Chapter 6 #2
“You made her,” Ava said to Bitty, with an astonished but not unkind laugh. “Didn't you?”
Bitty's wings drooped, and she seemed to shrink even smaller in the oversized chair.
“I was just so scared,” she whispered. “Everything was chaos and I couldn't find anyone and I just…
I needed someone. Like my grandmother used to, before I was taken to Tir n'Aill. Which I know is silly because none of that is even real but it feels real to me because I can remember it!” Tears began flowing down her tiny cheeks.
“I didn't mean to! I didn't even know I could!”
Mrs. Crumplebottom paused in her tea preparations, a look of confusion crossing her features. “I’m sorry, dear, but I don't understand. 'Made me'? I've lived in this neighborhood for forty years. I remember you coming into my shop just yesterday, during all that terrible noise and commotion.”
The existential implications hit Ava like a truck.
A dream had unconsciously created another dream—a thinking, feeling individual with memories and a history and a sense of self—simply because she'd needed comfort.
And now that person was standing right there, unaware of the nature of her own existence.
“Mrs. Crumplebottom,” Ava said carefully, “what do you remember about Boston…before yesterday?”
The older woman set down her teacup, her expression growing thoughtful.
"Well, let's see. I remember opening the shop every morning, helping customers find just the right book. I remember my late husband, how he used to bring me coffee and complain that I cared more about fictional characters than real people.” She chuckled.
“I remember my daughter calling every Sunday to check on me.”
“What do you remember about the city, though? About what’s outside those walls?”
“Yes, well.” She paused. Slowly, her expression grew troubled. “Now that you mention it, I can't quite recall...” She touched her temple, confused. “That's odd. I feel like I should remember more clearly what the city is like. Are my memories gone?”
“The memories are there,” Serrik said gently, stepping forward. His voice was softer than Ava had ever heard it, with none of his usual calculating edge. “You are all right, Mrs. Crumplebottom. Your memories are real.”
“But not historically real," Bitty said miserably.
“I made them up. I made her up. She never actually lived those forty years or loved that husband or raised that daughter.” She looked up at Ava with desperate eyes.
“Does that make her less real? Does that make my feelings for her less real? Does that make me less real?”
It was the question Ava had been dreading, the philosophical minefield she'd known they'd have to navigate eventually. In the merged world she'd created, the line between “real” and “constructed” had become meaningless—but that didn't make the emotional weight of the question any less crushing.
Never mind the problem of recursive dreams. What would happen if Mrs. Crumplebottom dreamed up a family? What if her family dreamed up a family?
“I don't know,” Ava finally admitted to Bitty. “I honestly don't know what ‘real’ even means anymore.”
Mrs. Crumplebottom had been listening to this exchange with growing alarm.
“I’m sorry, I do hate to interrupt, but are you saying that I’m…
not real? That my memories are false?” Her voice was shaking now.
“But I can feel them. I can remember the taste of my wedding cake, the sound of my husband's laugh. I remember holding my daughter when she was born.”
“Those feelings are real,” Ava said firmly.
“The love you feel, the grief, the joy—all of that is completely real. The question is whether it matters if the events that created those feelings actually happened in linear time now? Or if they were…created whole cloth, out of fiction.” She gestured at the books around her.
“I exist.” There was a surprising amount of steel in Mrs. Crumplebottom’s voice, now. “I think, I feel, I care about people, therefore I am. I have preferences and opinions and fears, therefore I am. If that's not real, then what is?”
“Precisely.” Serrik almost smiled. “Reality is not about the manner of your creation, Mrs. Crumplebottom. It is about consciousness you possess.”
Bitty looked between them all, tears still streaming down her face. “But what if I stop believing in her? What if I forget about her? Will she just—will she just disappear?”
“I…I don’t know. And for now, I don’t think we should worry about that.” Ava sighed. “I have no idea how to fix any of this. For now, dreams are the same thing as reality.”
“And if that moment comes? If dreams go back to being just dreams?” Mrs. Crumplebottom frowned. “What becomes of me? A dream of a dream?”
“I don’t know, okay?” Ava put her head in her hands.
“I don’t know what I’m doing! I didn’t expect—” She didn’t want to get angry at Bitty.
It wasn’t Bitty’s fault. She was just acting out of panic and desperation.
Just as Ava had, making Bitty. If anything, it was just a recursive action.
And if this went on much longer, Mrs. Crumplebottom was going to make someone out of her fear and loneliness.
Fuck, learning to be a demigod was annoying.
Somebody really needed to have printed a manual.
“I need a vacation.” She rubbed her hands over her face.
“I’m sorry. I’m just sorry for all of this.
I don’t know what’ll happen. But you have to agree that the chaos outside is wrong.
People are dying. More people are going to get hurt when Valroy starts his war in earnest. This has to stop. Things have to go back to normal.”
“Even if it means that people like myself and Miss Bitty here go away.” Mrs. Crumplebottom looked off for a moment then nodded. “Sensible. Yes. I agree.”
Ava blinked. “You…do?”
“Well. There’s no point crying over spilt milk, is there?
” She smoothed out the fabric of her dress.
“I am what I am, I didn’t ask for it, but it is what it is.
And if I get to keep existing, then that’s quite grand.
But if I don’t, well, it was wonderful that I got to help Miss Bitty here in her moment of need.
And I can go out knowing that, for whatever it mattered, I mattered.
” Mrs. Crumplebottom straightened her shoulders.
“But if I do have a choice, I for one choose to keep existing. I choose to keep caring for lost souls who find their way into my shop. And I choose to believe that the love I feel for the life I remember is real, regardless of how those memories came to be.”
Bitty let out a sob that was half grief, half relief.
She launched herself from the chair, flying directly into Ava's arms. “I was just so scared you wouldn't come back," she whispered. “I was scared I'd be alone with all these questions and no one to help me understand what I really am. So I made her and I’m so sorry and I’m so sorry—”
Ava hugged the tiny fae tightly, feeling the solid warmth of her small body, the rapid flutter of her heart.
Whatever else might be true about Bitty's nature, her fear and relief were absolutely genuine.
“I’m sorry…I'm sorry it took us so long to find you. I'm sorry you had to go through this alone. It’s not your fault.”
“I wasn't alone,” Bitty pulled back to look at Mrs. Crumplebottom with obvious affection. “She took care of me. Made me tea and let me cry and told me stories about all the brave characters in her books who faced impossible situations and still found the way through.”
Mrs. Crumplebottom smiled, the gesture transforming her entire face. “That's what books are for, dear. To remind us that no matter how dark things get, there's always a story about someone who found their way through something similar.”
Serrik had been watching this exchange with an expression that was difficult to read. “Mrs. Crumplebottom,” he said finally, “do you remember being afraid? When you first…woke up?”
“Oh yes,” she said without hesitation. “Terrified. Everything was so chaotic, so loud and bright and wrong. I felt like I was drowning in confusion.” She paused, studying his face. “Why?”
He paused for a long moment, as if debating whether or not to answer her.
Finally, he shrugged. “I spent nearly two millennia questioning the nature of my own existence. Wondering if my thoughts, my feelings, my very sense of self was real or merely an elaborate delusion created by isolation and madness.”
“And what conclusion did you reach?”
“That the question itself was meaningless. Consciousness is consciousness, regardless of its origin. The capacity to think, to feel, to choose—these things have value independent of how they came to be.” His golden eyes were focused out toward the front of the store and not on anyone else.
Bitty had been listening intently to this conversation. “So you don't think less of me? For being…what I am?”
“I would have to dismiss myself as well in the same breath, little one. I may have been ‘born’ real, but I was rendered unto a dream. I am of the same cloth as you.” His response was simple and left no room for argument.
“And you’re my friend.” She smiled. “Imaginary or not.” For the first time since they found her, Bitty smiled for real. In a way that stuck.
Mrs. Crumplebottom bustled back to her tea service. "Well then, that's settled. Now, I insist you all sit down and have a proper cuppa before you go back out into that utter nonsense out there.”
Yeah. They could do that.
They spent the next hour in the warm cocoon of the bookstore, drinking tea that tasted exactly like comfort should taste and listening to Mrs. Crumplebottom tell stories from her childhood.
Some of the stories were clearly ripped off from classic published stories that Ava recognized.
But no one was rude enough to call her out on it.
Toward the end of the hour, Mrs. Crumplebottom looked up at the bookshelves with a wistful smile.
“The lovely thing about a bookstore that exists in three realities is that I now have access to stories that span all of them. Fiction and non-fiction, histories that happened and histories that could have happened, love stories between humans and romances between beings of pure energy.” She gestured at a section where books were literally glowing.
“It's quite overwhelming, but also wonderful.”
“Do you think you’re going to be okay?” Ava frowned. “Once we go?”
“Oh, yes dear. Come what may, I will be quite fine.” Mrs. Crumplebottom considered her next words while refilling their cups.
“You know, I think the key is remembering that change has always been the only constant.
People age, neighborhoods evolve, technologies advance.
The scale of the change might be unprecedented, but the fundamental experience—of adapting, of finding your place in a new world—that's as old as time itself.”
Sadly, it was time to go. They had shit to do, and Ava's responsibilities as the Weaver weren't going to address themselves. But the bookstore had given them something invaluable—a reminder that even in chaos, there could be pockets of peace.
“You sure you’re going to be all right?” Ava asked Mrs. Crumplebottom as they prepared to go.
“I have my books and plenty of tea.” She smiled. “Plus, I suspect I'll have other visitors who need a safe place to sit and think. That's what bookstores are for.”
Bitty hugged the older woman tightly. “Thank you,” she whispered. “For everything.”
“No, I think it’s me who has to thank you for bringing me into existence. It's been quite an adventure already.” She chuckled. “To think. Little old me, on an adventure.”
As they left the bookstore, Ava found herself thinking about Mrs. Crumplebottom's words.
Change as the only constant. Finding your place in a new world.
Maybe that was the key to navigating this merged reality—not trying to force it back into familiar patterns, but learning to adapt and find beauty in the unprecedented.
“How oddly remarkable,” Serrik said as they walked back onto the chaotic street. "Both of them. The ease with which they've accepted their circumstances, to so quickly grasp meaning in such uncertainty…”
“Meaning beyond ‘mass genocide’ like some people we know? Yeah.” She grinned up at him. “But I get your point. Maybe this doesn’t have to be the disaster it looks like. If a solution doesn’t present itself, anyway.”
“Hm.” He smirked down at her. “I suspect you may discover the bookstore was an oasis of calm in a very turbulent st—”
Great timing.
As if to prove his point, the sound of distant screaming echoed from somewhere to the north, accompanied by what sounded like a very large creature roaring in anger.
“Right. Perfect. Love it.” Ava sighed. “Back to crisis fucking management. Bitty, are you ready for this?”
The tiny fae straightened her shoulders in unconscious mimicry of Mrs. Crumplebottom's gesture earlier. “Ready,” she said, and her voice was steadier than it had been since they'd found her.
Ava smiled. She was pretty sure that was a lie. But Bitty seemed to want to believe it. And just like her own existence?
Sometimes, believing was enough.