The fountain was an incredible piece of glasswork, really intricate and subtle, Möbius-strip-like the way the eye wound around and around in it. The very center was a wavery tube of opaque glass, a dark color on the blue side of indigo, and the glass was like water frozen in complex curvy patterns radiating asymmetrically into paler and paler blues. Valerie ran her fingers along the edge closest to her and it was clear glass, thin and sturdy.

She'd seen the fountain before, traveling the streets of the Endless City. Usually her daydreams started in an apartment she thought of as her own space. It was on the twentieth floor of a 50-floor glass building, in a northeast corner where the sunrise was cold and brilliant. Glass was overused in her daydream city, but she loved the excess, the land-of-Oz feeling it gave her. It wasn't only the skyscrapers that were made of their translucent colored glass, but the little buildings as well, the streetlights, the bridges. The wires and plumbing and innards were always hidden with a layer of opacity; the floors were texturized and gritty; other than that, her world was fresh and clean, visible and, well, Endless.

This particular fountain she found herself dawdling by was in a small park where three roads intersected in a triangle of traffic. It was morning, and there was a dewy velvet carpet of grass underfoot. She hadn't realized until now that the room in the hospital was completely devoid of windows. She drank in the outside morning air, lay down in the dew just to feel messy, a part of the world. Even the sensation of cold was welcome. She closed her eyes, opening her pores to the liquid underneath her, losing herself in the privacy of her own head.

"So they've taken you." The voice was quiet but peremptory, a little patronizing. How rude, Valerie thought. She kept her eyes studiously closed and concentrated on the dew.

"That won't go over well, you know."

Dammit, thought Valerie. Can't you see I'm ignoring you? She squinted one eye open to look at the intruder. The person was tall (or maybe it was just the angle), dressed androgynously in tight black leggings and a baggy Hamlet-style shirt, but black instead of white. It was belted, and Valerie wouldn't have been surprised to see a sword dangling from the left hip, but there was none. Their hair was dark and neatly cut; the expression on their face, looking down at her, was even more patronizing than the voice.

"What are you talking about?" she said grumpily. It was pretty common for people in the Endless City to address Valerie as though they knew her. She thought there must be a kind of logic to it, one just beyond her reach. It was better in the City to let intuition be as important as reason, she'd found. And it was better not to make assumptions. Gender, for instance, was often surprising. Valerie made friends with the plural-pronoun-as-singular-nongendered a long time ago. Otherwise, the assumptions were sure to embarrass her, later on.

"You. The hospital. Locked up."

"Who the fuck is they?"

"Are. Are they."

Oh, she did not want to be talking to this person. "I could have stayed in that hospital if I wanted to be patronized," she said.

"Oh, you'll get used to me. I'm not so bad. It's mostly show, you know."

"Please don't stick around long enough for me to get used to you."

"You're even spikier than they told me you would be, Valerie," the stranger smirked. "I just thought you might want to be warned."

"Warned of what?" Valerie snapped. "How do you know my name?"

"We're all aware of you, honey. You've been pretty important... up till now..."

"Look," she sighed. "You're trying to play some kind of game with me, and I'm not playing. If you want to be direct with me, you can come by my apartment later. I have to leave."

"Have it your way," they said, and sprawled on a park bench nearby, forcing Valerie to back her words up or endure this person's presence. Well, that's just fine, she thought. I don't need dew anyhow. She stalked off down the street, looking for a bus stop or a street sign. She kept walking until the world faded around her.