Kaelen's work at the flower shop was largely uneventful. Keep the space clean, make small talk with customers, arrange the flowers in bouquets, ring people up, rinse, and repeat. It would have been mind-numbing if not for the fact that the plants sang in his ears.

Of course, he made a new bouquet every two days for Lysander. He addressed it to Lysander and Briar, but he always put Lysander's name first on the card. He also sent them to his brother and to Wynne, of course, but after the drama with Wynne when they woke up in the hospital, Kaelen didn't send them as often.

Eulalia had only become marginally less standoffish since their first encounter. She mostly kept to herself, cutting dead leaves off of flowers and giving them to her various detritivores. Kaelen started to learn which vivariums were for what purpose - leafcutter bees for pollination, ladybugs and mites for pest control, cockroaches and springtails for eating the decay, and so on. Kaelen did notice that Eulalia occasionally took some out and put them in packages that ultimately appeared in the outgoing mail. While insects didn't bother him, Kaelen was glad that Iris had taken it upon herself to handle the packages for her niece's side hustle - he wouldn't forgive himself if they broke in his care.

The leaves outside began to turn. The marigolds got put out front.

Kaelen knew that elsewhere, the heart monitors continued to beep.

"Wynne got moved to a psychiatric facility," Rain said over the breaktime coffee she and Kaelen were having. "Godiva blames herself more than she blames you...she said that Wynne was acting odd, but she wanted to believe that her kid was well enough to rejoin society."

Kaelen hummed in assent before sipping his iced americano. "What did she say about their condition?"

"It took days for them to stop saying 'it was real' over and over, if that's what you mean." Rain sighed and leaned back in her chair. "I didn't tell her what that meant. I'm letting her think it was about the accident. If she knew what you and I know, it would break her."

"What happened after that?"

"Catatonia, it seems. But they're talking again. They seem to remember the accident fully, but...distantly. Godiva said Wynne was reciting the events in perfect detail, but...like they memorized it? I think it supports our theory about the time being messed up over there." Rain sat back up and leaned forward to take a drink, the beads on the end of her braids clunking against the table. "If Wynne had to tell the story of what happened to them, or even just remind themselves of it, the details would be crystallized over time."

"Like ice," Kaelen said.

"More or less." Rain sighed longingly. "Do you have anything for the next test?"

Kaelen's previous attempts at "dreamwalking", as Rain called it, had been less successful than the first. He'd only gotten flashes of ice, or nothing at all. He and Rain suspected that they could only use each type of bouquet once, and that the added strain of keeping Kaelen in their time, as it were, caused more difficulty. Furthermore, every successful attempt - no matter how minor - resulted in less actual dreams.

He was beginning to miss the dreams as much as he missed his friends.

"I have a few bouquet ideas..." Kaelen mused. "I think we might need to focus on length of time, to try to make it worthwhile, as well as protection in the event I run into the wolves again. But it's not like there's a flower that means extension of time, you know? And I don't want to get it wrong."

"I don't know if you can get it wrong."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it's symbolism," Rain said matter-of-factly. "If a Bosch painting you've never seen before can appear in the dream, who's to say you can't just find another artistic reference?"

The long-haired boy blinked. "I'm...I'm not sure where to even start."

"Start with what you know. What connects you to the rest of them?"

Kaelen paused for a moment, considering. "Lysander's sketches," he finally admitted. "We all went to his art show senior year. Even his parents didn't go. That's what I think connects all of us."

Rain arches a brow. "And here I thought it was all of us being queer except for Jude."

Kaelen scoffed at the mention of his brother. "Jude wishes."

"Fair. Well, then...what inspired Lysander? Do you know?"

"Yeah...yeah, I think I do."

Friendship Heights was always quiet. Sure, the handful of department stores still open had people darting in and out, but far less often than Kaelen remembered. The outdoor cafes were open, but none took respite in their chairs. There was rarely more than three cars at the crosswalk at any given time, at least before rush hour, when people would drive through the neighborhood but rarely stay long.

Kaelen passed the old mall he used to visit. It was closed now, with "retail spaces for lease" signs on the outside. He stared at the brick facade for a long time, wondering if the metro stop underneath was even open, before walking away.

Instead of heading straight home, Kaelen made his way to a local park. Like most things in this neighborhood, it was empty, but there were hand painted statues of people occupying the space. Namely, there was a police officer and an artist. Kaelen sat next to the statue, her bronze skin and hair almost wafting in the breeze. She was drawing the town, as she saw it.

"I used to wonder what she was seeing," Lysander once told Kaelen. "If you draw the same thing every day, you have to be seeing something different every time, right?"

"Dude, it's a statue," Kaelen had snarked playfully.

"Of course it is. But what does she see that I can't?"

A bird landing on the statue roused Kaelen from his reverie. He blinked - birds in DC weren't exactly uncomfortable around humans, but they rarely approached people. The bird was small, brown, with stripes of yellow, black, and white around its head. It peered at Kaelen from the side of its face, before turning and facing him.

Kaelen couldn't help himself. "...Ly?"

The bird didn't respond, just twisted its head away and flew off. Where to, Kaelen couldn't see.

"Figures..." the boy muttered. He groaned and laid down, his back flush against the edge of the fountain. He stared up at the afternoon sky, blue beginning to make way for gold. He placed his headphones in and put a playlist on. Metal music blasted his eardrums, the sensation calming him. He sighed gently and continued to watch the sky.

"What did Lysander see, that I can't?" Kaelen asked no one in particular.

The longer he looked at the sky, the less the colors looked like colors.

Voices roared in his earbuds. *I- I- I know you're living a lie!

His heart rate slowed as he drifted into the screams. I- I- I see the scars in your eyes!

He exhaled slowly, feeling the fear drain away from him like watercolor. I- I- I know you're living a lie!

Something cold touched his face.

I- I- I guess you’d rather have a star than the moon...

And the world went white.