The Birthday, Part 1

VP and BP Standings
Erin - 95 VP - 2600 BP - 2 Achievs
Sam - 87 VP - 5700 BP - 2 Achievs
Marissa - 77 VP - 3000 BP - 2 Achievs
Claire - 76 VP - 8900 BP - 2 Achievs
Norah - 74 VP - 2350 BP - 3 Achievs
Liesa - 70 VP - 4200 BP - 2 Achievs
Emily - 62 VP - 6100 BP - 2 Achievs
Dawn - 60 Vp - 6300 BP - 3 Achievs
Emi - 47 VP - 4050 BP - 1 Achiev
Chloe - 45 VP - 4525 BP - 1 Achiev
Riley - 18 VP - 5600 BP - 2 Achievs
Myra - 15 VP - 4800 BP

Andy woke to the uncharacteristic hush of a room pressed by weather. At first, he thought it was the heavy blankets, or maybe the aftermath of last night’s emotional storm, but as his eyes found focus—dull, the color of dishwater—he realized it was the sky itself that had gone wrong.

Gray. Not the pale blue ceiling of every morning in this place, but a smeared, bottom-heavy gray, almost Midwest in its intent, crowding the horizon right up to the sea. The kind of sky that promised rain and followed through.

He was warm, at least. Emily had migrated to his right side during the night, folding herself close against him, her head pillowed in the nook of his shoulder. Her hair fanned out over the blanket, pooling gold and pink around her face and, crucially, across her body, which otherwise had nothing between it and the world. Even in sleep, it covered her with the minimum necessary modesty, a trick of physics or magic or maybe just the HH’s sense of humor.

Dawn was on the other side, propped up on her elbow and already watching him, her bunny ears canted toward him at perfect attention. She wore nothing but a large, loose t-shirt—one of his, probably, from the way it dwarfed her frame—and a pair of striped boyshorts that matched the energy of a Saturday cartoon host. Her skin was the same shade as always, a warm olive that reminded Andy of garden mornings with his mother, and her hair was up in a half-mussed ponytail, already starting to slip loose.

Dawn’s smile was instant and deliberate, bright as a match in the dim. Not a slow, lazy waking, but a practiced landing: as if she’d spent half an hour rehearsing her opening line for the morning show and had just hit her cue.

“Hey,” she whispered, just for him, her voice a velvet ribbon pulled taut.

Andy blinked away the blur, not sure why the world felt so muffled. “What time is it?”

“Barely six.” Dawn’s glance at the dresser clock was more for punctuation than information. “I’ve been up a bit. Couldn’t sleep.” She shifted the focus from herself to Emily with a tilt of the chin, then back at Andy. “You’re a space heater, you know that?”

Andy grinned, keeping the sound quiet so as not to disturb the sleeping blonde. But his smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ve been called worse.”

Dawn rolled onto her back with a theatrical sigh, arms overhead, palms pressed to the headboard. The t-shirt shimmied up her ribs, exposing a slice of taut, olive skin and the shadowed valley of her navel before settling back to modesty. She hesitated, the ears giving away her nerves with a twitch. “How are you today?” she asked softly. “I know what today is.”

Andy’s chest tightened. She wasn’t wrong, but she’d said it with a gentleness that didn’t threaten to break him open. “It’s weird,” he admitted. “Like the weather heard, too.”

Dawn drew her knees up, wrapping her arms around them. “That’s okay. Sometimes it helps, you know—if the sky’s on your side.” She reached out, a tentative touch on his wrist, thumb circling the bone. “You don’t have to be okay.”

He didn’t respond right away. The sunrise that wasn’t coming, the gray pressing in, all seemed to flatten time. He remembered, with a kind of dull surprise, that last year on this day he’d spent the morning in bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering if he’d ever want to get up at all. It was easier to be numb: he’d learned that early.

Dawn’s touch was an anchor, light and real. “I wish I could’ve met her,” she said after a pause. “Laura, I mean. I think we would’ve hit it off. She seemed cool in the stories.”

Andy blinked hard, tried to find his sarcasm. “She’d have roasted you for the bunny thing. But yeah, you’d have gotten along.”

Dawn grinned, her teeth catching the light, her whole body relaxing at the joke. “I would’ve let her. I think I owe her, for being the first.” She squeezed his wrist, then let it go. “I’m serious, though. If you need to be sad, or mad, or nothing at all, I’ll cover you.”

He wanted to say thank you, but it would have sounded weak, or maybe too final, so he just nodded, hoping that was enough. The moment lingered, the air thick with what neither of them could put to words, and then Dawn popped up, stretching again, this time with more intention. “Come on. Let’s get carbs before the hunger games start.”

Andy considered resisting, but there was a buoyancy to Dawn's words that made it impossible to refuse. "You want to make pancakes, or you want me to make pancakes?"

“Both,” Dawn grinned. “But I’ll do the hard part. You can supervise.”

He nodded, then looked down at Emily. Her lashes fluttered as she started to wake. “Are you hungry?” he asked, keeping his voice gentle.

She didn’t open her eyes at first. Instead, she nuzzled in closer, breathing in slow, measured drags. Then, as if remembering she was supposed to perform waking for the audience, she blinked up at Andy, blue eyes still clouded with dream. “Only if you want me to be,” she murmured.

He felt a jolt at the words. It was a joke, sure, but also not a joke. Emily’s first transformation had made her hyper-suggestible, and after over two years of that affliction, she sometimes slipped that in, almost as a dare.

“I do,” Andy said, squeezing her shoulder. “We’re going to the kitchen for pancakes. You should come.”

That did it. She roused, brushing the hair from her face and letting it fall back in deliberate, almost liquid motion across her front. Dawn swung her legs off the bed first, stretching again, and then stood, her ears up and her tail—a little white puff, barely visible—already twitching with anticipation.

“You coming?” she asked, looking back over her shoulder at Emily, then at Andy.

“Yeah,” Andy said, untangling himself and sitting up. “Let’s go.”

The walk to the kitchen was brief but felt ceremonial. Emily padded behind them, her feet utterly silent on the tile, her long hair a trailing banner in her wake. Every few steps, she’d catch Andy looking at her and tilt her head, a question in her eyes, but she didn’t say anything. Not until they were all in the kitchen, the lights warming to a soft gold, the smell of last night’s coffee still lingering in the air.

Dawn got right to work, pulling ingredients from the fridge and lining them up with mechanical precision. “You know,” she said, cracking the first egg one-handed, “my abuela used to make these every Sunday. The whole house would smell like vanilla and cinnamon and a little bit of burnt oil. Sometimes I wonder if that’s the only reason I like making breakfast.”

Andy watched her, surprised by the efficiency in her movements. “You’re really good at this.”

She shrugged, but there was pride in it. "I like feeding people. She taught me that around the table is how you build a family."

Emily lingered in the kitchen's threshold, arms folded loosely across her chest, her hair still artfully arranged. She seemed more awake now, but her gaze was distant, contemplative, as if she were still turning over fragments of last night's conversation in her mind.

"There's room," Andy said, nodding toward the table.

Emily's focus sharpened. She moved to the island and chose a high stool, settling onto it with deliberate grace. Her eyes traveled to the window, taking in the gray sky, before returning to Andy. "This hasn’t happened before, has it?" she asked, voice soft.

He shook his head. "Not since we arrived. It's always sunny. I think the weather is... an effect. Of The HH, or of whatever Arabella wants the mood to be."

Emily twisted a strand of hair around her finger, studying the clouds. "It feels... heavier, today. Like it's a big day and nobody wants to admit it. Bigger than Challenge Day."

Andy considered that. “It is a big day,” he said. “Laura’s birthday.” He didn’t want to say more, not with Dawn so close, but the words stuck to the roof of his mouth. He watched Emily, waiting for her to push, but she didn’t.

Instead, Dawn piped up from the stove. “You want banana in yours?” she asked Andy. “Or are you boring?”

He smiled. “Banana’s good.”

Emily said, “Chocolate chips, if you have them?” Dawn gave her a thumbs-up.

Dawn moved around the kitchen with ease, making jokes when she could, humming under her breath when she couldn’t. Every time Andy tried to offer help, she batted him away, insisting he sit, relax, “supervise,” but when he sat beside Emily, he noticed Dawn watching them both out of the corner of her eye, as if making sure they didn’t drift too far.

When the pancakes were ready, Dawn plated them and set the stacks in front of Andy and Emily before making her own, lighter portion. She sat on a stool beside Andy, her thigh pressed against his. It was intentional, but not possessive; more like a tether than a claim.

The first bite tasted like a memory. Sweet, a little burnt, familiar in a way Andy didn’t realize he’d been missing. For a few minutes, there was only eating, the three of them working through their breakfasts in companionable, hungry silence.

After the first few bites, something shifted. The tension Andy hadn't realized he was carrying started to ebb, replaced by the dull, syrupy comfort that only real food in the morning could deliver. Maybe it was the banana, or the fact that Dawn insisted on heating the syrup in the microwave—“like my abuela used to”—so that it pooled on the pancakes with a warmth that crept into his hands and chest. Or maybe it was just Dawn herself, her The Way to a Man’s Heart transformation in full bloom, casting ripples of contentment through the room.

Emily was the first to melt. At first, she sat straight-backed, knees together, her hair doing most of the work of shielding her from the world. But with every forkful, her shoulders softened; her feet curled up on the crossbar of the stool, and she let out a tiny, surprised moan after the third bite, as if her body had overruled her decorum. Dawn noticed, of course, and beamed at her—no teasing, no fanfare, just a soft “told you so” glance that made Emily blush, then smile, then reach for a second helping without asking.

Andy ate slower, not wanting to finish. There was a superstition to it: if he could keep the meal going, the gray morning might not swallow him whole. The pancakes tasted like Sunday mornings with his parents, like kitchen tables in houses that smelled of lemon cleaner and coffee. Each mouthful was a small act of rebellion against the day's meaning.

When the plates were scraped clean, Dawn poured the last of the coffee and brought the pot to the table, then sat down beside Andy and placed her hand over his. It was a deliberate move, a little theatrical, but the intent was genuine. She squeezed his fingers, then reached her other hand for Emily’s. Emily hesitated—just for a second—then let herself be included, her palm cool and dry against Dawn’s warmth.

They sat that way for a while, the only sound the tap of rain starting up against the window and the low hum of the fridge.

Dawn spoke first. “We need to go soon,” she said, voice softer than the night before. “Not far. Just… we all want to make sure we’re ready for the Challenge. But that’s not why I’m telling you.” She met Andy’s eyes, her gaze steady. “It’s just, the girls are all nervous. Like, more than usual. I think they need to see you. Like, need need.”

Emily nodded, her expression turning serious. She squeezed Dawn’s hand, then let go, folding her arms across her chest, her hair shifting to cover her again. “She’s right,” Emily said. “You don’t have to do anything. Just… show up. It helps.”

Andy didn’t know what to say. There was something final in the way Dawn had put it, as if this was the last good breakfast they’d ever share, or the last time he’d get to be the “space heater” in the bed. But he understood: there was no longer safety in the form of vetoes availabe. This was the last elimination round. Everyone was waiting on him, maybe more than they realized. It was a familiar role—anchor, gravity well, the thing that kept the solar system of The HH from flying apart.

He nodded. “I’ll be there. Give me, like, an hour?”

Dawn smiled, relief passing over her face like sunlight behind a cloud. “Yeah. Take your time.” She leaned in, kissed him on the cheek, then on the mouth—soft, but with a little bite of mischief—and hopped off her stool to clean up the kitchen. Emily lingered a moment longer, watching him with a complicated expression, then slipped away as well. Andy heard her humming in the hallway, a tune he couldn’t quite place.

Dawn loaded the dishwasher, stacking the plates with almost ceremonial precision, then looked back at Andy. “You’re not alone, you know?” she said, not as a question, but as a fact.

Andy let the words settle in his chest, where they did what comfort always did: it hurt, but it also helped.

“Thanks,” he said, and meant it.

He watched as Dawn padded to the bedroom, her footsteps nearly silent on the tile. He stared at the table, at the ring of syrup left on his plate, at the coffee mug with its lipstick stain from Dawn’s smile. He let himself sit in the quiet for a long time, feeling the weight of the day gather, then recede, then gather again, just like it always did.

And when he was ready, he stood, stretched, and set about facing the rest of it.

---

The quiet that followed Dawn and Emily out of the Suite was a different kind of silence than the one before breakfast. This one was heavier, complicated—less like a prelude and more like the dense, low resonance of a bell that had been struck and was now fading, leaving behind the memory of sound in the hollows of the chest.

Andy stood in the Suite for a long time, doing nothing. No one else around. The air felt heavier now that she was gone, as if the act of forgiveness had used up all the oxygen in the room. He found himself drifting to the window, leaning his forehead against the glass. He watched the clouds curdle over the sea, watched the long, slow roll of the horizon. The ocean looked less like water today and more like a mood, as if the whole world had decided to wear its sadness on the outside.

Today was Laura’s birthday.

He made a show of moving around the Suite: showering, brushing his teeth, pulling on a clean shirt. But these were only gestures, borrowed from better mornings, and the emptiness in the rooms made him feel like a child rehearsing adulthood for a future that never arrived. He drifted from window to window, looking out at the endless, bruised horizon, and tried to convince himself he had a plan for the day.

Now that he was alone, it crashed over him all at once. He could picture the calendar from the house in Warrenville, the way his mom would circle birthdays in red, and the years after Laura died when the circle stayed, but no one ever said her name out loud.

There was an old rule in his family: on the birthdays of the dead, you light a candle, you say a prayer, you raise a glass, and you tell a story. His father had once said that grief was just memory with the volume turned all the way up, and Andy had never found a better explanation. He wondered, sometimes, if Laura’s own parents remembered this day, or if her birthday had simply been folded into the general cloud of everything they didn’t talk about.

For Andy, it was impossible not to remember. He remembered all of Laura’s birthdays as if they were a single, unbroken loop. Laura’s birthdays had always been celebrated in his house, never hers. Since she was five, she’d never wanted to celebrate at her own house—her father was never home, or if he was, he’d ruin it. So every year, she’d come over to Andy’s place, and his mother would bake a cake, always chocolate, never anything else. There’d be presents, some cheap, some homemade, some weird—his dad once bought her a chemistry set, which she loved, but she used it only once before she started making her own volcanoes out of cornstarch and ketchup.

The first one, the last year of kindergarten, she’d arrived an hour before the party started, hands empty, but face already bright with anticipation. His mother had baked a cake—yellow, with chocolate frosting, store-bought candles jammed in with loving fingers—and Laura had acted like it was the greatest gift in the world. There were presents from the Cooper family: a set of glitter pens, a book about the planets, a puzzle shaped like a wolf. Laura loved wolves, always had.

He remembered Laura’s face, always a little flushed, eyes wide as she stared at the cake, candles so bright they turned her irises silver-blue. He remembered how she’d pull him into a hug—never a quick one, always long enough that Andy would get awkward and try to wriggle free. “You’re stuck,” she’d say. “Birthday rules.” He remembered the smell of her hair, the sharp, clean scent of her shampoo and something like vanilla.

Andy remembered the way she’d clung to his mother’s waist at the end of the party, whispering a thank you with a softness that made Andy’s heart twist even then. He remembered the sleepovers, the movies, the nights when she would sneak into his room after everyone else was asleep, just to have someone hold her hand in the dark.

He remembered every year after: the scavenger hunts, the Nerf battles, the secret expeditions to the creek. He remembered the birthday at twelve when Laura, shy for the first time, had kissed him on the cheek and said, “When we’re grown up, we’ll get married for real.” He’d blushed, but he’d also believed her, in the way kids believe in gravity.

He remembered the last birthday before everything changed, when Laura had turned thirteen and the world had become suddenly, inexplicably dangerous. He remembered how his mother had insisted on making everything perfect that year—new dress for Laura, cake with three layers, even a rented karaoke machine. He remembered how Laura’s smile was wide but brittle, as if she already knew it would be the last time. He remembered the way she’d sat beside him on the porch after all the guests had left, her knees pulled up to her chin, her hair blown wild by the wind. He remembered the exact sound of her voice when she said, “Promise you’ll remember me, even if I get boring.”

He had promised. And he had kept it.

He kept it now, in the quiet of the Suite, with the sky so heavy it felt like the world was about to buckle.

Andy poured himself another cup of coffee—cold now, but he didn’t care—and stood at the window. He watched a set of birds, small and black, loop through the wind until they vanished. He pressed his fingers to the glass, traced a circle against the condensation.

He thought he was done crying, but the tears came anyway, silent and hot, blurring the horizon into a single smudge of blue and gray. He let them fall. It was easier now, with no one around to judge.

He wept, silent and hard, his forehead pressed to the cold glass, the mug of coffee trembling in his hand. He remembered Laura’s laugh, her impossible belief in everything, her stubborn refusal to let the world break her. He remembered the jagged edges, but he also remembered her heart, and how she always knew and regretted when she went too far. He remembered the way she’d made everyone braver, even him.

When he could finally breathe again, he wiped his eyes on his sleeve, and raised the mug in a slow, awkward toast. He **** himself to say it out loud, voice shredded but steady:

“Happy birthday, Laura. I hope you are out there, somewhere.”

He drank, and the bitterness of the coffee was exactly right.

For a while, Andy let himself sink. The Suite was a luxury mausoleum; the only noise was the wind rattling the window frames, and the soft hiss of the HVAC fighting the island’s humidity. He could have stayed in that numbness forever, but a sliver of obligation—maybe Dawn’s voice, maybe his own—nudged him out of it.

After a while, the pain faded into a slow ache. The ache had become a kind of ritual, as if he was obligated to keep it alive so she wouldn’t disappear completely. But today, he didn’t want to drown in it. Not again.

He saw the slim book Arabella had given him—The Prophet, by Khalil Gibran—lying on the corner of the table, just where he’d left it after his own birthday three days earlier. He hesitated, then picked it up, the cover still stiff, the gold letters worn at the edges.

He took it up now, feeling the weight of the day in his hands, and walked to the balcony.

The clouds had lowered since morning, flattening the light to a single dull wash. The air was thick with the promise of rain. Andy settled onto the lounge chair, tucking his knees up and resting the mug on the tiny side table. He let the breeze—what little made it this far up—cool his skin, and opened the book at random.

The first words he read were:

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

Andy felt them cleave through him, raw and unvarnished. He thought about Laura, about Erin, about Claire and all the girls who’d passed through the gravitational field of his life. He thought about the way love had always been a wound and a gift, a tether and a trap.

Andy read the lines twice, then a third time, as if repetition would dull the edge. He felt each word like a needle, precise and cruel, as if the book itself was trying to explain everything he’d never been able to say about what Laura meant to him.

He ran a finger under the last line—though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden—and felt the cold in his bones.

The wind picked up, whipping the thin pages of the book. Andy let it, turning his gaze to the sea, the point where the gray of the sky and the gray of the water blurred into nothing. He closed his eyes, letting the words settle.

He thought about how, for years, he’d built his life around loss. How even when he tried to move forward, it felt like cheating. Like he was betraying Laura by not being as broken as he was supposed to be.

He flipped ahead, hoping for comfort, but found only this, from the chapter on ****:

If you would indeed behold the spirit of ****, open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and **** are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

He felt something in him crack, not a breaking but a slow, quiet shift. The words were too perfect, almost cliche, but that didn’t matter. They belonged to him now, the way all the best wounds did. He closed the book, pressing it flat against his sternum. The words vibrated there, both a condemnation and a balm.

He let himself remember every birthday, every hug, every dumb, beautiful thing Laura had ever said to him. He let it hurt, but not so much that it hollowed him out. Andy let himself imagine, for a moment, what Laura would have said if she could see him now. Probably some trash talk about the shirt he was wearing. Probably a dare to cannonball off the balcony, just to see if The HH would let him respawn. Or maybe she’d curl up next to him like she used to do on those bad days, and let him have this: the quiet, the coffee, the memory, the pain.

He raised the mug again, not in a toast this time, but as a kind of signal—a message sent across the gray water, toward whatever was waiting beyond the horizon.

He watched the horizon, waited for the light to shift, and let himself believe—even for just a minute—that love and loss were one thing, not two.

He whispered the words, barely audible, but it didn’t matter. No one else needed to hear.

"Happy birthday, Laura."

---

The world went flat with the weather. Even the clock on the wall seemed to count the seconds in a different register, dragging the digits through syrup. Andy let the silence have him for as long as it wanted, propped on the balcony, one hand curled around his mug, the other around the spine of Gibran’s book. He tried to read but the words wouldn’t settle, only looped through the same phrases, becoming less like wisdom and more like a dare with every repetition.

He heard the elevator’s buzz—a soft click, followed by the low whine of machinery. At first, he ignored it. Let the visitors wait, he thought. But after three more insistent pings, Andy uncurled himself from the chair and moved inside.

Andy ran his fingers through his hair as he made for the foyer, feeling the static charge of anxiety build in his skin. He pressed the green icon, and the doors parted, spilling in a draft of chill, ozone-heavy air. Erin and Claire stood in the hallway.

Erin was nude, of course, the mint-green skin of her transformation showing everywhere, her nipples and areolae a darker, deeper moss. She’d tied her hair into a ponytail, but the effect was less “put-together” than “bare minimum required to avoid strangulation.” Erin’s gaze was locked on a point six feet behind Andy’s head, and her jaw was clenched in the kind of tension that had nothing to do with embarrassment.

Claire was a study in contrast: she wore a navy blue hoodie, the hood up over her cat ears, and a pleated skirt, white at the hem. The hoodie was zipped to her chin, but her tail whipped out behind her in quick, agitated sweeps, as if making up for the lack of exposed skin. Her hands were stuffed into the front pouch, and she barely looked up when the doors opened.

Andy stepped aside, gestured them in with a small, inviting sweep. “Come on,” he said, voice still raw from the morning’s emotional work. “It’s open.”

They entered together, but neither quite looked at him. He caught the weird push-pull between them instantly: two people walking in step, but each on a different mission. Erin walked with the shoulders of someone heading to a firing squad; Claire moved with the silent, predatory focus of a panther waiting for the right moment to pounce.

He closed the elevator doors, then followed them to the living area, where the furniture looked like it had been staged for a catalog. He hovered by the couch, uncertain.

Erin spoke first. “Hey,” she said, not looking up. The word came out flat, even. She scanned the ceiling, the windows, the light—everything except him.

“Hey,” Andy answered, taking a seat on the edge of the armchair. “You okay?”

Erin exhaled, a short, sharp sound. “Not sure.” She finally made eye contact, and for a moment her pupils dilated, the way they always did when she got aroused. It used to be a joke between them—how looking at him made her wet, how it had gone from embarrassment to weapon in the span of a few weeks—but this time there was no playfulness to it. “Can we… is it okay if we sit? Or do you want to stand?”

He shrugged, and patted the cushion beside him. “Sit. Please.” He watched as Erin crossed the floor and perched on the far edge of the couch, legs tucked under, hands in her lap. Her breasts pulled her a little forward, but she made no attempt to hide or cover them.

Claire hung back, a shadow by the sideboard. Andy gave her a gentle nod. Claire’s face was blank, but her tail wrapped tight around her right leg. She slid onto the ottoman, folded her knees up, and took out her notebook. For a moment, she wrote nothing, only traced the lines of the page with her finger, as if reminding herself the world was still made of paper and ink.

Erin stared at the carpet, then at Andy, then back at the carpet. “It’s not the usual, you know,” she said, voice lower now. “With the sky like that. My… condition. It’s new. I don’t know what happens if I don’t get sun for a while.”

Andy remembered, suddenly, the wording of the transformation: immune to temperature extremes, could photosynthesize for energy, but if deprived of sunlight, she’d become lethargic, and then—if that failed—she’d need him to “tend” her. No one had explained what that entailed. The manual on magical transformations was notably silent on what to do when your girlfriend turned into a houseplant.

Of course, this being Harem Hotel, Andy could imagine a few scenarios.

He reached out, hand steady, and let it rest on Erin’s forearm. Her skin was cool and waxy, but the pulse beneath it was quick and alive. “We’ll figure it out,” he said. “If you need sunlight, we’ll get you a grow lamp. If you need me, I’m here. Always.”

Erin’s lips twitched. Not a smile, exactly, but something approaching one. “I hope it doesn’t come to that,” she said. “But… thank you.” She leaned into his hand, just a little. Andy watched the stress lines soften at the corners of her eyes.

He looked over at Claire, who’d started writing. She finished a line, then hesitated, then held the notepad out so both could see:

I had a dream.

Andy waited. Claire flipped to the next page, writing as she went.

Not a nightmare. Not exactly. Just… weird. It was about Arabella, and Anna, and a man. They made me do something at an altar. They called me "Child of Bast." They called the man “Herman.” I don’t remember much of it.

She paused, noticing Andy’s start, then wrote in a different, hurried script:

Do you know him?

Andy’s memory flickered, hard. “Maintenance guy,” he said aloud, more to himself than to Claire. “From the elevator, six weeks ago. The day I had to vote for the First Challenge.” He remembered the odd, off-script conversation, the sly humor, the way the man had given Andy a half-second to read the challenge screen before “fixing” the bug. “He called himself Herman. He wore a yellow hard hat and sneakers. I thought it was a bit.”

Erin glanced at him. “I don’t get it.”

Andy shook his head. “It’s nothing. I just… I didn’t expect him to show up in a dream.”

Claire scribbled again.

It wasn’t a normal dream. It felt… staged. Like a ritual. Arabella was different. Sadder. Anna called me “Child of Bast” too. They said I was important. That I belonged.

She paused, then added in smaller print:

I don’t know what they want from me. I woke up and couldn’t stop shaking.

Andy read the words, then looked up at Claire. Her hands were trembling, just as she’d described, but her eyes were clear and open, demanding something from him—reassurance, or context, or maybe just someone to say, “You’re not crazy.”

He gave her what he could. “Sometimes, in this place, dreams are just another version of a message,” he said. “Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s Arabella’s way of prepping us for whatever comes next. But you’re not alone in it. I’ve seen Herman too. He’s real. Or as real as anything gets in the HH.”

Claire’s tail loosened a fraction. She wrote:

Thank you. I needed to tell someone.

Andy nodded. “Anytime.”

The three of them sat in silence for a while, the kind of hush that wasn’t empty, but full of all the things that couldn’t be said aloud. Andy studied the women on either side of him, feeling the ache in his chest shift from grief to something else—something softer, but more urgent. They’d all come to him today, in different ways. They’d all needed a place to land, even if only for a moment.

He didn’t want to let go. Not yet.

Erin shifted, her skin brushing Andy’s bare thigh. “Today’s a rough day, huh?” she said, more a statement than a question.

He didn’t ask how she knew. She always knew. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s Laura’s birthday.”

Claire’s hand shot out, found his, and squeezed. Erin pressed her shoulder to his, the warmth grounding him. He was surrounded by women, again—different ones, but no less important. He could feel the old pain and the new comfort at war inside him, neither strong enough to win.

Eventually, Erin broke the stillness. “Want to walk?” she asked, voice tentative. “The gardens might be… less awful than inside.”

Andy nodded, and looked to Claire. She shrugged, a quick, animal gesture, then tucked her notebook into her hoodie and stood, ready.

---

They exited through the lobby and into the main hallway. The shift in the air was immediate: the smell of rain, the damp, the faint buzz of electricity in the vents. Andy held the doors for both women, and they passed through as if it were a practiced routine.

The inner gardens of the HH were a single, perfect illusion: stone paths, perfectly symmetrical beds of flowers, and benches set at calculated intervals for moments of reflection. Today, the whole place felt subdued, as if the world itself was waiting for permission to wake up. The usual riot of color had been suppressed; the hibiscus flowers hung limp, their red and yellow petals darkened by the flat, gray light. Even the koi in the pond moved slow, as if wary of breaking the surface.

They walked without speaking, each step making a soft print in the wet grass. Andy felt the proximity of Erin on his left and Claire on his right, the small gestures of comfort and unease telegraphed through the shifting of hands, the brush of elbows.

They reached the far end of the path, near a cluster of low, mossy stones. Erin stopped, turned her face up to the sky, eyes closed. “I don’t think the sun’s coming out today,” she said.

Andy moved closer, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. She let herself lean into him, her breasts heavy against his chest, the mint-green skin cool but growing warmer by the second. “We can wait,” he said.

Claire stood at a slight remove, arms crossed, tail arced high behind her. She studied the flowers with a kind of hungry focus, as if she could solve the puzzle of her dream just by outstaring the world.

Andy let his gaze linger on her. “You okay?”

She nodded, but then turned to face him squarely. She mimed writing, then hesitated, hands hanging in the air. For a second, Andy thought she might cry, but instead she simply reached for his other hand, squeezing it once.

He squeezed back. “You’re allowed to need things, Claire,” he said.

She let go, then pulled her hood down, exposing the full sweep of her cat ears, and let the wind ruffle them. The gesture was so ****, so naked, that Andy felt his own guard slip. He wanted to say something poetic, or maybe just something true, but the words failed him.

Instead, he let the silence be enough.

They walked together, single file, Claire at the front this time. The path was slick with dew, and the air carried the promise of coming rain. Every few feet, Claire would stop, point at a flower or a bug or a weird patch of moss, and Erin would lean in, pretending to give a scientific analysis but really just making things up as she went. Andy let them pull him along, grateful for the distraction, for the simplicity of the moment.

They found a bench in a patch of weak sunlight. Erin sprawled across it, one foot on the seat and the other on the ground. Claire sat at the far end, her notebook in her lap, but this time she didn’t write.

Andy stood for a second, then sat between them. Erin put her head on his shoulder; Claire leaned her tail against his thigh. He was bookended by women who needed him, and maybe that was enough. Maybe that was all Laura ever wanted for him.

The line from Gibran wouldn’t leave his head.

And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

He looked at Erin, her eyes half-closed but watchful. He looked at Claire, whose attention was fixed on a bee exploring a hibiscus bloom. He looked at the sky, then the sea, then his own hands, lined and trembling but steady where it counted.

He didn’t say the words aloud. Not yet. They were too raw, too true.

But he held them, the way he held the two women now—gently, as if the act of letting go might break the world in half.