The world is quiet. All is still.

Her mind was a whirling mechanism of epiphany, each thought setting the next into motion, free of jam or ill-fitting conclusion. Nothing could grow stagnant when all was in proper order. Nothing could rot, poisoning her heart, dulling her eyes until all she could see was herself.

You see? You see! Wasn’t that lovely? She could tell you the pages of the novels she’d cobbled that together from. She’d held onto those words for years now, thinking that it would be the perfect way to explain such things should the moment ever come for her to express the thoughts. But that was all backwards, wasn’t it? She’d held onto them not because they were perfect. But because they were perfect to [i]her.[/i] Picking out the one right answer in a sea of infinite words had crushed her into a useless stone time and time again. Picking out the words she adored, to be whatever they needed to be for the people she held close to her heart? So much easier. So much more fun!

Love. Always kept turning up in the best stories, didn’t it? She really ought to have noticed the throughline sooner-

And that shadow of a memory kept her at the boundary of Crowhame. Because she wasn’t a machine. Not really. Not in the ways that mattered. All that ran well in this one, beautiful moment would, in time, wear down, skip, clog, fall apart, drown, descend into a useless pile of anxieties all over again. Even the act of trying to hold onto this perfect clarity would squeeze her to the point of breaking. Wouldn’t it be nice, to never have to fall from this height? To never endure the cycle again? Hadn’t she climbed enough?

Can she rest, now?

Perhaps.

But then again, she did have a rather good memory. If she found her way here once, she could do it again. And this time, with better company.

She took a step. And gently closed the book behind her.

***********************************************

“Ack!”

A black-cowled figure stumbled into the clown-rich chaos, the victim of a sudden lesson in comparative body mass. But before she could fall to her knees, where a death of pies surely awaited her, a second pair of shoulders came under her burdens, and a second pair of paws marked her path forward. Wolf wasted no time on words; they had precious little to reach safety, and less still to complete the miracle.

Soon the four of them were huddled behind the now-flaming donut cart, mere seconds of safety left. Just enough time for the figure to hurriedly transcribe one, last edit to their reality...

[b]Lucien![/b]

You can’t be dead.

You smell fried pickles.

No, more than that, you hear fried pickles, Crackling, sizzling, fresh from the fryer and ready to eat.

Worst of all, you [i]want[/i] fried pickles. Don’t lie. We all know you do. And when was the last time you heard of a dead man wanting anything?

Now then, are you going to wake up and taste them? (Mind your tongue, they’re still hot.)

[b]Professor![/b]

So. You’ve finally wound up dead, have you? After all this time, the boogeyman finally caught up to you, like you knew it would. All those years of worry, and now that it’s here, does it seem so bad? Was the ending really worth all that fuss? I bet it seems rather silly, in hindsight. You’d think that simple logic would’ve steered you right. By what merit does the last day get weighted more heavily than all the others that came before? The rest of your life outnumbers the end of it, after all. So by that logic, the end shouldn’t be all that important.

You think so too?

Ah-[i]ha![/i]

And how exactly is a dead man agreeing with me? Unless, of course, you’re not really dead! You never were! Members of the court, I rest my case, we may all recess for fried pickles now. (Yes, yes, there’s some for you too, Professor. Get up already, before Lucien scarfs them all down!)