I dreamed of sunshine.
Not the fake kind — not the yellow-tinted lights they pumped through the Sector ceilings to simulate daytime. Real sunshine. The kind that comes from a star. It was warm and heavy on my skin, like someone laying a blanket over me that was made of light.
I was lying in grass. Real grass. Green, and soft. It smelled like something I didn't have a word for — something clean and alive and so far from recycled air and chemical runoff that my brain couldn't process it.
A little girl was sitting next to me. Maybe seven or eight. She had dark hair, and big eyes. She was building something out of sticks and leaves — a tiny house, barely bigger than her hand.
She looked up at me and smiled.
"You're not supposed to be here," she said.
"Where is here?"
"Outside."
"Outside what?"
She laughed. Like it was the funniest question anyone had ever asked. "Outside everything."
