She couldn't remember when it started or how it was. So young, she didn't have memories of then, but her grandmother always had lots of stories. During the day, when she came back to their space after her daily lessons, her grandmother would sit in a chair by their false window depicting a fake rainstorm and tell her of the time when everyone was allowed outside. No one else listened to the stories. Her father went to his room, her mother to hers, and her sister to somewhere far from all of them. Her mother always said her grandmother remembered too much. "Do you remember the rain?" Her grandmother would ask her each evening. She shook her head. Her grandmother's memory of the present always seemed to slip away while the distant past remained perfectly preserved. "Oh, of course not. You were so young then. I remember when they brought you home, it was raining. The wind...the wind was howling. The goddess descended down on us with you in her arms and the sky was singing." Her grandmother recalled. "We could all go outside then. We went outside that day. I held you on the front porch as the thunder rolled in. This videos in the windows are nice, but there's no sound. If only you could hear it, the thunder...feel the humid air rise on your skin...the lightning dance across the darkened clouds...how the whole world can be moved around you by the power of a storm...If only you could see it once...feel the power..." She looked at the false window. Every room had one always playing a different scenery with different weather. They never synced with each other, as it didn't matter. It was only to make them forget they could never see outside again. No one could go outside without getting sick. That's what they were told. It had to be like this. They couldn't have real windows because sick people would break through them and spread their diseases to them. To protect their safety, they had other rules. They were given all their things by the company that rescued them, Moone & Wolfe Corp. At the head of the company was Dr. Edith Summerfield and the one they called the goddess, Miss Delilah. All rules and resources came from the two of them. Those who couldn't follow the rules were eliminated for the protection of everyone. Every day, the food was the same. Their clothes were all the same in the same dreary colors of white, black, and grey. Only Miss Delilah was allowed any color at all, a bit of red always on her dresses. The long hallways of their building were white, as were all the rooms. The only exception to this were the false windows littered about that showed scenery videos. For safety reasons, no flowers or non-human animals were allowed in the building outside of in food. Most consumed a daily biscuit enriched with all the nutrition one needed in a day. Most days, this is what she ate. When she was visited by the good doctor, Edith, or by the goddess, Delilah, she was given other foods. The higher ups never ate the nutrition biscuit. Those who weren't foolish knew very well the people higher up in the company got things the average person did not. Eating was as joyless as everything else. In the morning and at night, she took her medicine provided by the company. They all did. Failure to take assigned medicine at proper dosages resulted in removal or death. She didn't like the way the medicine they gave her made her feel. It was supposed to keep her moods steady, but she only felt empty while taking it. The few times she'd secretly stopped for a while made her very aware of what was missing when she took them as ordered. There was no stopping forever though. She had to keep taking the pills after a month or so, as that was how often she received her mental health evaluation. During the evaluation, she would be hooked to a machine that registered her emotional reactions and whether she was lying or being truthful. She hated that machine. It was always cold and heavy on her head. She would've given anything to be outside in that world her grandmother described. Her grandmother told her stories about spring flowers in every color, snowy winters, spacious locations and a real sky that changed as often as the breeze. She wanted to be out there. She wanted to be out there back then, before everything happened. That want was so strong, it entered her dreams. She couldn't imagine the places her grandmother described full of people. When she dreamt of going outside, the world was empty and in deep decay. Rusty metal, decaying wood, broken glass, cracked roads. The desolate space she entered there, dead as it was, felt more real than anything she ever saw when she was awake. She didn't mind the emptiness. With all the people that surrounded her here, she always felt alone. An empty world was more comforting than terrifying. She enjoyed walking through those places devoid of people. She would wander through old, abandoned buildings and play on playgrounds barely standing. She couldn't get sick in her dreams. There was no fear of touching anything contaminated. She ran her hands over the rusty places intentionally. There, in that space, everything was more real than she could comprehend with her normal senses awake. Colors were deeper, sensations stronger, textures far more detailed. She enjoyed sleeping because of this. It was waking and coming back to real emptiness that she hated. She wanted to wander that empty space forever. Sometimes, she saw a boy in that empty landscape. The boy was always her age, no matter how old she got. He had dark brown hair and eyes that matched. His clothes were usually in shades of green, though a different color than the grey-green his voice carried. Rather than that soft shade he echoed out, he draped himself in the colors of a forest. His eyes, deep and dark, always reflected brilliant blue stars and a city skyline of a place she couldn't name. When they met, he was sometimes cold, sometimes distant, sometimes kind. She could never quite reach out to him, but no matter how much the unspoken barrier between them thickened, she could never shake the strange familiarity that existed between them when no words were exchanged. She wanted to touch him, grab his hand, and go somewhere. A place she knew, but didn't know. A landscape in blue under a dark night, a rainstorm in July like the ones her grandmother pined for, a field beyond the rusted metal and rotten wood. Somewhere only their eyes could see the significance of, and the significance was that it was nothing special at all beyond being where they were to go. As she wandered, she often begged for his name, but he would never give it. Whenever she got close to knowing his name, his face vanished along with the world. All that remained was darkness below her and the empty night sky above her. The world would hum louder and louder until she woke. Then the memory of his all too clear face from the early parts of her dream would disappear from her entirely, leaving behind only the factual details without any imagery to accompany them. Brown hair, brown eyes, pale skin. The information was as empty as the screen projecting unattainable scenery beside her bed. The other person she saw in her dreams was a man. He never changed in age. His hair was dark too, and so were his eyes, but the texture of the hair was different and the eyes much brighter. His skin was darker than hers, and much darker than the boy's. She often compared him and the boy. In the man's eyes, she saw a calm, blue river beneath far more stars than the boy's eyes contained. His hair was much longer too, coming down in waves. If she held her breath when the wind passed through them, those strands transformed into the sea suspended in air. Rocking back and forth, dangerous and inviting. If she stared at him for too long, she knew somehow she would drown. His eyes were like the moon, encircling her in movements she couldn't escape, nor could he. Rather than the forest, he was dressed in the color of blood and gold. His presence didn't give her the sense of summer the boy's did, but that of a long ended autumn. She wanted and feared him far more than the boy. Whenever they met, the same as the man, she never changed in age either. She was always an adult when she encountered the man. He didn't take her anywhere. When they met, they always stayed in place. The world seemed to move in reverse when he was near. She always felt like she was falling with him. Any moment, everything would crash down. The ground cracked beneath her feet in his presence. What was beneath her, she couldn't imagine. What lay buried beneath the earth, deep, deep underground, she knew it wanted to rise to the surface and swallow her whole. She wanted to know the feeling and know nothing. Unlike the boy, she didn't need to ask the man's name. She always knew it, but it left her when morning came. Tonight, she wondered which she would see. Would it be the boy who's name she could never catch or the man she could not escape? Or, as it often was, would she be alone again in that lonely place? Her grandmother put her hands up to pretend to push the air. "I wish I could take you out there. I've always wanted to play with you on a swing. You know, we used to have a swing set before it all happened. You only got to play on it a few times, but I'd push you and you'd want to swing for hours. You'd tell me you wanted to keep going so the wind would always stay on you. You'd reach your little feet towards the sky and tell me you wanted to fly away." "I wish I knew how to fly." She said. "Yes, you were always asking me how to learn to fly. I told you it was something only adults could do, but I wished I could make you fly to the sky." Her grandmother smiled widely. "To see you up there, sitting on a cloud and looking down at us all, my little angel...I wish I could've...I wish I could've helped you...but I've always been a monster." "What do you mean by that?" She asked. Her grandmother looked down. "Don't worry about it, dear. You'll know one day." Her grandmother said nothing else of the past for the rest of the day. After dinner, she spoke with her grandmother again before heading to bed. She couldn't get her grandmother to answer her properly about what was the 'monstrous' thing her grandmother did. All she got was the same vague answer. She went to bed early after that. As she rested in her bed, wishing to leave this empty place and wishing to never wake up again, her bedroom door opened. The goddess entered her room. She walked over to the false window that currently showed a starry scene. "You're not asleep yet. Not at this hour. We are ones we enjoy the darkened sky." "Miss Delilah...why are you here tonight?" She asked. "I told you, my dear, you do not need to refer to me as Delilah when we are alone. After all, I am not Delilah." The goddess said. "Call me Heather, as I've instructed you to." "Yes, ma'am." She sat up in bed. "But tonight, you are wearing Delilah's clothes." "I had a performance I needed to conduct. That fake persona of Delilah Dot has long been erased. There is only me, Heather, now. As it should be. I have always been Heather." Heather said. She looked over at her. "How have your selected family members been treating you?" "No different than anyone else." She said vaguely. "Oh?" Heather laughed. "That's quite disappointing to hear, as they know. They all know. You will be the one they call Delilah soon. When you turn eighteen, we'll begin the transition. If we don't find Sky Summerfield or capture Alexis Linwood by then, then either Miss Edith will remain as the doctor or I will take her place. And this costume will be yours." "I don't know why. Grandmother is nice, but mother and sister both seem to hate me. Father doesn't care for me." "Perhaps they've realized when the time comes, I will take the last name they carry from you and give you a new one in its place. Perhaps Summerfield, perhaps Blackwell, or something new altogether. They are only to look after you until that point. You are not a Lowell. That woman didn't give birth to you. You are mine." Heather sat down on the bed. "You have no real last name. You are only Julia. I will complete the rest of your identity when you reach adulthood." Julia looked at the starry night sky on the wall. "But how am I to become the goddess? I can't make it rain. I don't know if my birthday is really July 7th or not, and you're still alive now. How would that be explained?" "The spirit transferred to a new host. They'll believe it. It's as simple as that. As for the rain, we have the technology to create storms. We don't need you to actually do anything but follow my lead and dress the part. As my child, you should be smart enough to understand there was never a goddess in the first place. But we must put on this play to keep the people in order." "Is there really no other way?" Julia asked. Heather smiled. "You have inherited much of his behavior. That wild beast, your father. I wonder if he is still alive." "Where is my real father?" "The coyote crossed the sea after a final meeting with the doctor before Miss Edith. Loyalty reaffirmed in darkness is the highest honor. He was released from us after that. I would have kept him myself. I think we could have broken him and made much better use of his cunning, but sweet Edith and her foolish brother were too enamored with that man. They always let him roam free." Heather put her hand to Julia's face. "Do not think on him. He didn't care about you. He had a child with another woman that he married and ran off with. You exist because we needed you to be born. If we find Sky, you will be his bride. I won't allow you to give birth naturally. We'll harvest your eggs and make sure the process is perfect to ensure you have an absolutely perfect child. We can design almost anything now, grow the child fast, and stop the aging wherever we want. Don't worry. We'll start giving you the drug to stop your aging too after you turn eighteen. You can be a beautiful woman forever, the same as me." "And what of the child?" "A back-up doctor or Delilah, depending on our needs. Perhaps, we'll get twins out of you and secure a back-up for both roles. If we can't capture Miss Edith's nephew, Sky, then we'll find a suitable replacement sperm donor." Heather said. "But that is a ways off now. You only just turned ten. We have nearly a decade to go before we need to arrange everything. However, we can begin your training to take the role of the goddess. I'll begin teaching you the real family history soon. You must know many things most are forbidden from hearing." "Yes, Miss Heather." Julia's body stiffened up the longer Heather spoke to her. When she woke from her dreams, what frightened her most was Heather. "Do not go to your usual lessons tomorrow. I will come to you once the rest of your pretend family has left." Heather got up from the bed. "Sleep well, my little doll." "Good night." Julia sat frozen until Heather left. She collapsed back on the bed. Her gaze turned to the false window. The scenery had change from a night sky to a rainstorm in a field. At the center of it, a single oak tree. She reached her hand out toward it. This video was her favorite out of the fifty videos that rotated randomly on the windows. She often dreamt of going to that place, or somewhere like it. She was always with the boy then. "Are you real?" She asked. "Or am I that lonely I've invented you? Could you tell me tonight?" Julia's heavy eyes closed. The windy, stormy place remained in her sight when her bedroom disappeared from view. The humid air on her skin, she didn't know if this is what it really felt like to be in a storm or not. It felt too real to be wrong, but dreams were often like that. The warm water washed over her, soaking her clothes completely through. She walked towards the old oak. 'You called for me?' The boy asked. She turned around and looked at him. His eyes drew her in to another location. A city in the forest under a sky reaching out toward infinity. Desperate, she asked with all the will remaining of her conscious self's desires. 'Are you really real?' He gave her his usual distant stare. 'Are you?' 'Your name...what is it?' She asked. The ground started to slip out from under her. 'My name? What is yours?' He asked back without answering her. 'You're not real, are you?' She looked up at the sky. 'None of this is real, is it?' 'Is it? Are you?' The boy closed the distance between them and whispered in her ear. His voice came through louder than thunder, reverberating through every part of her. 'I'm more real than anything you've ever known.' Once again, the world below her disappeared into darkness and she was left looking out at the sky. The boy was nowhere. She fell through the darkness and woke back in her bedroom. When she woke, the false window was still playing the same scenery. She looked at her clock. The landscape should have changed by now. They shifted every twenty minutes. "More real than anything I've ever known? That's easy. Nothing I've ever known is real. But are you really there?" Julia reached out at the rainy scene again. "If I could get out of here...if I could see a rainstorm just once...even if you're not really there...I wouldn't care if I was alone out there, so long as I'm not in here. I wish you were real..." She turned over and went back to sleep, hoping as always she wouldn't wake in the morning. An hour away, in a city in a forest, a boy was dreaming of a girl whose name he didn't know. He wasn't sure if she was real or not. Logically, he thought, she couldn't be, but much of what he'd learned recently wasn't exactly logical either. He knew one thing for certain. The location in the photo his father had, the rainstorm in July in the field with the lonely oak was a real location from a real memory transferred to photo. Whether he destroyed Moone & Wolfe or not, Sky knew he had to go to that place at least once. He had to see the place that was so special to those tragic children his family destroyed, Idris Thomas an Sarah Winter. He knew he had to go there, but he couldn't explain to himself exactly why. It didn't matter. What the dreams meant, he didn't know, but he was certain of one thing. He would go to that place one day, no matter the cost. The boy and the girl, dreaming of one another, remained for now, unaware the other was as real as rain and far closer than the moon.