Page 50 of Aïdes the Unseen
“Or something that wants to be one.” He walked to the door but paused before opening it. “She won’t be just your decision, you know. The others… some of them will come. Sooner than you think.”
“I’m counting on it,” I said.
He gave me a long look, somewhere between warning and approval, and then vanished down the hall. Alone again, I activated the display on the far wall. It glowed with the information.
Irina Bloom.
Human designation: Artist.
Energy designation: In flux.
She hadn’t dreamed yet. Those would come soon. The memories always found a way in. When they did, this time, if we were careful, she wouldn’t only remember what she was.
She might choose it.
Chapter
Nine
IRINA
Three days passed.
The puppy still hadn’t barked.
He slept most of the time, curled near the windowsill or beneath the old fern by the kitchen, as if the apartment were his burrow. I kept calling him temporary, but the longer he stayed, the more the label started to feel like a lie.
I hadn’t named him. I told myself I was waiting for the right word, but maybe I was just afraid to claim something I didn’t understand. Naming him would mean admitting I wanted him to stay, and letting him stay meant allowing something else to take root. As strange as the thoughts were, I didn’t deny them.
Thankfully, I could take him to work with me. The Greenhouse Annex wasn’t the kind of place that followed strict rules, not when it came to lifeforms of any kind, really. I brought his blanket and tucked him under the desk in my office, near the big window where sun pooled through by noon.
He made for a silent companion. Observant. Growing stronger every day.
We had a rhythm now. Morning check-ins with the sensors inFuture Flora,a walkthrough of the propagation corridors, then updates to the interactive installations—adjusting scent diffusers, reprogramming the ambient pulse reactions forRegrowth, that sort of thing. If he joined me, he’d pad quietly between the aisles of bioreactive flora like a tiny curator.
Somehow, no one questioned his presence. Maybe they didn’t see him. Or maybe they just knew not to ask.
After work, I’d settle him into the basket on my bike and we’d glide up the trail toward Williamsburg, the city shifting around us like a breeze. At night, after dinner and a walk through the park, we returned to a peace that was no longer just mine.
When the next storm promised, we went to bed early. A soft headache had been building behind my eyes since sunset. A pulse like a second heartbeat, slow and steady, hammering an ancient drumbeat.
I dreamed of soil.
Rich, black, humming with life. I was buried in it, but I could breathe. I wasn’t afraid. My fingers curled into the dirt like silk. Something was growing around me—through me—roots twisting into my ribs, my spine, my lungs. Not choking. Connecting.
And far above, a voice.
Low, like thunder in a cavern. Not words. Just presence. Ancient and?—
I woke in the dark. Not just early-dark. Wrong-dark. Thicker than it should’ve been, like sleep hadn’t fully let go.
The puppy was at the foot of the bed, standing still, silent. Watching me. Not whining. Not pawing at the sheets. Just—waiting.
I sat up slowly, the air oddly still, and rubbed my eyes. The faint strip of streetlight across the floor felt like the only real thing in the room.
He looked different in the half-light. Taller, maybe. Limbs stretched longer than they had any right to be. But when I reached out, he licked my palm like always—soft, grounding.
Still real.
