The inn was warm. A little too warm, actually.
It was one of those golden-hours kind of afternoons, where the sun soaked the walls in soft oranges and long shadows, where tea cups clicked gently against saucers, and the silence started to stretch like a rubber band pulled just a bit too far.
They'd waited.
One day.
A full day. And Jeremy hadn't shown up.
Peri twirled his spoon, watching the dregs of his tea spiral like a galaxy. His leg bounced under the table—not from worry, no, just from habit. Maybe.
Amalia sat by the window, knees hugged to her chest, her black-on-pink hair catching the fading light like spilled ink and roses.
Her onyx eyes flicked toward him.
"I think," Peri said slowly, "we should go ahead."
She blinked. "Without Jeremy?"
He gave her a crooked little smile, the kind that seemed tailor-made to be trusted. "Mhm. He'll catch up. Probably just got held up by the Count household. They're pretty tight on security, yeah?"
Amalia tilted her head. "Oh... right. He did say they were being strict this season..."
Peri nodded along, sipping tea. "Yup, totally. Lots of rules. Fancy people problems."
Pause.
Wait.
Did he actually say that? Or did I just... say that?
He blinked, hiding the flicker of confusion behind a soft exhale. His thoughts slid sideways. Again. Like butter on a hot pan.
Cool. New memory drop. Must be Tuesday.
"You trust him, right?" he asked.
Amalia nodded quickly. "Of course."
"Then he'll find us."
She looked down at her hands. "Would he be mad if we left?"
Peri set down his cup and leaned forward, resting his arms on the table.
"Do you think Jeremy gets mad at you for making a decision?"
"No..."
"Exactly." He beamed. "He'll pout. Maybe guilt-trip us a little. But he'd never get mad."
There was a long pause.
Then he added, softer, "Huh. That... sounded rehearsed."
She glanced up. "What?"
"Nothing," Peri grinned, waving it off. "Character synchronization jazz, probably. It's like deja vu, but more spiritual and less cool-sounding."
Or maybe it's me being puppeted by a dead script and smiling through it. Either way.
The next morning, they left.
The innkeeper wished them well. The carriage creaked along the dirt road like it had done it a thousand times before—which it probably had, in a hundred versions of the same story.
Peri walked beside Amalia in the dawn mist. Her cloak was drawn up, hood lowered over her face. She kept glancing back every few minutes.
He didn't ask. Yet.
An hour passed in relative silence before she said, "You're not worried?"
"Nope," Peri replied cheerfully.
Absolutely. I am vibrating with anxiety. If I vibrate harder I'll phase through this damn dimension.
"But... Jeremy said he'd meet us. What if something happened to him?"
"Something probably did," he said brightly, like they were talking about the weather. "He's not exactly normal. He attracts things."
She bit her lip.
I don't even know what that means. Why did I say that.
Oh. Wait.
Was that in the summary?
...There wasn't a summary about Jeremy. Was there?
Peri gave her a comforting smile. "We'll see him soon."
"But what if this changes everything?"
He stopped walking and looked back at her, sunlight catching on his glasses.
"You're allowed to change things, Ama," he said softly. "Even in someone else's story."
Amalia stared at him, visibly shaken—but slowly nodded.
And just like that, she walked beside him again.
She didn't ask why he suddenly seemed to know what to say.
He didn't ask himself why it hurt to say it.
That night, beneath the canopy of unfamiliar stars, Peri lay on his back in the grass while Amalia slept a few feet away, curled like a child trying to shrink into the smallest version of herself.
The stars blinked lazily above.
Not right. Too many blue ones. That one's shaped like a sword. That one's twitching. Stars don't twitch. Do they?
He sighed.
"This isn't how the story went, is it?"
Silence.
"Eh, probably not," he answered himself, then turned to stare at the trees.
"Still. Kind of nice, isn't it?"
His smile curled gently. Soft. Sweet.
Detached.
Behind his eyes, his thoughts chewed at the edges of the world like termites.