Wildfire

Chapter 2

"So," he smiled, the expression professional yet somehow intimate, like a secret shared between strangers. "Tell me why you're here."

Lauren shifted in the leather chair, buying time. After hours of watching his YouTube videos, feeling understood through a screen, the reality of confession felt suddenly daunting. Her fingers found the edge of her silk blouse - another piece of her carefully constructed successful author facade. "Writer's block, mainly. My publisher-"

"Is it?" Dr. Winters' pen hadn't moved on his notepad, though his hand maintained that precise positioning. He sat perfectly still, only his eyes alive behind those transparent frames that caught light at impossible angles. "Writer's block is what you tell your agent. Your publisher. Yourself, perhaps. But that's not why you entered a therapy contest, am I right?"

Something in the way he said it made her skin prickle. Like he already knew the answer.

A cloud passed over the sun, momentarily dimming the vast office. Lauren twisted the silk fabric between her fingers, feeling the expensive material ground her in reality. Or what she thought was reality. "I've been... struggling with pressure. The success of 'The Invisible Kingdom,' everyone's expectations-"

"Lauren." The way he said her name wasn't unkind, but it cut through her deflection like a surgeon's blade. "You've watched my videos. All those late nights, searching for answers. You know what I discuss. What I understand." He leaned forward slightly, his glasses catching light at angles that seemed to change the color of his eyes. "Why are you really here?"

The city sprawled beneath them, thirty-five floors of altitude making her feel simultaneously exposed and hidden. All her practiced explanations, her careful half-truths seemed pointless under his steady gaze.

"I'm seeing things that can't be real." The words came out in a rush, like a dam breaking.

"Characters I wrote, but edited out. They're appearing, talking to me, and it feels..." Her voice caught as she remembered Casimir's smoke-grey fur shifting like mist in her pristine kitchen, reality bending around his impossible presence.

"Like what, Lauren?" His voice carried the same gentle authority she'd heard in his videos, but here, in person, it seemed to fill the space between them with an almost physical presence. The air itself felt charged, waiting.

Through the wall of windows, clouds cast moving shadows across the city below, their shapes morphing and reforming like thoughts she couldn't quite grasp. Dr. Winters waited, his glasses catching light at angles that seemed to change the color of his eyes from moment to moment.

"It feels more real than this does," she finally admitted, gesturing at the office, the view, her own trembling hands. "More real than anything I've written since 'The Invisible Kingdom.' More real than-" she stopped herself, but his slight head tilt encouraged her to continue. "More real than the person I've been pretending to be. Than Lauren Morrison, bestselling author."

The scratch of his pen paused. Something flickered across his face - interest, perhaps, or confirmation, gone so quickly she might have imagined it. "When did these appearances start?"

"Three days ago. In my kitchen." Lauren closed her eyes, remembering the coffee stain still dark against her white marble floor. "Casimir - he was a character I cut from the book. A cat who could move between worlds, who understood too much. The publishers thought he was too dark for young adult fantasy." Her fingers traced the edge of her chair, feeling the leather warm beneath her touch. "But there he was, telling me that 'creation is a door that swings both ways.'"

When she opened her eyes, Dr. Winters was studying her with an intensity that made the air feel thinner, while his pen moved across the notepad in precise, elegant strokes. His gaze never left her face, as if he was recording something more significant than her words.