Daisy Duke's Arc

Chapter 20 of 22

The morning line stretched long. Daisy pulled each dream. Thorn read it. Safe, ruinous, safe. Then Thorn's eyes snapped wide, all at once. The dark rose petals around their face curled inward on their own. "It's calling," Thorn said. Their voice came flat. "My twin. Louder than your oven." They stepped back from the counter. "I have to go. Now." Daisy's petals went cold. The next customer waited, dream already rising off his palm, bitter and hooked. Without Thorn she couldn't tell teeth from summer porch. She'd break someone the way she broke that man with the shaking hands. "Wait," she said. "If you leave, I close. I can't sort blind." Thorn didn't slow. One hand on the door. "You'll find another way. You always do." The bell rang. They were gone. Daisy stood alone with a line of hungry dreamers and no eyes but her own. Skeeter leaned by the frozen corner. "Now what," he said quietly. Daisy didn't answer. She looked at the wilted cornflowers, the meltwater fall, the crack in the floor. She needed something that could taste danger without a person's whole face turned toward it. The frozen corner shimmered. From the silver-blue fall rose a woman with a star-flecked tail, dark skin dusted with light. Lyra Starflow. Daisy's neighbor from the deep water, who spoke only when it mattered. She'd never come inside before. "Your floor leaks into my sea," Lyra said. Blunt. "I followed it up." She studied the line, then the bitter dream floating over the man's palm. "That one's rotten. I can smell it." "You can smell dreams?" Daisy asked. "No." Lyra reached into her hair. A moth crawled out onto her finger, fur soft as sugar, wings pale. It fluttered toward the man's dream, then jerked away, antennae flat. "She can. She flinches from the ones with wounds inside. Stays calm for the safe ones." Lyra held the moth out. "Stars fall into my sea and forget they were stars. I know the smell of a thing gone wrong. So does she." Daisy took the moth. It settled on her wrist, warm and still. She pulled the next dream, a girl's, faint and sweet. The moth stayed calm, wings soft. Daisy baked it in. The girl laughed. The bitter man stepped up. The moth flinched hard, curled its legs. Daisy pulled her hand back and set out plain shortbread. The man left whole. By dusk the line was gone. Every dream sorted right. Daisy set the moth beside a moonlit sprig of vanilla on the counter, its new perch. "Why give her to me?" she asked. "I have my own star to find," Lyra said. "Below. I go tonight." She slid back into the fall. "Feed the moth briny sweet. She likes the sea." Daisy watched the water still. Thorn was gone, but her bakery could open safe. She had her sorter now, small and winged, and it would never be called away.