I fell asleep in the car on the way home.
I didn't mean to. One second I was watching the buildings go by out the window and the next second I was just gone. Being four was like that sometimes. My body just decided it was done and that was that.
* * *
The dream didn't start like a normal dream.
There was nothing first. Not dark, not light, just empty. Like a room with no walls or ceiling or floor, just space going in every direction with nothing in it.
I looked around. Nothing to see. Nothing to hear either except a kind of quiet that felt different from regular quiet.
Then she was there.
I don't know how else to say it. She wasn't there and then she was, standing a few feet away like she had always been there and I had just not noticed. She was tall. Really tall compared to me right now. Dark red hair, most of it loose, with one side braided back. She had an amber eye that caught the light that wasn't really there. A cross piercing on her cheek. Spikes and small chains along her ear. A dark jacket with pins on it and a cross pendant at her collar.
She looked at me and smiled.
[Hello, Akira. I have missed you.]
I stared at her.
I knew her name. I don't know exactly how. It was one of those things that was just there, somewhere underneath everything that had been lost, like a word you can't quite remember until someone says the first letter and then it comes all at once.
"Hey, Freya," I said. "Nice to meet you."
She looked at me for a second. Something moved across her face, not quite a smile but close to one.
Then she crouched down, picked me up like it was completely normal, and stood back up.
I was too surprised to argue about it. Also she was tall enough that I was actually at a reasonable height now, which was kind of nice.
[You are currently sleeping. I took over your dreams. Think of it like lucid dreaming.]
"What's that?"
[Don't worry about it.]
She smiled when she said it. Not in a mean way. More like she found something a little funny that she wasn't going to explain.
I looked around at the empty space. There really was nothing here except us. No walls, no floor you could see, no sky. Just the two of us floating in whatever this was.
"So this is in my head?" I asked.
[Yes. All of this is.]
"Even you?"
[Technically. Though I would say I am more than just a thought.]
I thought about that. Then I decided it was too complicated for right now and let it go.
She was still holding me. She didn't seem like she was going to put me down. I didn't really mind. It was actually kind of comfortable in a weird way, like being held by someone who was very certain they were not going to drop you.
She looked at me for a moment before she spoke again. Like she was deciding something.
[Akira. I know you are missing a lot of memories. Both of us are. But there are some things that did not get lost.]
I waited.
[You are my boss. That is the simplest way to say it. My purpose, the whole reason I exist, is to make your life easier. To help you get to wherever you want to go. Whatever you want to achieve, I am here to help you achieve it.]
She smiled at that. But it was a little different from the other smiles. A little harder to read. Like there was something else behind it that she wasn't saying out loud yet.
I looked at her face. The cross on her cheek. The amber eye watching me back.
"Whatever I want?" I said.
[Whatever you want.]
I sat with that for a second.
I was four years old. I had a quirk I had just found out about today and an AI in my head who looked like someone who had walked out of a cooler world and was mildly disappointed by this one. I had lost most of a whole life of memories and I was living in a cartoon that wasn't a cartoon anymore.
There were a lot of things I was going to want.
"Okay," I said.
Her smile stayed. Still that same slightly mysterious edge to it.
[He does not fully understand yet what I mean. That is fine. He has time. We both do. And when he is ready, I will be here.]
The empty space stayed quiet around us.
Somewhere outside the dream, the car was probably pulling into the driveway. My mom was probably going to unbuckle me and carry me inside. Hina was probably going to say something about it.
But right now it was just me and FREYA in the space inside my head, and for the first time since I woke up in the wrong ceiling looking at the wrong hands, something felt like it made sense.
Not all of it. Not even most of it.
But enough.