“Mister Visitor? Having indecisiveness issues?” Mercune asked playfully. But a trace of actual uncertainty showed on her face.

  “Admiring your handiwork!” he answered. This was true enough. “Especially these little guys.” He lifted a milk bread sandwich square and took a nibble. Curried chicken with dried cranberries and pecans. It was as elegantly balanced and tasteful and understated as . . .

  He squelched the thought. “Sooo, let’s say, hypothetically, that I ate all of these in the next ten seconds.”

  Mercune beamed. “Plenty more where that came from!” She gestured, and curried chicken sandwiches started tiling their way across the wastes like an undersized Windows background. “Just say the word!” She waved, and the sandwich-tiles vanished.

  “I’ll be needing that word!” replied Proto through a mouthful, already scarfing down number two.

  “The word is ‘tubular,’” she said.

  Proto blinked and scrutinized her. How . . . ?

  Mercune reddened slightly. “I see you using that word constantly in most possible futures. And you’re usually happy when you’re saying it. . . . Um, not to creep you out or anything!” She twirled some hair around a finger and looked away.

  “ . . . tubular,” he replied after a moment.

  She giggled, exhaling and closing her eyes for a second.

  Then, she waved, and more sandwiches misted into being.

  “You’re right,” he observed, scarfing down one square, then another. “Dream-eating is the bee’s knees.”

  “Darn tootin’!” she agreed through a mouthful, then swallowed. “It’s the ant’s pants! The cat’s whiskers! The catfish’s whiskers!”

  “The clam’s jam? The eel’s heels?” he suggested.

  “Alright, Dr. Seuss, let’s turn the page on this one.” She giggled as Proto nodded grimly.

  “Yeah, no,” she went on. “I always see anime characters eating these things, in cute little diners that I guess they have in Japan. I’ve only had them once in real life. I was visiting one of Gramps’ interns. Her mom made them.”

  “Well, you’ll have to have them in Japan someday,” suggested Proto. “Maybe you can go on a tour of cute little diners!”

  “I don’t think so,” she said quietly.

  Proto wondered at her change in tone.

  Then, he recalled he was speaking to a future-seeing girl who’d soon be headed to Dubai, and who’d recently shown him all the ways she was likely to die there.

  Well, shit. Charming, Proto.

  “But it’s okay,” she added quickly. “Maybe they’ll have elegant milk bread sandwich squares at Wraithing Research Center! Where Gramps is taking me. What do you think?”

  “They will if you make them!” Proto felt carried away by a warm rush of assurance. “If you can dream, you can make a world of your dreams, right?”

  . . . what? You wheel of cheese.

  At first, Mercune looked like she agreed with his self-assessment. Indeed, Proto hadn’t seen such a blink and brow-raising stare since Mean Girls.

  After a moment, though, she smiled and squeezed his hand. “So young, and yet so wise!” she playfully declared.

  “Welp, you’re the first to tell me that,” he said.

  “Yeah, no one tells me I have wisdom either. Just a ‘talent for physics’!” She wheezed it out again.

  “Oh, I get the sense you’re pretty quick,” said Proto.

  “Quick as a fox! On a motorcycle,” she agreed immediately.

  Proto waved a hand and conjured a red motorcycle ridden by a fox—one with green-tinted sunglasses and long, long red hair. It did a wheelie and vroomed by.

  Mercune laughed with delight. She pointed, and a ramp apparated in front of the fox. It rode its motorcycle up the ramp and shot up into the air—up, up, and away into the stars. The vulpine biker disappeared into the heavens with a cartoonish twinkle.

  “And that,” intoned Proto in storyteller fashion, “is where the Fox-on-a-Motorcycle constellation came from.”

  “Oh, that’s cute. He’s right next to Flua-Sahng’s husband!” Mercune pointed at the sky. “Not that her husband will be there for long. He’s a Wandering Star, after all. You know which one I mean?”

  “I’d forgotten she even had a husband,” answered Proto. “Let alone one of the celestial persuasion.”

  “Saturn! The Gloamy One. You can barely see him up there.” Mercune pointed. “She put a ring on him.” She giggled. “True story!”

  Proto had felt he’d gotten to know Flua-Sahng pretty well. But he supposed that someone who’d been around since the beginning of time was bound to have some life history he wasn’t aware of.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “But you must’ve known all that. He’s on your shirt, for Heaven’s sake!” she went on, pointing out the Saturn emblem. “For the Queen of Heaven’s sake!”

  “Speaking of the Queen of Heaven,” he said, “do you think we’ve kept her waiting too long?”

  “Oh, she’ll be fine. She’ll just need to learn some patience,” declared Mercune dismissively. “Then she can add that to her many affinities!”

  As she nibbled a jammy scone in her left hand, she drew in her sketchbook with her right.

  A cat took shape upon the page. It seemed simplistic at first, with some quirky details that almost looked like errors—a quaintly eccentric sketch, at best. But his admiration grew as those “errors” were incorporated into details she added later, becoming part of a broader picture he never would’ve imagined.

  The cat wasn’t exactly realistic. At least, this wasn’t realism. But everywhere he looked, there were nuances and subtleties that felt impossibly lifelike—almost more lifelike than life. That tilt of head. Those slightly uneven eyes. That paw, lifted up and drooping down.

  “You’ve gone silent!” the redhead teen noted, not looking up from her sketching. “Is your mouth full? Try the ham and brie. I looovvvee brie! Gramps says I’ll know I’m grown up when I prefer bleu.” She wrinkled her nose.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” replied Proto. “After I’m done with this.”

  The cat was drawn in that truly unique style of a child who’d taught herself without training—year after year, just drawing and drawing, learning new tricks, until finally it looked good. It was art that got where it needed to go, but followed a route that no one else had ever followed. The route her own heart was inclined to chart, over her years of chasing where it led.

  Mercune glanced up at him and frowned. “Done with what? Your mouth’s empty!”

  “Just admiring something.” Proto peered down at the cat.

  “Ah.” She visibly tried to suppress a smile, but it came out as red in her cheeks, obscuring her freckles. “My babysitter used to tell me I’d be a great artist someday. She was smart and beautiful. She has a great future ahead of her.” She looked down at the sandwich squares. “But . . . she clearly wasn’t a seer.”

  “Hey.” Proto pointed at her. “World of our dreams, remember? Once we’ve dreamt it, we’re halfway there.”

  “Sheesh, that’s even cheesier than the last one!” Mercune admonished.

  “And getting cheesier by the minute.” He stuffed brie in his mouth.

  She couldn’t hold back some lilting laughter. “Keep going, cheeseball!”

  “I’m cheesy so you don’t have to be,” he declared valiantly through a gooey mouthful.

  “Doesn’t that just sum you up though!” she cried delightedly.

  Proto’s lips quirked with something between a grin and dismay.

  Mercune threw her arms around him in a hug. “Thank you, Proto. For being my friend, and . . . thank you.”

  After a moment, he hugged her back. Red hair fell softly all about his face, and he felt her cheek against his. It was only after they withdrew, and she saw his face and blinked, that he noticed the moisture on his cheeks.

  “Are you—or is that from—?” Mercune felt her face, which also was wet, then peered at his.

  She flushed. And, to be honest, he probably did too.

  They both turned away from each other and faced the mists.

  “Well! I guess we’ve kept our exalted Queen waiting long enough!” she managed. “Also, you smell like cheese.”

  He eyed her sidelong, and she tittered. “What! Just telling it like it is. It’s okay, I do too.”

  “Cheese-friends till the world ends?” suggested Proto.

  “ . . . what?” Mercune wrinkled her nose and laughed at him. “Come on.”

  They walked and talked, those two dreamers in a tracksuit and a tunic-dress, and soon enough they stood before the wall of mist that hid the Queen of Heaven.

  Funny. He’d expected to see this hundreds of times, night after night. Instead, he’d only gotten one week.

  Maybe Mercune noticed how he slowed as they approached it—or maybe he’d let more show on his face than he thought—because she slowed too, then stopped beside him.

  “What’s the story, Morning Glory?” she asked lightly.

  “Not a lot, Apricot!” he managed. “Doing swell, Tinkerbell!”

  “Proto, I think you made those up just now!” she marveled. “I’m proud of you.”

  He tried to chuckle appropriately, but it caught in his throat. He had to look away.

  “Oh-kay, that is not ‘doing swell.’” Mercune planted her hands on her hips. “I may be a girl who watches Frozen, looks like Anna, and aspires to be Elsa, but I’m not entirely lacking in wits! What’s the lowdown, Charlie Brown?”

  Now he couldn’t help but laugh. But he wondered how he could reply honestly to this. She had a way of seeing through dishonesty, and it rarely turned out well.

  “Just remembering things and wishing others could remember them too,” he finally answered. That had always been an issue for him, as someone who liked to keep his past close enough that he could get back to it. But lately, here, it had become something else altogether.

  Mercune warmly clasped his hands between hers and put her all into a smile. “Well, let me reassure you there. There’s zero chance that I’ll forget about this dream! Or about . . . ” Her lips quirked. “Zero chance!”

  Proto regarded her sadly. What could he say? “Talk to me after you’ve faded into mist in a few minutes”?

  Her brow arched. “You don’t believe me! You look awfully sure of yourself. Well, Mister, sometimes I surprise people.”

  Proto recalled the events of her dreams over the past week. “You don’t know the half of it,” he replied to his friend.

  “That doesn’t even make . . . ” she began, then tilted her head at him. Several seconds passed. “There’s something you know that I don’t know.” A fey sheen blazed in her green gaze.

  “Well, there’s a lot you know that I don’t know,” he rejoined.

  Mercune had that look she got when things got real. But that was okay. This actually was what he’d hoped to A/B test.

  It was moments like this that determined the future—inflection points, when the moment balanced on an edge, then rolled one way or the other. Certainly, all the banter and friendship mattered too. They affected which way such moments rolled. But for all that to matter, you had to get to moments like this.

  Mercune’s brow furrowed. “Sure! But it’s like that ‘known unknowns’ and ‘unknown unknowns’ thing. You know I foresee things that are unknown to you. But I don’t know how you know things that are unknown to me. Not fair!”

  Echoing in Proto’s head was something Himari had said: “Mercune is so fun. So quick! Though there’s nothing she likes more than when someone’s quicker than her!”

  “You’re quick,” he said. “Quick as a fox. On a motorcycle.”

  She flushed slightly and couldn’t suppress a grin. “Ain’t it the truth! But you’re not getting out of this that easy, Mister.”

  “Getting out of what?” he asked.

  “Telling me what you’re doing here. And what I’m doing here!” she answered.

  “But why?” he asked. “Who cares if you can see what you’re doing, as long you’re doing it?”

  “What kind of question is that!” she retorted. “I care, of course.”

  “But why?” he repeated. “We’ve done the same things here either way.”

  “Yes, we have,” she replied patiently. “But if I can’t see what we were really doing, then . . . then . . . ” She shook her head in frustration.

  “What, you think seeing is more important than doing?” he asked.

  Mercune’s eyes went wide and flicked to him. She stared for five full seconds. “Ah. That’s what this is about, is it? I see.”

  “You don’t,” he replied. “But I think you could.”

  As she peered at him, that fey sheen in her green gaze warmed to a keen blaze. “So quick,” she murmured, almost inaudibly.

  She shook her head and looked away, but smiled faintly as she did. “Well, alright. I’ll be a seer.”