When Poire came to once more, her room was dark, covered in shadows from cars racing in the street below that jumped from one wall to another. She heard noises downstairs—chatters in the living room and laughter—and she hated it so. She wondered if she should join them, if it wouldn’t be too much to have another pair of eyes present, when there were already so many observers.

The question was soon answered, however, when her mother called Poire down, and Poire had no choice but to comply.

The wooden steps creaked beneath her awkward feet. She felt squashed, as she did every time when walking down her stairs, stuck between walls that were always trying to be one with each other.

“Poire! Come say hello to your sister,” she heard her mother say, from behind an angle so dead she simply could not see her figure.

Poire replied with a nod, an invisible answer for an invisible parent. Her purple, dotted socks slid against the floorboards. Poire’s sister, Annabelle, greeted her with a supposedly joy-filled grin. The expression was so warm it looked more as if it had been etched into her cheeks with a scalpel and forced to stay frozen, rather than a genuine attempt at communicating emotion. Poire couldn’t understand. How can she smile so happily under these conditions? she wondered, as she took a seat next to her kin on the crooked red sofa, that had nursed her through a childhood she barely ever bothered to remember.

Her sister made small talk. As Poire looked at Annabelle’s mouth, she felt as if the words that fell out of her lips were only getting further away, until they ceased to overall.

And, when Poire took a deep breath, intent on responding—her sister, too, had disappeared.

She was back in the forest, with the lemur’s big round eyes fixated on her figure, as he laughed and asked her: “What did your sibling tell you, girl?”

“I think she might have been talking about her new job.”

“Oh?” The lemur cocked his head to the side. “What does she do?”

Poire’s shoulders fell. It was so dark in these woods. She could barely make out anything at all now. It was freezing. She shouldn’t have been able to live in such conditions, yet despite the trembles in her limbs and the clicking of her teeth, Poire was still here. “A lawyer,” she said. “I think.”

“Do you also want to be a lawyer?” The lemur’s voice boomed across the trees. It had gotten so loud, there was so much noise, and it hurt Poire to think any longer.

So, she merely said, “I don’t know. I just wish the principal’s daughter would stop beating my face. It is swollen now, and puffy, and always too big for me.”

The lemur cackled. “If you wish hard enough for it, it could become reality.”

Poire sighed. She sat down in a pile of leaves. They greeted her with a funny poof sound. “I think you’re lying to me,” she said. “Nothing can help me.”

“Then…” The lemur’s eyes began to glow a light shade of gold. As he looked down on her from the branch above, baring his fangs, an ominous grin taking his lips, he said, “Do not wait. Help yourself, girl."