Ashes to Ashes

The Therapist Office

Luna slouched deeper into the couch like she was trying to merge with it. Her hoodie hood was up, boots were still muddy from whatever half-assed trail she’d stomped through to get here, and her expression was a masterclass in Do Not Engage.

Dr. Vega, meanwhile, had mastered the look of a woman who had seen too much weird s**t to be impressed anymore. She crossed one leg over the other, pad in her lap, pen poised but not scribbling. Yet.

“Sleep any better this week?”

Luna shrugged. “Define better.”

“Less nightmares?”

“They’re not nightmares. I don’t wake up screaming or anything.” A pause. “I just… wake up wrong.”

Dr. Vega raised an eyebrow. “Wrong how?”

Luna stared at the little fake bonsai on the table between them. “Like I wake up burning. Not like, on fire. But like I was fire. And it’s gone. Like I got snuffed out.”

There. Said it out loud. Sounded insane. She waited for the diagnosis: delusional, maybe pyromaniac-adjacent.

But Dr. Vega only nodded, scribbled something.

“You said something similar last week,” she said. “You described it as ‘forgetting something important as soon as you wake up.’”

“I didn’t mean it literally.”

“I didn’t say you did.” She tilted her head. “But it’s recurring. These dreams — or memories, or whatever they are — always end with fire, don’t they?”

“…Yeah.”

“And a man’s voice?”

Luna’s jaw tightened.

Dr. Vega flipped back in her notes. “You’ve never named him.”

“I don’t know his name,” Luna snapped. Too fast. Too defensive.

“But you know him,” the therapist said gently.

Luna crossed her arms. “Not everything’s symbolic. Sometimes a dream is just a dream.”

Dr. Vega gave a little smile. “Sometimes. But let’s humor the idea that this one isn’t. That it’s not random. What do you feel, when you see him?”

“Cold.” The word escaped before she could think. “Like he’s made of winter.”

“And yet,” Dr. Vega said, “you run toward him.”

Luna said nothing. Her tongue felt thick. Her throat, tight.

“Not like Dominic,” the therapist added.

Luna stiffened. “Don’t—”

“You ran from Dominic, even in your dreams. You told me that.”

“He’s dead.”

“Is he?”

The air between them snapped taut. Luna looked up slowly.

Dr. Vega’s expression didn’t change. “I mean, metaphorically.”

Luna blinked. Thought about the last few days. About the static electricity she couldn’t shake, the dreams that left ashes on her tongue. About the odd flashes of gold in her eyes she kept seeing in mirrors. The way she’d smelled ozone after just walking past streetlamps.

Something was waking up.

And she didn’t know if it was her, or something in her.

“I don’t know who I am anymore,” she muttered.

“That,” Dr. Vega said softly, “is where we begin.”