>>6476098
Anyway, let’s focus on now. You don’t feel any different. A little warm, maybe. A little floaty?

You move your hand in front of your eyes. Is it moving in slow motion? You could swear it is. You raise your head and look at the moon. It’s a crescent. You’ve always liked crescents more than the full moon. Something about the edges, how you can see it’s actually a circle, just lit from a certain angle. It makes you think. What is the point? What is the point of realizing the angle of the sun’s light on the moon forms a crescent, a beautiful crescent, when it’s actually just a stupid round rock? What is the point of being a creature that can understand this, and the concepts of space and satellites and stars? An animal is always more peaceful, you think. These bugs, for example, don’t know shit about anything.

Yet they do what they’re supposed to. Are you? Are you doing what you’re supposed to? You can’t even tell a true vision from a dream. You’re a disgrace to your family. You feel an immense loneliness watching the bugs do their thing. They’re luckier than you, born as bugs among other bugs, all knowing what they must do, all feeling like they belong. You don’t feel like you belong.

A cat is meowing nearby. Well, that’s hardly surprising, is it? How many cats does your family have now? Twenty? More? You don’t even know the number. Respecting the cats and their routines has always been ingrained in you. Sometimes you wonder if your grandma likes some of the cats more than she likes you. You feel ashamed to think this, as if you’re comparing yourself to a cat, or, much worse, as if you’re jealous of them. It makes you a little ashamed.

At least two cats are rubbing their faces against your ankles. You try not to focus on them. You are sitting on the ground. The earth feels good. You wonder if people would be different if they sat on the earth among the grass and the bugs instead of in their houses. You are stupid. A stupid boy.

You try to focus on the right now again.

What was that thing Rachel told you? That you had good “calves”? What kind of random thing was that to say? She said you had good, or was it “nice”? Calves. You don’t even play on the Quidditch team. And yet you felt proud. You felt proud of your calves instead of your Gift. Actually, enough with the self-degradation. Let’s focus.

You ate the mushrooms, the special magical mushrooms that supposedly help open your third eye. You ate them because you hate how vague your visions have been so far and you want to master them. You want to make your mother and your grandmother proud. And given the current state of the world, with a Dark Wizard supposedly defeated after nearly destroying the Ministry, your visions could help against dark magic and danger. You feel responsible. You want to master them and protect the people you love. Because so far, every vision you’ve had has been a danger alert, nothing more.

>>6476099
>Where does your attention go?

>The aphids.
>The moon.
>The cats.
>Try to stop drifting and try to focus on the Sight

>>6476100
>The moon.
Astronomy and its connection to prophecy.

>>6476100
>>Try to stop drifting and try to focus on the Sight

>>6476100
>Try to stop drifting and try to focus on the Sight

>>6476143
>>6476169
>>6476177
You realize you can see quite well at night. You wonder if your eyes are adjusting or if it’s the moonlight. You look up. You think about how much brighter it would be with a full moon. It’s a very strange thing, a rock in the sky, reflecting sunlight. Your left ankle is itchy. A mosquito bite? Could be fleas too. You look away from the moon.

Anyway, let’s focus on now. Not on the moon, not on your ankle. On the Sight.

You try to remember how Grandma does it. She never tries. That’s the annoying part. She just sits at the kitchen table with her coffee going cold and her eyes half closed, and at some point her face changes, like someone in the next room just said her name. You asked her once how she does it. She said, “You don’t reach for it, Glenn. You make yourself a good cup and wait to be filled.” Which is the most useless advice anyone has ever given a fourteen-year-old. And the worst part is that when you do have visions, you don’t even remember them. It’s more like an epileptic fit. You tremble, you lose consciousness, you usually fall down, and everyone feels sorry for you afterwards.

You sigh and try to focus. You close your eyes. A good cup. Empty. Wait to be filled.

Nothing.

Well, not nothing. There are colors. Slow ones, blooming and folding in on themselves, green into violet into white. Is that the mushrooms? Is that the Sight? Is that just what happens when you press your eyelids shut? You honestly don’t know. You never know. That’s the whole problem.

Your breathing is very loud. When did your breathing get so loud?

You try to feel forward, the way you feel for a stair that isn’t there. Tomorrow. Next week. September. The train. Nothing comes. Just your own heartbeat,and an enormous, humiliating wish that someone, anyone, would tell you you’re doing it right.

You are going to fail at this too, aren’t you?

Anyway, let’s focus on now.

Okay. A good cup. Empty. Wait to be filled. You breathe in through your nose for what feels like four seconds and out through your mouth for what feels like nine. Somewhere in there you start counting the cats by their purring. One. Two. Three-ish. The purring is not one sound but a kind of weather.

Then the weather stops. You open your eyes. The two cats at your ankles are gone. They’re standing a few steps away, side by side, perfectly still, tails low and straight. They are not looking at you. They are looking at the far corner of the garden, past the roses, where the hedge goes dark.

>>6476265
You follow their eyes. Nothing. Hedge. Shadow. A little rustle.

A bug, probably. A big bug. Or a hedgehog. You’ve never seen a hedgehog in this garden, but you’ve also never looked, so who knows what lives here? Hedgehog. Hedge-hog. A hog that lives in a hedge. A hog. That is a really stupid word. You say it quietly to yourself a few times to check. Hedgehog. Hedgehog. It stops meaning anything around the fourth try, which is deeply upsetting.

Anyway, let’s focus on now.

A third cat has joined the first two. Then a fourth. They aren’t moving. Just looking at the same spot.

You decide, in a very serious and mature way, to ignore all of this and concentrate on the Sight. You close your eyes again. But then something moves. You know without looking it wasn't the cats. You take a step towards the dark corner of the garden, opening your eyes. The colors are back. You hold up your hand in front of your face, and even with your eyes shut you can see its outline, glowing faintly, with every finger dragging a little ribbon of afterimage behind it like a tired comet. You wave. The ribbons wave back a second later.

This is fine. This is probably fine. This is probably what David meant by “a little visual”.

You realize there are six cats now. All of them looking at the corner of the hedge. All of them, you notice, sitting in a perfectly even half circle. Nobody told them to. Nobody could have. Cats don’t do that. You sometimes wish you were one of them too.

Okay. It could be a hedgehog. A big, serious, mystical hedgehog. Probably hurt. You can be kind to a hedgehog. That is a thing you can do. You’re good at being kind to small animals, it’s one of the few things in this family nobody has ever asked you to be better at. You walk, very slowly, past the roses, toward the dark corner of the hedge. The cats part for you without looking at you.

The closer you get, the colder it gets. It really shouldn't feel cold at this time of the year. Even if you were naked and you are not. You shrug and continue.

There’s no hedgehog.

In the grass at the foot of the hedge, where the moonlight doesn’t quite reach and shouldn’t be bright enough to see anything, there is a cat. It’s sitting very upright, paws together, tail wrapped around them, the way cats sit when they’ve decided to be formal. It is silver. Not gray, not white. Silver, like the rim of the mushrooms, like something that’s been polished by years.

You can see the hedge through it. You can see the individual blades of grass through its chest, and they’re moving in a wind you can’t feel.

One of its ears has a small, neat notch missing from the tip.

Your brain says, very clearly, that’s not a real cat. Your body, meanwhile, has apparently decided to be polite. You stop a few steps away. You do not scream. You are quietly proud of that.

Anyway, let’s focus on now.

You kneel, reach out with your arm, fingers almost reaching the cat's face.

>>6476271
You know this cat.

That’s the strange part. You’ve never seen it. But you know the notched ear. You know the way it holds its head slightly to the left, as if listening to something just behind your shoulder. There’s a photograph on the mantel in Grandma’s sitting room, a small black-and-white one in a silver frame. A girl of about ten, scowling at the camera, holding a black cat with a little white patch on the chest, that’s too big for her. The cat is looking left.

You know instantly this is Apate.

You were never told the cat’s story. You only knew that Grandma never talked about it, and that when she dusted the frame, she dusted it last, and slowly.

That photo is older than your mother. That cat died decades before you were born.

The silver glowing cat looks at you. Its eyes are the only part of it that isn’t see-through. They’re green and absolutely, unbearably present, the eyes of someone who has been waiting a very long time to be noticed by the right person. Or are you imagining all this?

Behind you, the six living cats have gone completely silent. When you glance back, you see something you will not be able to explain to anyone: the whole half circle has lowered itself, front paws flat, heads bowed.

They’re bowing. The cats are bowing to a dead cat. This is the most normal thing that’s happened to me all year.

You don’t know what to do with your hands.

Apate stands. She stretches, front legs first, the way cats do, and for a moment her outline shivers and thins like a reflection when a stone hits the water. Then she walks toward you, unhurried, tail high. She stops at your left ankle, the itchy one, and rubs her face against it. You feel nothing. No weight, no fur, no warmth. Just a faint, cool pressure, like a breath against your skin.

And your ankle stops itching.

Apate sits again, a little closer now. She turns her head, slowly, away from you, toward the house. Toward the second-floor window, dark, where Grandma is supposedly asleep.

"She has been calling for me. She doesn’t know I can hear."

The mushrooms hum. The moon is a crescent. Somewhere in the house, a floorboard creaks, once.

Anyway, let’s focus on now. Did she talk to you?

Was that a voice? A thought? Your own brain wearing a dead cat’s face? You can’t tell, and the worst part is that you also can’t tell if it matters. That’s the whole problem with you, isn’t it? Even when something answers, you can’t be sure you didn’t write the answer yourself.

You crouch, which makes the garden slide a little to the left and then politely come back. You want to say something. How do you even phrase this? "Hello, are you my grandmother’s dead cat?" Out loud, to the grass, at midnight.

“Apate,” you whisper instead. Just the name.

Apate’s ears move. Both of them, the whole one and the notched one, turning toward you. Her eyes narrow, slowly, in the way of a cat who is deciding whether you are worth the effort.

>>6476274
Then she talks to you again, not in words but as a cool, breath-like pressure against the inside of your skull, but this time it isn’t just words. It has a shape. It feels like being addressed by someone who is very old, very patient, and not at all impressed by fourteen-year-olds.

"You came out here in the middle of the night." Apate says. You open your mouth. She isn’t done.

"Tell me why you are here, little one?"

Behind you, the six cats have not moved. The half circle is a held breath. You get the very clear feeling that your answer matters, that she’ll know if you lie, and that the cats will know too.

>“I want them to stop looking at me like I’m broken. I want to be a master of the Sight. I thought mushrooms might help.”
>"I wanted to get away from everyone, I wanted to be alone with it, where nobody could watch me fail. I wish I never had any gift of prophecies."
>"I thought these mushrooms would help me understand. I want to know if it’s me seeing the future, or if I’m just where the future happens. Am I even free?”
>"Why are you here? I never knew we had ghost cats in our garden."

>>6476275
>“I want them to stop looking at me like I’m broken. I want to be a master of the Sight. I thought mushrooms might help.”

>>6476275
>"I thought these mushrooms would help me understand. I want to know if it’s me seeing the future, or if I’m just where the future happens. Am I even free?”

>>6476277
>>6476282
“I want them to stop looking at me like I’m broken. I want to be a master of the Sight. I thought the mushrooms might help me understand."

Apate says nothing. She looks at you for a long time with those green, unbearably present eyes, and the cool pressure behind your forehead goes very still, like water just before it freezes.

"A master doesn't need mushrooms." She seems unimpressed. "But I understand why you tried. It is helpful actually."

You feel a bit emberassed. "I want to know if it’s me seeing the future, or if I’m just where the future happens.” Your voice cracks on the next part, and you hate that. “Am I even free?”

The cat looks more amused now.

"If I said you were free, you would wonder if I was a thing your mind made up to comfort you. If I said you were not, you would wonder the same, and be sadder. The question is not for answering."

You open your mouth. Nothing comes out. You close it.

Apate looks at you a little longer. You brace for something profound. You are ready for it. You’ve been ready for it your whole life.

Then her ears swivel, both of them, the whole one and the notched one, toward something over your left shoulder. Her pupils go wide. Her tail starts to twitch. She is gone from where she was sitting. You turn your head and see her, silver and see-through and extremely serious, crouched in the grass with her rear end wiggling, eyes locked on a pale moth drifting past the roses.

You watch the dead cat of your grandmother’s childhood pounce, miss, and land in the flowerbed with great dignity. She does not look at you. She is pretending nothing happened. She begins to wash one silver paw which is a strange thing to watch a ghost do. You can see the hedge through her tongue.

Anyway, let’s focus on now.

You look at the moon, because you need something to look at that isn’t a cat judging you. Crescent. Right place, above the roof, a little left of the chimney. Good. Normal.

You look at Apate. She’s still washing the same paw. It’s the same paw. She has been washing that paw for a while now. How long is a while?

You look back at the moon.

It’s over the apple tree.

That’s not where it was.

You find your attention drifting towards...

>Your school friends.
>Your family.
>Hogwarts and upcoming classes.
>The war.
>Your body.
>Something you can’t name. [What?]

>>6476353
>Your school friends.

>>6476353
>>Your school friends

File: Glenn.jpg (107 KB, 1129x754)

107 KB JPG

>>6476810 >>6476879 >>6476983

>>6476456
>>6476580
It’s a normal school day. A very specific one, you realize. You’ve been here before.

A corridor outside History of Magic. Hannah catches John by the sleeve and tells him she knows his cousin. They arrange a meeting. She’ll pass the message on, so it’s good. Everything’s good.

You’re a few steps behind them. Wait. Why am I watching myself from the outside?

Anyway, let’s focus on now.

You enter the classroom with your friends, all clad in Ravenclaw robes.

Professor Binns drifts through the blackboard and begins by telling the class, about his old life. His tea. His armchair. Then, eventually, a subject: magical relics. “There are many, many ancient relics in this castle than I am bothered to list. Some are wanted by wizards and other creatures. Some are forgotten, dusty, sitting in some forgotten room...”

An hour of this.

You look around at your friends.

Valdis has fallen asleep with his eyes open, which is a skill, and his quill is slowly writing a line down the page. It goes off the parchment, onto the desk, and halfway across the next desk, which belongs to someone who has not noticed yet.

Anya, two seats away, is writing so fast the quill is leaving a faint trail of smoke. Was it really smoking, or are you imagining it? She underlines the word “relics” and then, with great care, draws a small circle around it.

Tim is drawing a Quidditch play in the margin of his notes.

John is sitting very still, listening. He glances sideways at you once, and you look away fast, as if you’ve been caught doing something. You have been caught doing something. You were watching everyone.

And Glenn, the one you can see, the one in the third row, is very pale.

That’s me. That’s me, and I look awful.

You feel like when you focus on someone, you can hear "something." You can hear their "personality"

You decide to focus on

>Valdis. He has always been the clumsy black-sheep of your year.
>Anya. She is the best of your class. Really smart girl. You think she is also braver than you.
>Tim. His main interest in life is Quidditch. He invited John once to watch a game together during last summer but you were not invited. You think you are not that close with him anyway and they are teammates. So you guess that's normal.
>John. He is your best friend at school. You even share the bunk bed together. You both don't talk about your families to each other though.
>Glenn. Focus on yourself.

>>6476722
>>Tim. His main interest in life is Quidditch. He invited John once to watch a game together during last summer but you were not invited. You think you are not that close with him anyway and they are teammates. So you guess that's normal.

>>6476722
>John. He is your best friend at school. You even share the bunk bed together. You both don't talk about your families to each other though.

>>6476722
>ohn. He is your best friend at school. You even share the bunk bed together. You both don't talk about your families to each other though.

File: John.jpg (162 KB, 726x807)

162 KB JPG

>>6477110

>>6476879
>>6476983
You decide to focus on John.At first there’s nothing. Just John, sitting very straight, with his quill held the correct way, the way they teach you in first year and nobody keeps up. He’s listening to Binns with the faintly worried expression of a boy who suspects there will be a test.

Anyway, let’s try to focus deeper.

And then you hear him.

It isn’t a sound. It’s what a sound would be if it were a person. It starts low and steady, a hum. It doesn’t rise or fall. Pretty stable and consistent. Kind of reminds you buzzing of a bee.Under the hum, there’s a kind of care. That’s the only word you’ve got. It’s in the way he sits, the way his quill is already moving before Binns finishes a sentence, the way his attention keeps swinging, once every few seconds, to check on the people around him.

John was the one to defeat your first year DADA professor who turned out to be a vampire. He was always there when someone needed his help. He does seem like a caretaker from this perspective, you think.

Then you hear something else.

It’s very quiet. A kind of soft place at the edge of the hum. You lean toward it, in your head, the way you lean toward a voice in the next room.

John's being seems to be vibrating with this mantra: "I’ll handle it. They don’t need to worry." He is, you realize, a person who has gotten very good at being fine.

You try to focus deeper.

The hum has a slight distortion now. Fleeting scenes flash in your mind's eye.

You see John diving extremely fast towards the ground trying to catch the Snitch in a Quidditch game. You remember that. He crashes and gets seriously injured. Then you see a witch clad in green and silver. John's mother. You feel anxiety and fear pulsing out from John. “He’s been scared too, and never said.” You hear fear in the hum, small and old, and stunned that someone so calm could carry it. John looks at you and you can feel his fear die down, leaving a calm and secure feeling in its place. “He never thought I was broken.” you think to yourself.

>>6477098
You feel something brushing your leg. You look down to see the black cat. Apate is looking at you with curious eyes. "How long have I been dreaming?" You think to yourself. You are not even sure if this can be called a dream.

The scene slightly changes around you now. The classroom looks much bigger than it did a moment ago. The far wall has retreated into the distance, and the tall windows seem to extend upwards forever. You look at yourself.

You’re still in your seat. Head tipped back, eyes open and not looking at anything, one hand curled stiffly on the desk like it’s holding a rope. The quill rolls off the edge and clicks on the floor. Your face is the color of old candle wax.

That’s me. That’s me, and I look awful. Am I trembling?

You can feel your vision getting obscured into a tunnel and cold sweats on your neck. You are about to receive a vision.

You’ve never seen this part before. You’ve always been told about it afterwards, in careful voices, by people who’ve decided what you’re ready to hear.

The class is empty but your friends are still here. You see Anya jump from her chair. You start watching yourself and your friends like a ghost in the room.

"Glenn?" She doesn’t touch him. She hovers, hands up and open, like she’s afraid he’s made of something that bruises. "Glenn, can you hear me?" John also moves next to you. "Don’t, don’t shake him. I read that you shouldn’t shake someone during a fit." Anya says."I’m not shaking him!" John replies. He’s already there, on one knee beside your chair. His voice is low and even.

You feel embarrassed that they had to see you and treat you like this.

"Is he dead?" Valdis whispers from somewhere around your elbow. He’s gone grey.

"No, you moron" says Tim, and then, quietly, a beat too late, "...probably not."

Tim has gone very still as he watches you. He’s the one you’d have guessed would laugh, the one who makes the jokes when things get tense. But he isn’t joking. He’s staring at your face with a look you’ve never seen on him.

"Did he hit his head?” he asks. "On the desk, or..."

"No," says Anya.

"Keep quiet, and don't let anyone enter here. He is having a vision." John says. "It’s the Sight."He says it the way someone says the weather is bad, a plain fact, no drama, no fear. "He’s not dying. He’s not faking. He’ll wake up in a minute and he’ll know something we don’t."

You can see that they are scared. But it is a good thing, no? Means they love you?

John is the only one who is not in panic as far as you can tell. He’s waiting. That’s all. He’s sitting very still on one knee next to your chair.

"What is the point of having visions of a supposed future if it leaves me in such a miserable state?" You ask looking down at the cat. Apate shrugs. Can cats shrug?

You continue watching the scene before you. Or are you just remembering?

>>6477110
You know you will come to yourself soon and tell them what you have seen. You know how it plays out. A slow pressure starts building somewhere behind your ribs, then easing away. Every second leaves a faint impression on you, like a finger pressed against the skin, and you can feel the impressions accumulating. What is that? The time?

Something stirs beneath your feet. A slow, sinuous movement somewhere beneath the stone, passing from one end of the classroom to the other. Something is slithering under the floor.

Okay, this is getting ridiculous.

Let's just try to focus.

You notice that John has not moved... Actually nobody has moved. You blink. You are back at the beginning of the course. Didn't you already watch this? You blink again. Anya jumps from her chair. Your friends gather around you, once again. You watch it happen a second time, and then a third. The whole memory is on loop.

Only thing not repeating itself seems to be the cat. She just sits on one of the desks and licks her paws.

You try to focus...

>on the memory and try to will the loop to end or finalize.
>on the memory and try to just leave it, blinking your eyes hoping to open them back on the garden at home .
>on floating away, through the walls to the next classroom or corridor.
>on the cat.
>Other [What?]

>>6477111
>on the memory and try to will the loop to end or finalize.

>>6477185
You try to will the loop to end. You focus. You concentrate.

The scene continues a couple of times.

You try harder. Focus harder.

The scene continues to repeat.

You're getting pissed off. More than that, though, you're starting to feel sick. Maybe it's the sight of watching yourself faint twenty times in a row. Maybe it's the mushrooms. Maybe it's both. You start to worry and panic is about to kick in.

Then you look at Anya. She looks angelic from this point of view. Like a nurse, worrying and caring about you. You never thought you would use "angelic" to describe her but here you are. She is a muggle-born and your family is weird even by wizard standards.

Anyway, let's focus and end this.

The scene begins again. You watch yourself receive the prophecy, just as you have so many times before. But this time you say something different.

"A creature of the night shall perish where even hope is imprisoned. Its last shadow shall flutter against cold stone, and fall forever still."

That was not the original vision you received. Is this a new prophecy? Did you just receive a new vision? Or are you imagining this?

The cat watches you with an air of approval. You turn to look at your friends and see if their reactions will change, but the scene quickly dissipates. The classroom dissolves like paint dropped into water, its walls and faces stretching into long, colourful streaks before vanishing altogether.

You are now back standing in your garden. Only the garden seems more vivid than before.The night is alive with colors.

For a moment, everything is beautiful.Then, some events happen simultaneously. You realize there is an owl with a letter waiting perched on one of the wooden beams sticking out from the small stone tower next to your house, your family's owlery. You hear some whispering or rustling, somewhere near in the garden. Apate stretches its legs and starts trotting towards the house, jumping on the edge of the lower window, heading towards the open second-floor window above.

You decide to

>Check the owl and the letter
>Check the rustling in the garden
>Follow the cat
>Other [What?]

>>6477581
>Other [What?]
>Grab the letter and then follow the cat, if it is real and not a result of our altered perception, Glenn will check it later, after influence of mushrooms will run out.

>>6477586
You take the letter. You can see its from David.

You put it in your pocket and continue towards the house. The cat jumps up to the second floor and enters inside through the half open window.

You walk towards the door and quietly sneak inside.

Just as you enter and take your first steps inside toward the stairs, your dad is coming out one of the rooms to the corridor. Everything inside seems out of focus too you. Like distorted.

You decide to

>Hide in the nearest room, trying to get out of sight before your father sees you.
>Head towards the stairs not caring if anyone sees you out of bed.
>Wait and talk to your father
>Other [What?]

>>6477628
>Head towards the stairs not caring if anyone sees you out of bed.

>>6477781
You head toward the stairs, not caring whether your dad or anyone else sees you out of bed at this late hour.

You walk through the corridor. The corridor is longer than it was this afternoon. You are almost sure of that. Your dad is in his pajamas, heading for the kitchen with a comic book in his hand. You can see the panels moving around, and even hear some of the speech bubbles, which seem to be shouting.

“Oh, Glenn! You hungry as well?” your dad asks, sounding completely normal.

You try very carefully to answer without seeming high. You simply nod.

Your bedroom is upstairs, and you’re coming from the corridor, not from the stairs. He notices this and asks, “It’s quite late, isn’t it? Were you not sleeping?”

You decide to

>Say, “Couldn’t sleep. Just came down for water.”
>Say nothing, just nod and walk past to stairs.
>Say, “I was practicing some spells for fourth year.”
>Deflect, “What are you reading?”
>Look at Dad and try to "hear" his personality.
>Other [What?]

>>6478576
>Say, “Couldn’t sleep. Just came down for water.”

>>6479258
(Sorry for delay, had to take care of something IRL)
You say you couldn’t sleep and came down for some water.

Your dad looks at you, then glances back at the door, then down at your shoes, then up at the clock on the wall. “Came down? Did you just come from outside?”

“I was checking if it was still there,” you reply.

“If what was still there?” Dad asks, puzzled.

“The outside.” You shrug.

He nods slowly, the way a man does when he has been married into a house of seers for twenty years and knows when not to ask. He goes to the stove and starts making a sandwich. He does not ask a follow-up question. This is somehow worse.

The kitchen is extremely bright. You hadn’t noticed that from the corridor. The lamp over the stove has a halo, and the halo has a smaller halo.

A glass of water has appeared in your hand. You have no memory of acquiring it. You have been holding it for what feels like two full minutes without drinking any of it, and your dad is watching you do this.

“Are you sure you don’t want something to eat, Glenn?”

You nod firmly. You take a very small sip of water. It tastes like the color blue.

Don’t say that. Don’t say that out loud.

“This water tastes blue,” you say out loud.

“It’s the new pipes,” he says. Dad slides the sandwich across the counter. “Eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You’ve been staring at that pickle for a full minute.”

“It’s looking at me.”

“Then eat it first.”

You eat the pickle. It’s the best pickle of your life. You almost say so, then catch yourself, then say it anyway.

“Best pickle of my life.”

“Thank you. I picked it.”

>Take the sandwich and eat it with total confidence. Nothing could go wrong.
>Back away slowly. Say you remembered something upstairs.
>Ask Dad what the comic is about.
>Focus on Dad and let your third eye do its thing.
>Tell him everything. About the garden, the cat... the mushrooms too?

>>6480615
Focus on the vibrations of the sandwich to try and predict what will happen if we eat it.

>>6480615
>Tell him everything. About the garden, the cat... the mushrooms too?