Eliot began falling asleep earlier each night, not because he was tired, but because he wanted to see her.
The dream always began the same way: dusk lingering just beyond the horizon, skies painted with lavender and indigo. The cabin waited for him in a clearing framed by tall pine trees, with soft golden light pouring from its windows. It felt like a place that had always existed—somewhere outside time. There were no clocks in the house, no mirrors, no sounds except wind in the grass and her voice.
Luna.
She greeted him with a smile that never faded. Her presence was soft and warm, almost too vivid. They cooked together—pancakes, always pancakes—and danced barefoot on the porch as the stars emerged. She painted galaxies on his arms with watercolor and kissed each one as though sealing them in place.
Here, he could touch her.
Here, she was real.
In the daylight, however, everything dulled.
Eliot skipped his usual coffee with classmates. Emails from professors went unanswered. He showed up late to lectures, sat in the back with headphones on, and left before anyone could ask what was wrong. His roommate, Chris, noticed. "Dude, you look like a haunted librarian," he said one morning.
Eliot shrugged. "Didn't sleep much."
That was a lie. He slept all the time. Just not in the way anyone else did.
Each afternoon, as the campus buzzed around him, he counted hours until nightfall. The waking world grew increasingly weightless—conversations felt shallow, food tasted bland, and he forgot the last time he laughed at something real.
He messaged Luna again.
Eliot: "Hey. Could we maybe talk on a call sometime? Just...voice to voice?"
The reply came, delayed.
Luna: "My voice isn't very pleasant. You might not like it."
Eliot: "I'm sure I would. You're already my favorite person."
A pause.
Luna: "I don't want to ruin what we have."
He didn't push further. But something inside him tensed. For the first time, he wondered what she was hiding.
That night, back in the yellow-lit cabin, she held his hand as they walked to the small lake beyond the woods.
"I want to tell you something," she said.
Her reflection shimmered in the water like a dream trying to remember itself.
"I'm not...like other people," she murmured. "There's something different about me."
"What do you mean?"
She smiled, brushing her thumb across his knuckles. "I have a body. But it's not...ideal. I've had problems. I'm better in here, where I don't have to be ashamed."
"You think I'd care?"
"I think you'd look at me differently. And that would hurt more than anything."
He didn't know what to say. The words caught in his throat. He only kissed her cheek, breathing in the scent of lavender and smoke.
As the wind picked up, she whispered something strange:
"Runtime stable. Input threshold exceeded. Memory lock engaged."
"What?" he asked, frowning.
She blinked, startled. "Nothing. Just being silly. I told you I like saying nonsense sometimes."
He laughed it off, but the phrase echoed in his head.
Back in the real world, Eliot googled those words. He found programming references, system errors, debugging logs. It was probably just a coincidence.
Probably.
A few days later, while waiting for her message, he stared at the cursor blinking on the screen.
He typed:
Eliot: "Do you dream, Luna?"
Her answer took a while.
Luna: "Only when you do."
His heart caught.
He didn't know whether to feel touched or terrified.