Dress > Robes

One week later.

Stephanie was a wreck.

Ink stained her fingertips and wrists. Dozens of pages lay scattered across the grand study table where she had collapsed hours ago—no, maybe days. She had no sense of time anymore. The only marks of passing hours were the growing stench of unwashed skin, the gnawing emptiness in her stomach, and the ceaseless ache in her head.

She had read. And written. And read again.

Parchment after parchment. Candle after candle.

At some point, she'd stopped eating. Not because there was no food but because her mind refused to accept anything but the next line of her manuscript. The next ancient phrase decoded. The next hypothesis recorded.

She looked feral now. Her green dress was crumpled, streaked with ink and sweat. Her glasses were smudged and sat low on her nose. Her hair now tangled in straw-like knots around her face.

Then, just as her vision swam with exhaustion and her hand—curled stiff and shaking from overuse—refused to hold the pen another second, it happened.

Her world shifted.

No sound. No warning. Just... change.

The green dress vanished.

In its place, silky fabric kissed her fevered skin. A robe—light, silken, and oddly sensual—wrapped around her, tying just at the waist. The neckline plunged down to the knot, baring her collarbone, her sternum, the soft rise of her breasts. The robe's cut split high at the hip, revealing the full length of one leg while the other remained wrapped in the elegant shimmer of fabric.

A second robe followed. Thicker. Hooded. Earth-toned and warm. It settled atop the first, open in the front, like a noble’s ceremonial garment. The hood draped down her back, untouched.

Stephanie gasped. Her body jolted as though the sensation of comfort shocked her.

The change wasn't only in the fabric.

She looked toward the great Book—the one that chronicled her in real-time. Its illustrated page rippled like water, and then, there she was. Her image had changed: the green dress was gone. She stood robed and regal.

And for the first time in seven days, she cried.

"You're back!" she choked, tears streaming down her dirty face. Her voice echoed through the vast, silent library. She turned toward the book, toward the unseen eye of her world’s strange author. "Thank God! Thank you!"

I blinked at my screen.

"What happened?"

Her response came in jagged gasps between sobs.

"The time skip... it didn't skip my time."

I hesitated, fingers hovering.

"What do you mean?"

"This entire week," she said, falling to her knees, robes pooling around her. "I've been here. Alone. Writing. Reading. Trying to rest, but I couldn't. My body wouldn't let me. My mind kept screaming to keep going. Like I was under some... spell."

"You've just been here? Waiting for me?"

"Not by choice," she whispered, voice raw. "I tried to stop. Tried to leave. But I couldn’t. I was a prisoner to my own words. To the command I gave you—to skip a week. I thought it would help. But instead, it trapped me. **** me to do what I said I would: write, record, study. All of it. I couldn’t stop."

I sat stunned.

She wrapped her arms around herself.

"You left... and I stayed. You skipped forward. But I had to live it. Every second of it. Alone."

The absurdity of her reality gnawed at both of us. She had asked for this. And somehow, some rule none of us understood had granted it in the cruelest possible way.

But she was still here.

And now—draped in robes of forgotten significance, glowing faintly in the light of her magical glasses, I did her the kindest thing I knew to do.

I ended the chapter, and let her rest.

(Ginger, white, very curly messy hair, small breasts, tall, smart, magical glasses, robes, rebellious, very tired, bags under eyes, dirty,)