So much for teaching. You creep forward, acutely aware that you'll be getting an earful if she wakes, and rest your fingertips on her gummy forehead. You'd normally look in her eyes, but they're closed, maybe sutured closed. Whatever. You shut your own eyes and see her fluttering strings, your hot bright core— what did Richard call communion once? Commingling? Press your hot bright fingers deeper— ignore her mumbling, or you'll feel bad— and let her strings wrap themselves around you, and feel something, and focus very hard on feeling that something more. In and through. Come on now. You've done it before.

In and through until you slip weightless through gauze and are suffocating. You are wet and it is cold and clinging and you are immobilized and choking on blue. Not drowning. You did that already. And not dying, not really, because you can't do that. Positive thinking. You aren't where you were, meaning you must be dreaming. Meaning you can be anywhere, and you aren't choking on anything, and so you aren't. You are pleased with your perspicacity.

When you said dreaming, you meant you were participating in a dream. This is Claudia's dream, and the goo is her invention— unlimited guesses where she got that from. You doubt she knows she's dreaming. If she knows anything, she knows that she's dying, maybe dissolving, or dead already.

An ordinary search would take hours or days. The goo is uncaring, featureless, and more opaque than it isn't. You'd have to dig crisscrossing tunnels. But you think about the Herald appearing, disappearing, and say, out loud, "Claudia." And then she's there, or else you're where she is, and she's a dark smudge in the blue, and you have to scrape huge wobbling chunks away to even see her face— eyes open, bulging, unblinking. When you yank her out, she gargles and hacks blue down your misty front. You hold her as she does, even though you don't know her. Even though she's rarely very pleasant. You hold her because she doesn't have parents either.

Still, you're disconcerted when she raises glazed eyes to your face and says, tremulously, "Mom?", and even more disconcerted when your body, such as it is, begins to ripple into not-your-body. Claudia hugs you and sobs into not-your-chest and you don't know what to do— leave her? But you're not—

There's a sharp tug at the small of your back, and you're tugged with it, pulled cleanly free of the woman Claudia clings to. Henry tries to pat your shoulder, but his hand goes through. "Careful."

"I was fine," you whisper, "I just—"

"I'm sure you would've gotten out of it, but this is a little more convenient. Poor kid." He's gazing at Claudia. "Do you think you or her have it worse?"

"What? I— I— I don't— um, I think positive, so—"

(3/a lot)