The stairs creaked like they were alive, which, to be fair, they might have been. Elian stepped over the third one, the one that liked to groan like a demon when stepped on, and entered the second floor hallway.
He paused. From behind one of the closed bedroom doors, a storm of whispers licked at his mind like wind crawling through keyholes. A low, crawling hum vibrated along the wallpaper.
Lucy.
He knocked twice, then three times, the rhythm she preferred when she was nervous. The sounds inside ceased instantly, like someone cutting power to a sound system mid-note. Then, in a whisper as thin as thread, he heard. "It's not morning yet."
"It is," Elian said gently. "It just doesn't look like it because Lunir made the ceiling show stars again."
The door creaked open a fraction. One glowing eye peeked out.
"She's sad. I made her cry."
Elian crouched down to her level. "Why?"
"I said she couldn't make a new mom because we already have one. And she got mad."
Elian nodded. "That makes sense. But you didn't do anything wrong. Feelings don't always line up right, especially in dreams."
Lucy stepped out in her fluffy slippers shaped like two growling monster heads, her hands clutched around a tiny plush bat. Behind her, the shadows shifted in odd, slow movements.
"I don't want Double to come out today," she whispered.
"He won't," Elian said, placing his hand on her forehead. "He's just a part of you. And today, you're in control."
Lucy nodded, but the hallway seemed to twitch behind her like something holding its breath.
Across the hall, Lunir's door opened by itself.
"Elian," she said brightly, voice echoing oddly. "Can you tell Lucy I'm not mad? I made her a new breakfast world."
"You what?"
Lunir waved her hand. The carpet shimmered, pixelated, then bloomed like a pop-up book. In the space of a heartbeat, the hall was now a patchwork quilt of cereal rivers, marshmallow grass, and pancake clouds, all dream-thin, edible illusions shaped by imagination too powerful to stay inside her skull.
"I think she'll like this one better," Lunir said. "It has floating jelly-bears."
"Lunir," Elian said patiently, "you can't reshape space before school."
"But I'm not going to school today," she said, beaming. "I dreamed the school burned down and they gave us the year off."
"That was a dream."
"Oh," she said, disappointed. "It felt really important."
"It was a lie," Lucy whispered, stepping into the illusion world. Her eyes went misty. "But it's so pretty."
"She forgives you," Elian said.
Lunir's smile returned. "I know."
At the end of the hallway, a door banged open and Rava stormed out, dramatically flinging a glowing silver collar over her shoulder. It hit the wall with a squelch and slid down like wet paint.
"I am not wearing that thing to school!" she shrieked. "It makes me sound like a choir of cicadas with acid reflux!"
Aunt Tyrraline appeared behind her in a whisper of shimmering wingbeats. "Rava. You blew out the neighbor's window yesterday with your off-key humming. That collar stays on."
"It makes my voice all normal! I'm not normal!"
"I've noticed," Tyrraline said coolly, catching the collar midair and snapping it into a box of glowing runes. "Your role today is 'mute but sparkly.' Do not deviate."
Rava groaned so loud it made Lunir's marshmallow clouds ripple.
"Elian," Tyrraline added, now turning her eerie golden gaze toward him, "you have five minutes to eat something non-sentient and shepherd at least six siblings into the van. Or I'll let Dravyn pick the route again."
"You drove through a cemetery last time!" Rava whined. "Literally through it!"
"Shortcut," Dravyn called from downstairs.
Elian took Lucy and Lunir by the hands, guiding them past melting pancake trees and sugar-breathing toast-beasts. "Come on," he said softly. "Let's keep this dimension intact until at least dinner."
Lunir leaned against him. "I dreamed you flew."
"I can't fly."
"Yet."
Behind them, something shadowy detached from the wall, shaped like a girl but without a face. It paused briefly, tilting its head toward Elian. He met its gaze, if it even had eyes, and nodded once.
Thing nodded back and vanished.