She thinks she’s dreaming. Or hallucinating. One of the two, maybe both, maybe neither, but it doesn’t matter. Because—

“You look like you’ve just seen the Devil,” the crow squawks.

Her throat’s parched. Sandpaper-dry. “The Devil?” she repeats. She sounds incredibly stupid right now, she knows, but then she always does.

The crow laughs. Or was that a cough? She really can’t tell.

“Yes,” the crow says, craning its dark head to one side. “Are you alright?”

No, she’s anything but alright. “I’m—I’m fine.” She blinks hard and hopes the crow is merely a brief afterimage of today’s blistering summer sun and not a reincarnation of the Devil himself.

Lamentably, the black smudge, in all its feathered glory, doesn’t disappear. It instead proceeds to ruffle its glossy coat with an air of utmost importance.

“Quite hot today,” it comments, and jerks its head toward the large rectangular swimming pool a few feet away. “Mind if I take a dip?”

Okay. She’s definitely dreaming. Definitely. And yet—the sun feels too real on her back, the blue-white checkered tiles feel too rough under her shins, the wind—or lack thereof—feels too hot against her face. Maybe she’s having some sort of delirious heatstroke, but it’s only June and eighty-six degrees is not quite hot enough.

The crow is staring at her now, and she’s confused for a moment before she remembers. “Oh. Go—go ahead?”

A talking crow. A swimming crow, too, as she watches it float languidly on the rippling surface of the water. She wonders if she’s going paranoid, if it’s a symptom of built-up loneliness. Built-up longing. A desperate, twisted version of a Freudian slip, almost. She hadn’t tried to get back in touch with her friends after graduation. They always thought she was guano loco and she believed them.

The backyard is quiet for a while. Cloyingly sweet magnolias perfume the air. Cornflower fields bloom in the blue, blue sky. She lets the sun drench her shoulders and nearly forgets the crow’s presence.

“You don’t ask many questions, do you?”

She flinches bodily, startled. “Sorry?”

“You don’t ask many questions,” the crow says from where it’s bobbing on the water. “I’m pleasantly surprised.”

“I have plenty of them, though.”

“Oh? I guess it can’t be helped. Humans are inherently curious beings.”

She huffs. “You say that like—like crows aren’t.”

“We are. In a different way. We prefer to observe instead of inquire.”

“Well.” She hesitates. “I’m sorry for asking, then, but are you—am I asleep? Are you real? Is this a dream? Am I—am I dreaming?”

The crow tuts. “Those are questions for yourself, I hope? I don’t even know where we are.”

“Oh.” She feels dumb and more than just a little crazy. That said, she has her reasons.

“Where are we, again? I do hate to ask.”

“My backyard,” she says, a beat late. “I think?”

The crow nods. It hops out of the pool and makes a rather poor attempt to shake its feathers dry. “So, are you going to eat that pudding?”

She blinks. “What?”

“I said, are you going to eat that pudding?”

She follows its gaze and finds, to her horrified surprise, a plate of pudding sitting delicately on the ground at the edge of the pool.

“Did you bring that here?” she says slowly.

“No? I thought it was yours.”

“I don’t eat pudding.”

“Neither do I, but—well, it looks delicious and I’m starving, so if you don’t mind—”

“Please tell me I’m dreaming so I won’t have to call my psychiatrist tomorrow.”

The crow lets out the equivalent of an impatient sigh and struts toward the pudding. “If you’re not going to eat it—”

She stares as it picks at the burnt caramel layer. Is she in an Aesop’s fable? Did she read one too many philosophical texts on animal consciousness? Or—worse yet—did she accidentally take some of her mother’s pills? At this point, she isn’t sure where she is anymore. Who she is. What she’s doing. Because—a crow that talks and swims and eats pudding? She’s guano loco, indeed.

“Do you not want any?”

It takes three full seconds for her brain to reboot. “Oh, I’m—I’m good. Thanks.”

She leans back on the heels of her hands and glares at the lifeless sun hanging above her as if it can offer some kind of answer. It doesn’t. After a moment, her eyes start to water, and she squeezes them shut. Stars appear everywhere. She watches them burn yellow and neon green and cerulean before fading into extinction.

“I think I’m going crazy,” she tells the crow.

And for once, it doesn’t reply.