as she stood beside me. "I wasn't sure which time slots I'd already packed in and scheduled two participants today at four. I hope they won't be too upset if I cancel. I'll be sure to install their time slot first thing tomorrow."

Well, there wasn't much I could respond with to that. I turned my eyes back up to the results board to check if the results were still present. They were not, in fact, and the screen had fully darkened. Beside me, Lottie continued to examine the clipboard in her arms for a few seconds longer before she set it against her chest to hold it, turning up her face to meet my gaze.

"What's on your mind, Digby?" she inquired.

"You know, Isabelle was supposed to call me today," I told her. "That was the agreement we made when I reached out a while ago. She promised to call me today before three thirty. We were finally taking a shot at becoming friends again and she agreed to talk to me about that today."

"Well, isn't she working right now?" Lottie asked.

"No, not now," I corrected. "She said she'd call me when she was done working for the day and the cutoff point to expect her call was half an hour ago. I didn't get anything from her."

"I think there must be a good reason that she hasn't reached out yet," Lottie assured me. Absentmindedly, she lightly tapped her paw against the back of the clipboard as she spoke.

"All right. I'll tell him," Lyle muttered from over by the phone. Something in his voice was solemn, much softer than it had been before like in respect. "Thank you for calling."

"Maybe, but there's something else that I realized," I told Lottie. The curiosity shimmered within her dark eyes as she listened—At least for the first portion until her gaze began to stray past my shoulder in distraction further on. "I made the mistake of doing something similar years ago when we were last talking. I got tired of talking to her because I felt she was treating me unfairly when I kept trying to help her find work. You know just as well as I do what I did because of that. It's just that for all I know, this could be her way of getting revenge for it. If I hadn't..."

My voice trailed off as Lottie proceeded to nudge my arm, silently urging me to stop and redirect my attention elsewhere. The shimmer of curiosity in her eyes had withered into something cold of concern as she stared past me at Lyle standing at the phone. Unsure of what I would find, I turned around to sneak a glance back at him again. He was no longer on the phone, and yet he still hesitated to leave the wall where he stood to answer it in the first place. He had his back leaned against the wall again as he buried his face in his paws that sat beneath his glasses, standing in the hunched image of despondency. He didn't move, didn't raise his eyes, just huddled against the wall in silence.

"Did you see what happened?" Lottie whispered at my side, so softly that it was hardly a breath.

Almost like he had suspected we were talking about him, Lyle finally moved from the wall with a deep sigh and his paws slipping from his face before I could answer. He removed himself from his current stance, stepping forward in an approach towards Lottie and me, accompanied by a glum expression painted across his whiskered face.

"Digby, your mother was just on the phone," Lyle murmured dismally. "Something happened. She wants you home right away."

My stomach plunged. Fuzziness like a dazed spell descended on me so sharply that it was a miracle my knees didn't buckle under the sudden pressure. Wait, what?

"What happened?" Lottie urged to know, spilling the question that had begun to hammer against the casing of my mindspace. "Is everything okay?"

"We'll talk about it later," Lyle said to her. He draped an arm around her, pulling her close to plant a short and shaky kiss on the top of her head before he spoke again. "I think it's about time that we get going as well."

"What?" Lottie blurted out, wriggling free from his hold to spin around and face him at the statement. "Uncle Lyle, we have clients waiting to see us. We can't just leave them."

"I'll handle it," Lyle promised. "Let's all get going upstairs and grab our coats. It's cold outside. I don't want you to freeze."

The very next thing that I registered, Lottie and I had surrendered to a persistent hustle together to ascend the steps to the second floor, trapped under a trance of silence. We had already long abandoned the participants expecting their names to be called in the waiting room, departing swiftly from the room of Happy Homeroom without so much of a word of warning. Not even I had the answers. With the immense space that the rush took up, there was no room left to question it. The only answer we grasped for certain was the instruction from Lyle to gather our coats and evacuate from this building as quickly as possible.

Hasty to obey commands, Lottie and I joined each other to whisk ourselves to the second floor, but split our own ways to return to our offices. I didn't waste a beat, flinging open the door to my office to collect my belongings. My puffy gray coat had crumpled to a pile onto the polished floor, dimmed under the clouded sky peering in from the window, at the wheels of my chair. I snatched the coat from the floor, rushing to clothe myself in it, but it was as I was slipping my arm through the last sleeve that my eyes found something abandoned on the empty surface of the desk. A yellow sticky note, crinkled at the edges and scribbled with Isabelle's new phone number. I had left it there in case she called me while I was sitting at my desk and needed to check the number to ensure that it was hers. I wrenched the zipper of my coat shut, wedged the note into my pocket, snagged my office keys from next to the keyboard, and broke off to cross the room in short strides.

The hallway had been deserted by the time I launched myself through the door again. I gripped the doorknob and bowed my head, fumbling to lock the door after me. My heart clobbered clumsily with every urgent movement. Just as the lock clicked, the door to the right of mine slung open, giving way to Lottie's rushed exit. She had wrapped herself in a midnight-blue coat that shone under the lights beaming down at the top of the hall. I jerked the key from the lock, jiggled the doorknob to make sure it was sealed, and took off once more through the hallway where Lottie stood locking her own door, heading for the stairs once again. Lottie appeared to finish the task of locking her own door just as I was passing by her, abandoning the lock and moving with rapid clicks against the pearly floor to attach as my company once again.

As one, we proceeded back downstairs, hastening down the steps to the first floor. Clusters of visitors still congregated throughout the first floor halls, clogging our path. Under fluorescent lights, I followed Lottie's guide as we weaved through batches of animals, making our way for the building's exit point. We caught several eyes as we slipped by, and likely several more behind my back that I had failed to notice, and curious murmurs slithered around at every corner. The crowd finally let up at the final turns, granting us our solitude as we crossed into the main fork of turns and into the entrance area hall with a ceiling bordered by round lights on either side.

Treading side by side with clicks that echoed against the walls with every swift step from Lottie beside me, we had barely made it halfway through the entrance hall before a triple-note tune leaked into the room from the intercom. It was the declaration sound that a pre-recorded announcement was about to begin. Lyle must have set it off. Following the short tune, a voice spoke, oddly calm for the situation at hand.

"Due to an unexpected setback, all staff present on these grounds have been forced to take their leave," the voice announced. "Do not panic. Everything is under control. This building is now closing. Please begin to make your way to the exit. If you have a scheduled appointment, it has been canceled. Please contact a member of staff for rescheduling."

The same triple-note tune projected into the room, marking the end of the announcements, but perplexity had already plagued my mind at the sound of the voice. That hadn't been Lyle's voice. Even if it was an old recording, it wasn't even built on the same sound foundation. It was a different voice entirely. It was smoother, like a voice that had been trained specifically for voice-related responsibilities as in commercials or readings, and maybe even rounder. It didn't matter when the announcements had been recorded or in what context. That was a different man involved in a familiar task.

The frigid air pinched my face as Lottie and I pitched ourselves through the main double doors. Amidst the frosty air, the puffs of our breath were instantly visible.

"I need to wait for my uncle," Lottie told me from the moment we stepped foot outside into the shoveled path surrounded by a wintry snowfall, folding herself into her arms to keep warm as she reached a halt and the doors latched shut behind us. "He'll be here soon. You keep going, though."

And so, I did. The flat, shoveled path at my feet gradually submerged into a layer of snow a couple inches deep with the further I journeyed from the building. The chill that wrapped around me jabbed with such harshness that it screamed against both my exposed paws and face. Tiny snowflakes flitted down from the gloomy skies with every step driven by my skipping heart. I had only been walking for about a minute before the commotion registered in my ears, the crunching distantly behind me of countless feet scrambling to cross the snow and the overwhelm of chatter. Finally, I permitted myself a break, tossing a glance over my shoulder back at the building I had abandoned to discover an exceedingly dense mass of animals pooling out from the main doors—Coming and coming and coming without end, hundreds struggling to escape after the evacuation protocol. Lottie had vanished, swallowed up by the entire population that the building had held, now clambering to desert it.

Something was definitely wrong.

Breathy sobbing was my immediate greeting as I thrust open the door to my house with a half-hour hustle behind me to get here. Instantly, my stomach rocketed sharply to my feet before I had even fully gotten the door open yet. I lurched the door open the full way, only to discover both Mom and Dad seated at the end of the table facing me in my entrance. Mom shuddered with tears so heavy that she had completely and utterly lost control of them, gasping and quavering with arduous sobs. Dad, having drawn up a chair close beside her, enveloped her firmly in his arms to hold her steady, but the dampness on the brown fur of his cheeks implied that he had cried a few tears already. A numbness swarmed me in the blink of an eye, washing over me like the embrace that I witnessed before me.

"Mom?" I urged shakily. "What's going on? What happened?"

Mom whimpered with a deeper sob at the question. Dad rubbed her arm to soothe her as he held her against him, raising his misty eyes to meet mine.

"Digby, we just got a call from Mario over at Smash Ultimate," Dad told me. There was a certain scratchiness fixed into his voice that only further proved his stifled tears. Mom only continued to shudder with sobs in his arms. "It's about your sister. Something happened to her today in her combat trial."

"What are you talking about?" I asked brokenly.

Mom took in a strangled gasp from Dad's arms before he could answer, lifting a quivering paw to wipe at her face as he looked at her. Suddenly, the illuminated room was dimmer, bleaker than it had been before, weighted by the tearful atmosphere.

"She insisted that she was ready, but she had no idea what was coming," Mom whispered. Dad squeezed her close again as she struggled to speak. "Mario put her up against a fighter who had been training there so much longer and had reached far higher skill sets than she had achieved. He was twice her size and very strong. I don't know what he was thinking, putting her in a situation like that."

I hadn't even heard the full story yet. There were many things that brought Mom to tears, but never like this. My stomach clenched with misery even without the full truth, a roughness stirring behind my dampening eyes. Please, no.

"Isabelle wanted the chance to prove to herself and everyone around her that she was capable of great things," Dad went on when Mom's voice trailed off. "Mario set her up with his best fighter. Apparently, he was notorious around the place for crushing any opponent that stood in his way and every single fighter there knew she wasn't ready for that kind of challenge. They were already begging for the fight to be put to an end before it had even started."

"The fight..." Mom whispered, a loud sniffle slicing through her breaking voice as she tried to speak again. "The fight only lasted for five minutes before it was over."

"Did she get hurt?" I asked weakly.

Mom opened her mouth to answer, but the only sound that croaked out was another strained sob. She pressed a trembling paw to her mouth as more tears trickled down her face, the features shriveled in her agony.

"Mom, is she hurt?" I urged to know, my own voice surrendering to an involuntary break as the tears threatened to spill over. "Is she okay?"

Mom's powerful sobs almost echoed against the walls at this point as she sunk into Dad's arms, whimpers muffled into his shoulder. Dad adjusted his hold to cradle her against him, lifting his eyes once more to meet mine. A silent solemnity clouded the dark colors, a message that couldn't have been spoken aloud. It was worse.

Worse than hurt.

"She's not. Tell me she's not," I pleaded. Dad's eyes were already fixed to mine, holding firm to the bitter truth that swum within them. I snapped in a breath to spew out my words, a gasp that spilled my tears over as they dribbled down my face. "Please, say something. Tell me she's okay. Just say something at all."

But Dad didn't speak. Instead, he silently and slightly shook his head. That was my answer. She wasn't okay. She wasn't going to be okay.

No. No. No. Thoughts fired through my head as the clench of distress built up in my chest. I had just spoken to her two weeks ago. She couldn't have been gone. Not just like that. Not by that way. Immediately, I ransacked my utter conscious, searching for the last fragments of her aura, the most subtle attachment of my subconscious that I had been extended as a twin brother. The fraction of her soul that binded with mine and developed into a blessing once she left me behind in life. The weight of her company even when I couldn't find her.

It was gone. It was like a gaping hole had been gouged out of my very subconscious, an essential element that had diminished to nothing. An energy that had gone from existence along with her, void and nothing more. No, it must not have been true. There was no life that stood quite as ruthless. It was a mistake. It was all just a mistake. I still had a sister. I had to reach her. Even if I would fail to reach her at work, I had ways to reach her at her existence's core—Her own home. My paws carelessly grappled at my pockets, tears burning at every corner of my eyes. Keys in my right pocket. A spare pen and a few loose Bells in my right. The number. Where was the number? I'd just had it. I had stuffed it into my pocket trying to leave my office, and then—

I had dropped the number somewhere at work.

In a heartbeat, I had already spun around on my heel and made a break for the door I had entered from. I had to go back. I had to go back. It was only as I wrenched open the front door that it seemed to sink in for my parents to realize what I was doing, the groan of chairs sliding across the wood piercing the air as I flung myself back out into the icy atmosphere.

"Digby, wait a second!" Dad pressed from behind me, and then the door slammed shut behind me in my departure.

My head reeled, whirling in that surreal fashion as in a dream or a blur my brain refused to comprehend. My entire body rattled with each hammering step against the flattened snow. The air shrieked around me, whipping my face with a frosty tinge. I had traveled this terrain countless times, the very same images flashing past me as I tore through the path splitting from rows of houses. A throbbing spasm of an ache shot through my chest with every gasping breath of the frigid air. I shot past streetlights skirting a broad path, emitting a faint glow against the dim air and propelled myself past amblers, earning mumbles of disapproval.

Not Isabelle. Not Isabelle. Not Isabelle.

The surrounding area from the HHDA had been fully isolated now. The tiny, fluttering snowflakes had packed up enough of a course to conceal the stampede of footsteps that had taken over just forty-five minutes ago. A flawless blanket of snow clothed both the recurrent hedges directing me to the doors and the towering roof of the building itself. I lunged myself against the double doors as my paws, pounding with iciness, wrenched at the doorknobs to allow myself entrance. The doors resisted, jiggling on their hinges but refusing to open. It was locked. Of course, it was locked. Deadened to the touch by now, my paws fished out the keys from my pocket, picking the main key from the rest and jabbed it into the lock. The click of the lock sounded only after an effortful tussle with it and I broke out into the building once again.

At this point in the afternoon, with the dingy shadows that painted the corners, I had never once known the building to be so empty. Each light that passed above my head skimmed past my sight with every pummeling, sprinting step. Having escaped from the intense winter chill, a faint moisture gradually met the layer behind my puffy coat. I sprung up the stairs that would lead me to the second floor, head swiveling and eyes darting to scour out my missing note, but I didn't have the faintest idea where I had dropped it.

The answer was proved to me not long after at all. Once emerging into the hall housing all three of the offices, the crumpled note sat striking against the milky floor, first drawing my eye. It sat barely a yard out from the middle door leading to my office and just about three from the crevice in the wall that sported the general office phone. I pushed on across the hallway, plucking the note from the floor and unfolding it to check that it was in fact my own. The very same digits lay sprawled out across the pale yellow texture. I clasped the note in the same paw that had grabbed it, delivering myself instead to the nearby phone and yanking it from the receiver.

I chucked the note to the back of the crevice with paws trembling in my haste, my eyes dancing between it and the key of the phone for reference. With my newly freed paw, I punched in the digits that would dial in to Isabelle's house, tucking the phone under my floppy ear to listen for her voice. The phone rang out to the other line, buzzing into my ear with the sound. Once. Twice. Three times. Four. It wasn't only my paws trembling now. Every inch of me quivered involuntarily as I stood with one paw tucked up under my ear with the phone and the other perched on the edge of the crevice.

"This is Isabelle! I'm sorry that I'm not around to answer your call. Please leave a message or I can get back to you another time."

"No, stop it," I mumbled aloud, a tremor shooting through my voice. I slammed the phone down onto the receiver to cancel the call, tucked it back into place, and punched in the digits a second time. In my mind, I was pounding my fists against the solid walls of consciousness, struggling for the chance to escape this reality. I had to free myself from this nightmare.

Almost immediately, the phone buzzed with another set of ringing. It rang once, twice, again, and again. The same tone, the same voice, the same message concluded the sound.

"This is Isabelle! I'm sorry that I'm—"

I struck the phone down for a second time, trying once again in a panicked scurry to mash in the digits and returned the phone under my ear. The first ring. The second ring. The third. The fourth.

"This is Isabelle! I'm sorry that I'm not around to answer your call. Please leave a message or I can get back to you another time."

A flash of pumping frustration commanded my paws before I could process it, watching myself claw the phone from its plug into the wall and fling it up. A thunderous crash filled the hall as I bashed the entire phone and receiver into the corner of the crevice, fracturing it with a single collision, and hurled it to the side. The crack of the phone making impact with the floor etched into my soul, flinging my eyes open to the world and tearing me from my trance.

Just a moment ago, I had been shuffling across the trampled snow to return home and hear the news that had forced every last animal out of the HHDA. I blinked at the lights that shone down on me, absorbing my new surroundings as my heart hammered against my chest. I had torn the phone out of the wall trying to reach my sister, whom I could no longer reach again no matter how many times I called, after rushing back to this building just for that. And now, bathed in the truth in reality, I stood alone as the same numbness enclosed me in an embrace, sinking slowly into such a broken defeat. It was over.

"Digby."

The sound of a voice from behind me spun me on my heel, whipping around to see who was there. Wrapped in the same midnight-blue coat that sported shines across it under the fluorescent lights, black mascara already starting to smear the tops of her cheeks where her tearful eyes ended, Lottie stood to stare at me after waiting for me to notice her for who knew how long. The suffering glimmered far more prominently in her dark eyes as they met mine than the tears ever could have. What was she doing here?

"Lottie?" I said after a lengthy pause, trying to pick out reality from imagination. "Why did you come back?"

"Because I knew you'd be here," Lottie whispered.

There were no more words to respond with, so we both gave up on them. The very same story that I had just been told fused with the tears swimming in Lottie's eyes as we sank into each other's gaze. She knew. I broke away from her gaze, leaning my back against the wall and sliding down into a seat on the floor. The click of her shoes tapping against the floor was softer than usual as she wordlessly approached to join me, settling into a seat so close beside me that our arms met.

And there we were, sitting there in the salty atmosphere of loss, close by each other's side under the piercing lights from above with nothing but a blank wall between doors before us. For the first time today, the moment had finally slowed, sneaking from one second to the next at the speed of what was once a minute and allowing us to breathe. The worst had already occurred, but now it was time to sit in it. Amidst the patient rising and falling of my chest in my own steady breath, I listened to Lottie's delicate breathing beside me and reminded myself that she was there with me.

We spent a lifetime sitting together on the floor, relying on the silent peace of the other's company. That peace had most definitely not been anticipated, but it blessed us all the same. But peace didn't always represent happiness—Just the absence of turmoil. Internally, I was frozen, ceaselessly numb in a dazed sort of way. Even after it all, my tears had gone from me. I gazed ahead at the bare wall in front of me as Lottie's warmth radiated through my coat arm, indifferently playing through the day in my mind. A brief fruit breakfast. Open Advisory. Lunchtime. Instructing a class during the Studies period. Watching a husky dog put together a design on a massive screen. Evacuating the HHDA. And just like that, I was an only child.

A faint sniffle escaped from Lottie beside me before she spoke up in a strained whisper.

"Uncle Lyle told me everything," she murmured, but the strength in her voice curbed before the last word had even ended. She drew in a sharp, trembling breath, choked out a cough-like sob as her tears returned, and set her head down on my shoulder.

Almost like her final gift to me, Isabelle's voice and motioned retold themselves in my open memory as I sat in silence. I even scraped as far back as the first recollections that I had once shared with her, the vague candlelight-like images from when we were much too young to understand that we were conscious. The ruffling and rustling of her yellow fur in my face as we curled up for naps together in a mansion we had claimed together out of a cardboard box as puppies of two or three years. The preschool mornings where we were carried in by the arms of Mom and Dad, our tiny eyes seeking out a pink otter who was just a tiny bit older than us from a room full of bobbing baby animal heads.

Our memories broadened somewhere around the age of six. Our early school years were defined by conferences and discussions with teachers bumping us higher and higher in grade levels and our parents congratulated our minds while all that we did was finish the instructions handed to us. It was around the period of time that Isabelle had signed up for the school band without telling anyone first. That sort of independent decision-making had brought a hesitance upon me at first, but I had let that go once she was declared a main soloist after months of daily work that I hadn't been involved in. She'd always decided on a firm interest in singing and taking lessons wherever she could find them, which hadn't made sense to me, considering nobody in our family had contemplated a singing career. At her final concert, she'd led the band through a tune called My Love, a message disguised by admiration for another and at the end revealed to be a message of self-love instead, and she had flung her arms around me in the tightest embrace to date as soon as she had descended from the stage.

She had graduated from high school when she was thirteen and hadn't taken so much of a break before she set off for college. When I graduated shortly afterwards at fifteen, she had shown up more than anyone to support me in whichever future I would choose. She'd had such a good heart. The only reason it was tainted was because it was damaged. She had put so much hard work forward both for herself and others, all the way up until the end. And where had that gotten her? Her skull bashed in and her blood splattered across the floor and her coworkers frightenedly fussing over her safety at a job she had earned because of that hard work. What an awful way to go.

"So, that's it, then," I mumbled at last. "She's gone."

"Don't say that, Digby," Lottie whimpered.

"It's the truth," I reminded her. "What else is there to say?"

The moment was timeless, capturing us into a void of endurance. A numbness had begun to trickle down my back after sitting for so long, and still I wasn't inclined to move. Lottie was still settled close to my side, her head resting on my shoulder in her shaky gasps of tears. After a few wordless minutes, she spoke up.

"I just can't believe I'll never see her again," Lottie whispered through her tears. "Or hear her voice."

Unusually, a different reminder surfaced in my mind. Between the ages of six and ten, or something around there, Isabelle had swung back and forth through phases of feelings for Lottie, just like I did now. It wouldn't have exactly been the best thing to mention right at this moment, but I could transform it into something a little more comforting.

"She cared about you very deeply," I murmured.

"She cared about you more, and you know that," Lottie mumbled softly.

Maybe she did. I set my head against the wall behind me. It wasn't like I could have ever known where I had stood to her—Not right from the source, at least. Mental struggle often clouded one's perspective. I understood that as well as she had. She was kind enough to bring me back into her life last month, even if she'd been struggling. Did that kindness amount to care? Had she cared about me as much as everyone stated? If only I could have found the words to ask her. I hadn't had any idea that after twenty-one years of life, I would have arrived at the point where I was running out of time.

"She was too young for this," I muttered.

That was the statement that fully set off Lottie's tears again, her short gasps giving way to flimsy sobs that muted themselves as she turned her face to conceal it in my shoulder. I leaned my head onto hers, sinking into her the same way she had been sinking into me. For now, and every single moment that came forward as now, the world was ours alone and we entertained the solitude in the binding presence of one. If that was peace in the face of loss, then so be it.

We shut ourselves away in the empty building for the rest of the time that the evening allowed. The outside world would only have been swarmed with the notion of the truth of what had happened, so we avoided it. We wandered the empty halls, rediscovering for ourselves how they appeared while deserted. We evaded the recognition or the discussion of what had happened and instead dwelled beneath the radar of bitter truth, exchanging meaningless conversation whenever something struck our mind. All the while, an unspoken agreement rooted between us: This was instead a day of unimportance, a day of eluding life and all of its weight to instead indulge in one of our own. Everything that had come before hadn't happened and nothing else mattered in the little pocket universe we dug out for ourselves.

Together, we drifted between each abandoned room, each abandoned branch of the building. We spilled silly thoughts that had holed up somewhere in our minds. We pretended to be happy, somewhere behind our unsmiling faces. We joked, we danced, we chased each other down the desolate halls like we were tiny animals without responsibilities. We pried our eyes away from clocks; time didn't exist in our own little world, just us and the moment. I always admired her, but within the hours that we spent together, alone in the abandoned building, my adoration for her kindled a fire of warmth like sunlight somewhere deep. She might not have felt the same way, but we shared this moment together and that was enough.

The first time I allowed myself to read the time from a clock was when Lottie announced to me that she was ready to go back home. The clock I scanned read a quarter to nine, leaving us already plunged into nightfall while we had been too preoccupied to notice. I wasn't sure that going home was quite what I wanted. Not only would the walls of home close me into the reminder of what my reality was, but I had been swept away by the newness and special undertones of this uncommon moment. I wasn't keen to leave her side just yet, not after we had claimed the evening as our own. When I expressed this to her—Well, the first part, at least—She understood and invited me to join her. We would take the journey back to her home together and enjoy dinner as a group of three with her, her uncle, and myself.

We sank down from the heights of our imaginations and settled down into reality, regaining our composure and stepping back outside. The air was even more frigid than it had been before, biting and pinching at my cheeks. The sky above was completely drowned with foggy clouds that casted shadows across the snow. It appeared that the unending day was winding down at last. Side by side, venturing through the icy air and through the recent coat of snow, we started off on our way along the path. I had been considering the pulsing ache in my paws from the harsh chill when Lottie's own paw wrapped around it, closing it in her own. We had met each other's gaze as we shuffled along, for several seconds in fact. It was at that moment that her paw took mine that after so, so long, we were exactly where we had once been before the fall of the HHDA.

Our paws clasped together all the way back to Lottie's house. Quite ironically, it was the only house among the rest of the lane with an illuminated lamp, slicing through the bleakness of the night. We passed the mailbox, advanced the main path leading to the door, and arrived at a stop in front of the entrance. I anticipated her to open the door and announce our arrival, but instead, she turned to face me and took hold of my second paw in hers.

"I think Isabelle is going to be okay," Lottie whispered to me. As our paws still latched together between us, I saw her face under the glowing lamp. She had cried off all of her mascara, but had wiped away any smearing that it had resulted in. I noticed the glint of the lamp reflecting in her dark, round eyes. "That's what I believe. That might just be because I can't bear to think what would happen otherwise. And even if she's not, I think we can work through it together. I haven't been the nicest to you these past couple of years, but I promise you that we'll always be together."

"I don't know what you're talking about. You're genuinely the best part of my life," I told her. In truth, I hadn't the faintest idea how the words slipped out so easily without a fight. Maybe it was the unusual day that turned everything surreal or the trance that her illuminated face in the depths of night put me through. At least it was out there.

Lottie's hesitance to answer implied that she wasn't entirely sure how to respond, though she didn't seem entirely uncomfortable, either. She dropped her gaze from mine with a light sigh, studying our paws weaved together, before she released her grip.

"Well, let's go," she mumbled. She turned away from me, thrusting open the door at last and emerging through the doorway. As I followed behind closely, I heard her address her uncle, who appeared to be close enough to the door for conversation range. "We're here, Uncle Lyle."

A warmth swept over me as we stepped into the house. Lyle was seated facing the door in the gathering area of the entrance segment—A region on the left side of the room with three elegant gray chairs positioned around a darker gray carpet—With a thick book between his paws and the bridge of his glasses creeping down his nose. By the time I stepped into the room, he had taken his eyes off of the book in front of him and cast a glance over at Lottie and me. As the door latched shut behind me, he shut the book, set it down in his lap, and readjusted his glasses.

"Hello, Digby," Lyle greeted me. Lottie, standing beside me, unzipped her coat and began to shrug it off. "I thought you might be here."

"How?" I asked.

"I just know things sometimes." Lyle raised himself to his feet, plopping the book down onto the seat he had previously been using. "How do you feel?"

"Fine, I guess," I admitted as he turned back to face me and started off on a leisurely shuffle to cross the room and join me.

"Good," he said, clasping a paw over my shoulder in what could have almost been a reassuring manner. "Well, now that you're here, take off your coat and stay a while. I was just about to prepare dinner. You can stay here for as long as you're comfortable. Our home is your home."

Silverware clinked gently against bowls as the three of us gathered at the table to delight in a warm, filling meal together. Lyle had prepared a bean and cheese soup for tonight, sitting across from me at the table while Lottie sat at the side to my left, and nobody uttered a word as we ate. The sky outside of the kitchen window was gloomy and dull while the kitchen and dining room segment of the entrance lit up with an almost yellow glow.

While Lyle and I maintained a steady pace in our eating, I couldn't help but notice how slowly Lottie was consuming her bowl of soup. Every once in a while, she lifted her spoon and sipped at the dark broth, but never took a full bite. She didn't meet anyone's gaze, either, staring into her round spoon as if she was fascinated with the way her reflection distorted. Several times, I searched her face, awaiting any visible twitch of distress, but when the calmness in her expression was never overridden, I let the matter go and kept eating.

The lack of conversation during a meal must have been a usual thing for this family. Back at home, a meal would have been occupied by a lighthearted chat over our dishes, no matter what it was. Maybe I was lucky that the silence didn't stress me out, but a swelling sense of underwhelm sent my eyes traveling around the double-room to keep myself entertained as I gulped down spoonfuls of beans and melted cheese. My foot absentmindedly tapped the wooden floor beneath it, my thoughts spinning and leading me down a daze of daydreams and contemplation to fend off the boredom.

I hadn't set foot in this house for years, much less eaten a meal here with everyone present. The very last time I'd actually come by was the short period of time three years ago to look after Lottie while she had come down with food poisoning—Wait, no, that wasn't quite it, but she had definitely fallen quite sick. The last time that the three of us sat down together at a meal was before I'd hit my teenage years at all. Somehow, it was like nothing had changed at all, every little thing set up in the exact right place as my memory provided it. So many elements that I recognized, so many more that my eyes had always skimmed over without much question.

My eyes fell upon the wall near the door. Lined up in a neat row, fixed to the surface of the pale wall, were three separate photos in wooden frames. This must have been among the thousandth time that I had taken notice of the photos, but not until this moment did I thoroughly consider them. All three photos contained a single animal between the rectangular frame, brightly beaming like a picture snapped on a school picture day, and after an intensive observation, I realized that all three were otters, each of a different fur tint. The first from the left I identified with hardly a thought behind it—It was Lottie, portrayed from what seemed to be her late teenage years, dressed in a neat white blouse with her hair tied up into a typical bun that lacked her spotted bow. The second was a brown otter perhaps my age now, sporting a blue-gray t-shirt with only the finely-trimmed brown fur atop her head rather than falling hair. The third was even older, possibly as old as late twenties, a pink otter in a tint darker than Lottie's and wrapped in a formal black jacket over a white shirt with two jet black braids tumbling down her shoulders. While I knew Lottie well, the two otters that joined her I had never once crossed paths with.

"Mr. Lyle?" I prompted. Lyle swallowed his bite of soup and raised his eyes to meet mine.

"Hmm?" he replied.

"Who are those otters?" I inquired, motioning timidly over to the frames arranged along the walls.

Lyle's eyes darted from behind his thick glasses to look at the frames as if to remind himself of their presence. He studied them for a moment only before he nudged his spoon through the soup to gather his next bite and offered my answer.

"They're my daughters," Lyle told me, scooping together his next bite and slipping the spoon into his mouth.

"But they don't..." I began, my voice trailing off as the awkwardness of the protest became clarified and I wasn't sure how to continue. I snuck a glance between each of the photos, studying the otters' smiling faces. Not one of them appeared even remotely related, from the variances in features to the drastic colors. Luckily, Lyle understood what I was trying to say and didn't seem to judge me for it.

"They don't look like me?" Lyle echoed after gulping down his next bite. I turned my face back to meet his gaze again, my ears swinging at the sides of my head at the movement. "Well, I'd be very surprised if they did. You see, they're adopted. I took them under my care when their father left."

Lottie's spoon clattered against her bowl as she set it down, abruptly ending her slow consumption to drop her paws into her lap instead. After that last sentence, I could have agreed that eating wasn't all that appealing. My gaze drooped down to my spoon, staring fixedly down at my contorted reflection.

"He left...?" I mumbled falteringly.

Lyle's answer stalled, hesitant to arrive. I caught the faint scraping of silverware against his bowl, heaping together another bite of soup and taking it. He gulped down the bite, set down his silverware, allowed a faint clearing of his throat, and finished the sentence for me.

"Me, Digby," he said.

My heart lurched with such power that every inch of my bones felt to rattle with it. My eyes snapped up from my bowl at the sudden confession, the stun wiping my mind clean of all words in this situation, but Lyle didn't meet my gaze. It was his turn to gaze down into his bowl, hunched towards the table with his elbows leaned on the edge, but he wasn't done speaking.

"His name was Trevor," Lyle went on after a moment, pausing to lift his napkin and dab it across his face in case he had splattered soup somewhere on his cheek, though I had never seen him eat messily enough to make that mistake. "We were involved in a romantic relationship for about ten years or so back when Happy Home was first coming to life. I had a lot of work to get done, so he helped me occasionally in a part-time job under my employment, but he was also working as a fashion model at the time. When our connection deepened, we aspired to start a family and adopted our daughters, but things didn't really work out the way we planned."

"What happened?" I asked weakly. "He just got up and left?"

"Well, there was..." Lyle paused again, this time to clear his throat for a second time. When he spoke in following, a quiver of unsteadiness crept through his voice as if a press too hard on it would completely crack it. Guilt twisted my stomach into a knot at the sound. "There was more to it than that. I put too much pressure on him. I gave him the shared responsibility of raising our kids and also expected him to balance between his work as a designer and a model. I was used to having my paws full like that, but evidently he wasn't. He started acting shady and was doing things like not letting me look at his computer and spending more and more time out of the house. I promised him that I would try to fix it, but one day I just..."

On the very last word, his voice finally broke as his composure crumbled down right before my eyes. Instantly, he chucked his crumpled napkin down onto the table and slipped his free paw under his glasses, pressing it firmly against his eyes. He might not have been completely breaking down crying, but the shaky, shallow breaths that slipped out after his falter was just about there. Once he managed to regain his composure for the most part, he removed his glasses to wipe at his eyes with his paw and returned the glasses to his face with a faint sniffle.

"One day, I just woke up and he was gone," he concluded. "Packed his bags and vanished sometime during the night. He didn't even let me try to make things better. He just broke under the pressure and left both me and his children behind to start a new life."

My eyes latched onto the distorted representation of my face in my spoon again. I had known Lyle for almost twenty years and never once until this moment did I ever witness him cry. I had been hearing of him and his daughters countless times in my puppyhood in my closeness with Lottie and had questioned here and there why he had no partner to help him raise them, but only now did I know the full story. He had loved Trevor deeply, maybe even deeper than my love for Lottie, and he was utterly broken in his absence after all these years.

"I'm sorry if this is an intrusive question," I spoke up, raising my eyes as Lyle took up his spoon to continue eating. The dampness of restrained tears still shimmered in his dark eyes, pooling at the bottom rim. "Do you think you'll ever find a love like that again?"

"Digby, I don't think you realize how old I am now," Lyle told me, sparing a brief glance at me before he scraped together another bite of soup. "I'm turning sixty-three this year. The chance of me finding any kind of love, let alone a love that means that much to me, basically doesn't exist. I'll sooner meet the end of my life before I meet someone I can admire quite like that. So, no. I wouldn't be counting on that."

Lyle allowed himself another bite of soup, gulping down the bite and studying the contents of the bowl for a couple of seconds before he raised his voice to speak again.

"Both of my daughters have moved out by now, as you've probably guessed," Lyle told me. "My oldest is even halfway around the world right now to study abroad. They were already long gone by the time I brought Lottie in."

Lottie's head snapped up again, hastily meeting Lyle's gaze with a glint in her eyes that I wasn't at an efficient angle to catch. Lyle met her gaze just long enough to recognize the silent message she conveyed before he turned his focus back to me.

"But we don't like to talk about that in this house," Lyle went on, gathering up another bite of soup and lifting it to accept it.

. . .

The clouds had cleared away, giving way to a dome-shaped sky glistening with dots of starlight. The newest layer of snow still blanketed the land, stretching with a sea of whiteness across tree branches and roofs as far as the eye could reach. Not even the icy air had let up, pinching my cheeks and paws with frigidity, but I had stepped out without a coat anyway. In the words of Isabelle in our final conversation over the phone, today had just been a day. It was a challenge to wrap my head around the fact that this was still the same day that I had been watching a polite husky named Chase put together the design of a sci-fi laboratory on a screen. An entire lifetime had come around since then. If there was anything it had taught me, it was that I hardly knew anything about life's workings at all.

I had never considered it so thoroughly before. Life, while allowing my existence and everything around me for longer than two decades, was yet so incomprehensible. There was so much happening in the background while most didn't even stop to look, absorbed and preoccupied with their temporary routines. Even the stars that glittered above my head were a constant that had blessed us centuries before I could have seen or considered it. And that wasn't even mentioning the mystery of emotion and experience. Life could have permitted something amazing that one believes they could never get used to, or something awful that they had never even considered could have happened to them. But somehow, even when the worst occurred, we adjusted and we were okay. That was the true miracle of life.

That was what brought me back to my initial realization that life was far more incomprehensible than I could have understood. After the events of today, it was then that I realized that I was the animal absorbed and preoccupied with his temporary routine. I had been so distracted by the concept of doing my best work and chasing new beginnings that I had forgotten I was alive. Life hadn't created us and brought us into the world just so that we could ignore it and indulge in diversions that clouded our minds. It was about time that I found a way to return to my core spirit, to acknowledge in my soul of my existence in the universe. This was also the reason why I stepped outside without a coat, yearning to immerse myself in life just the way it was in all of its many temperatures, and whether it was stupid or not, it didn't matter much to me.

I leaned my back against the front door, seated on the edge of the top step towards the entrance. The lamp had since shut off in the late hour and the awning that jutted out from the house blocked a portion of my view of the stars, but I wasn't bothered. A biting breeze swept across the area, sending snowflakes dancing along the surface of the snow, and I ignored it. I didn't have the faintest idea what time it was and that was fine. As far as I knew, both Lottie and Lyle were still up. After dinner, Lyle had gone back to his book in the gathering area and Lottie joined him at another seat while I requested to sit outside for a while. I must have been sitting out here for at least twenty minutes now.

What about my parents? I gazed up at the shimmer overtaking the shadowed skies. I wondered if Mom and Dad had gone to bed. I wouldn't have felt very well to find out that they had stayed up past their bedtime worrying because they didn't know where I was. I hadn't let them go where I was going. I'd just burst from the door and was gone. Even now, unless they had figured it out somehow, they still would have had no clue of my whereabouts.

Maybe it was time to head home. It was only fair to them. They were dragging themselves through this loss just as I was, only for me to disappear for hours on end. But was going home what I wanted? Was I ready to face the truth so conspicuously? I rested my head against the door behind me, contemplating my situation under the glistening sights. All this time, I had been doing so much for them and everyone else—I didn't regret or take it back in the slightest, of course—But rarely had I considered what I myself had wanted. Two days ago, if my parents were worried and wanted me home, I would have been home in a flash. Tonight, I hesitated. Sure, it was home I would be heading to, but a home suffocated in reality. This right here was home where I didn't need to face reality quite yet.

The door softly unlatched from behind me. A backwards swing was coming next. I hastily removed my back from the door, twisting around in my seat as it eased open from the inside. Lottie now stood in the open crack of the doorway, peering down at me. She had removed her hair bow at some point, but her hair was still tightly tucked up into a bun at the top of her head.

"Uncle Lyle said that you were still out here," Lottie said. "Aren't you getting cold?"

"A bit," I admitted.

"You should be wearing your coat," Lottie told me. I figured that she was about to disappear back into the house and retrieve it for me, but instead, she stepped through the doorway to join me and gently shut the door behind her. She plopped down into a seat next to me on the top step, settling to get comfortable, and then she inched closer to situate herself right up next to my side, almost like a seated snuggle. "That's okay. I'll keep you warm."

My heart rocketed into a sort of shiver at the movement, startled at the lack of warning beforehand, but I disregarded this as I wrapped an arm around her and held her close.

"You're not wearing a coat, either," I reminded her.

"I'm fine," Lottie mumbled, almost in a sleepy manner as she sunk her weight into me, surrendering to the half-embrace. "I don't get cold easily."

The faint shudder of chill receded at the close proximity of Lottie beside me. We leaned into each other, huddled close in the dead hour, and didn't utter a word, at least at first. I embraced her close to my side, gazing up at the stars above us, as my thoughts had already begun to fire again in the silence. My parents' faces had begun to flood my mind again, retelling the same thought process I had offered myself before Lottie had even joined me before I spoke again minutes later.

"My mom and dad don't know where I am right now," I whispered. "I didn't say anything to them before I left to go back to the HHDA."

"Uncle Lyle can give them a call and let them know," Lottie murmured.

"Hmm." I rested my head on top of hers, cradling her close to me. "I think the problem is that I just still can't convince myself to go back home. It doesn't have anything to do with them. I feel like going back would remind me of what happened and I'm not sure that I can go through that again right now."

"I can understand that," Lottie whispered. The wind whistled somewhere in the distance. "We have a spare room here if you want to just go back in the morning. We can cook you breakfast and prepare you some coffee and you can come to work with us."

"I don't want to be a bother," I mumbled. "I've already been here for more than an hour after you didn't plan for company."

"Of course you're not a bother," Lottie told me. "I don't remember the last time anyone's ever used that room. If you'd like it for tonight, you can take it."

"But what about Mr. Lyle?" I inquired.

"I was there when he invited you to stay as long as you're comfortable," Lottie reminded me, softly in the tranquility of the night. "Also, if something bothers him, he tends to call attention to it. If he didn't want you here, he would have said something about it. Please don't worry about that."

"I suppose you're right. He's not exactly shy about that," I murmured. "If he thought it was time for me to go home, it would be more likely than not that I would be aware of it. I probably would be hearing something like, 'Don't you have somewhere else to be, Digby? It feels like I've seen your face enough for one day.'"

A short eruption of laughter escaped from Lottie, clearly amused at the impersonation of her uncle. Although it was only the first spurt that held audible volume, it took her a few seconds to regain her composure.

"He absolutely would have said that," Lottie agreed. A beaming smile climbed up onto my face, silently entertained by the amusement we shared, before something struck me.

"Hey, was that sarcastic?" I asked.

Crickets whirred from deep in the shadows as we sat together, resting in each other's closeness. My heart skipped in my chest—Wait a minute, she couldn't feel it, right?—Stirring what was almost a genuine vibration of nerves where it beat in its steady and rapid rhythm. Icy breezes crept along here and there, but it was like I cared even less now. I enveloped my love close at my side, resting my head on top of hers as we gazed up at the stars together, just the two of us without distraction.

There was nowhere else I would have rather been right now.

"I was thinking about something for a while before you came out here," I murmured after a while. I felt Lottie shift slightly in my arm as she adjusted her lean against me. "I think you'd be interested to hear it. I was thinking about life and how it's so abstract that it's physically impossible to understand anything about it. I think the only things you can ever understand about life are the little aspects of your own experience and existence, but that's not life as a whole. Life will surprise you by presenting you with things you never understood before."

"That's beautiful, Digby," Lottie whispered.

"You think so?" I whispered back, lifting my head just long enough to catch a glimpse at her before I settled again. "Personally, I think more animals need to consider that. This might be a much better world if we did. We're just so busy with our own lives and our own experiences and routines that we never stop and think about who we are in our truest existence."

Lottie's answer took its time to deliver. She seemed to be contemplating this, sitting in silence with no words or movements and only the delicate sound of her breathing. Seconds later, she spoke again.

"I think about that sometimes," Lottie confessed quietly. "I didn't think anyone else did. It feels refreshing to finally talk about it with someone who understands. I try to keep that sort of thing as a reminder from day to day. I'm trying to remember that everyone else has a life that they're trying to live and that life is more than meets the eye. I do it to try and gain a sense of self-clarity, or maybe a deeper connection to everyone around me."

"Well, you do it very well," I told her. When Lottie shifted in her seat again, I realized that she was trying to sit up the full way. I raised my head and she did the same.

"I appreciate that you—" Lottie began, but her voice faltered in a split second.

We had both noticed at the very same time. With the closeness in which I held her, the space between us had reduced dramatically, our faces just inches apart. My heart jolted with the force of an earthquake, my eyes locking immediately with those of hers right in front of mine. The deep ebony colors within her eyes melted into my very soul, spellbinding her face in my sight. The pulse of nerves in my chest had promptly built up into a stampede as our eyes not only met, but stilled.

The seconds crept by in a breathless silence. I sank further and further into Lottie's eyes with each fleeting moment. With the way she hardly blinked, it was almost as if she was becoming lost as well. The shiver of uncertainty illuminated and refined the atmosphere that enclosed around us. As the seconds came and went with each hammer of my throbbing heart, a single question stood above all else in my mind. What was going on?

Lottie broke away from our gaze, shifting awkwardly in her seat with a slow and hesitant inhale. She cleared her throat softly, appearing to be struggling to look me in the eyes after initially tearing hers away. After her eyes traveled across the steps in front of us for several seconds, she lifted her head to watch the stars. I never once looked away from her face.

"Do you ever think about the lessons of the stars that your parents used to teach you?" Lottie inquired after a lengthy pause. "You and Isabelle used to tell me all about them when she was still living here. I've been thinking about those a lot recently, for some reason. I think it's quite a bit like what you were just talking about with life. We see the stars as they hang so far above us and we can't help but feel so intrigued by their mystery. That's why we have animals going up there to see the stars and dwell in that mystery for themselves. But sometimes you get so distracted by the fact that you're up so high that you forget to stop and think about the beauty that's all around you. You tell yourself you're going to walk among the stars, and then you only become lost in the constellations."

The conversation soon faded out. In the nearing of the dead hours of the night, drowsiness had begun to weigh us down, sinking into each other as we had before. At some point, my eyelids must have flitted shut beyond my recognition, as when I next processed what was happening, I had drowned in the cozy darkness of a doze, resting my head on top of Lottie's as if it were my pillow. Of course, by that point, the sleepiness had grown to something so weighty on my shoulders that I didn't bother opening my eyes. With the soft breathing of Lottie's near mine, I could only assume that she had surrendered to a doze with me, but she awakened considerably sooner than I would have on my own.

At some point, Lottie shifted in her seat once more, easing her way out from under the weight of my head. The movement snapped me back to reality and I brought myself back up to a full seat, but my mind was already frazzled with exhaustion, clouded with lethargy. In a murmur, Lottie was speaking to me again.

"I should go back inside," Lottie told me. Recognizing these words, I withdrew my arm from around her and she carefully climbed up to her feet to stand. "I just almost fell asleep right then. I still need to get ready for bed. You can stay out here, but not for much longer. It's very late and you need your sleep."

"Where is the spare bedroom?" I mumbled as Lottie brushed down her uniform and glanced down at me. I didn't have any immediate plans of returning to the house just yet, but if I waited any longer, I might have forgotten to ask. Stumbling through a dim and mostly unfamiliar house trying to find my way while everyone else slept wasn't exactly a situation I was eager to involve myself in.

"The first entrance to the right from the hall," Lottie whispered, landing a paw on the doorknob to prepare to enter. "It'll take you to another shorter hallway, but you'll see it anyway. It's the only door that's down there."

"Got it," I mumbled, reaching up and rubbing my eyes firmly with my paws to squeeze the sleepies out. The door whined as it swung open in the start of Lottie's entrance, but before she could duck through, a different thought tumbled its way into my mind. "Lottie?"

Lottie had been stepping into the room, but came to a halt immediately at the sound of her name. She turned back to face me, propping open the door with her paw as she stood in the doorway.

"Yes?" she whispered.

"Thank you for sitting with me," I said.

I only kept myself outside after Lottie had disappeared back into the house for a few minutes longer. Just enough to say goodnight to the stars shimmering above me. Wisps of gray clouds had begun to whisk across the sky but the stars were nonetheless bright, glittering down on me as if in a knowing way. It was in that analogy that I remembered that Isabelle had absolutely adored the stars when she was alive—Although, that was fueled by the lessons that Lottie had just been mentioning. Maybe somewhere, somehow, it was a sign that no matter where I was, she would have always been looking after me. Yes, maybe that was what I wanted to believe.

I emerged back into the house with the soft flame of the most genuine peace hollowing out a home in my empty chest and the soundless latch of the door behind me marked the end of the nightmarish, enchanting, and overall utterly memorable day behind me.