The first training session happened three days after the funeral, in the brittle silence of a house that had lost its anchor.
Gwen sat on her grandmother's back porch, a mug of coffee cooling in her hands. It was too bitter, but Birdie had insisted. "You need to taste something real," she'd said. "Something that's just itself. No emotions attached."
The late October morning was crisp and clean, the air sharp with the smell of wood smoke from someone's fireplace. Birdie sat across from her, smoke curling from her cigarette.
"Close your eyes," her grandmother said.
Gwen obeyed.
"Now tell me what you taste."
"Coffee," Gwen said. "Bitter. A little burnt."
"Good. That's yours. That's real." Birdie's voice was calm, methodical. "Now I want you to picture a room. Your room. Anywhere you want. Make it real in your mind. The walls, the floor, the ceiling. Every detail."
Gwen tried. She pictured her bedroom, but it felt flimsy, transparent. Like a stage set.
"Describe it to me," Birdie said.
"My room. The walls are… blue. There's a window. My bed."
"Not good enough." Birdie's voice was a whetstone, sharpening Gwen's focus. "The crack in the ceiling above your desk. The way the light comes through the curtains in the morning. The smell of the wood floor. The squeak of that one floorboard by the closet. Make it *real*."
Gwen tried again. This time she focused. The water stain on the ceiling that looked like a bird in flight. The particular squeak of the floorboard three steps from her door—her midnight path to the kitchen. The way dust motes floated in the afternoon sun. The smell of her room—old books and a forgotten lavender sachet.
"Better," Birdie said. "Now stay there. In that room. And I'm going to try something."
A moment of silence.
Then it hit her.
Grief. Not her own. Her grandmother's. It tasted like old pennies and smoke and something darker, older—the accumulation of decades of loss compressed into a single, suffocating flavor.
The room in Gwen's mind wavered. The walls went thin, translucent, the details bleeding away.
"Hold it," Birdie commanded. "Don't let me in. Your room. Your space. Build the walls thicker."
Gwen tried. She pictured the walls as brick, as stone. But her grandmother's grief seeped through like water, finding every crack, dissolving her mental construct like rain on paper.
"I can't—"
"You can. You just haven't learned how yet." Birdie's voice softened slightly. "Open your eyes."
Gwen did. She was shaking. The coffee had spilled, a dark stain spreading across her jeans.
"That was awful," she whispered.
"That was your first lesson." Birdie crushed out her cigarette. "You can't build walls out of imagination. You need something solid. Something true. Your room isn't enough because it's just a picture. You need foundation."
"What kind of foundation?"
"That's what we're going to figure out." Birdie stood and headed inside. "Come on. We've got work to do."
***
Two weeks in, Birdie tried something different.
"Today we're doing anchors," she said, settling into her kitchen chair. The radiator clanked and hissed. Outside, mid-November rain streaked the windows. "Not walls. Not filtering. Anchors."
"What's the difference?" Gwen asked. She was getting used to the grueling curriculum of survival.
"Walls keep emotions out. Anchors keep *you* in." Birdie tapped ash into the tray. "When things get too loud, when you feel yourself dissolving, an anchor pulls you back. It's your emergency measure. When the walls fail—and they *will* fail—your anchor is what saves you."
"Like the pond? The memory you had me build?"
"Exactly. But a memory's not enough. You need to make it physical. Visceral." Birdie leaned forward. "Close your eyes."
Gwen obeyed.
"Picture the pond. Your father's hand on yours. The stone. Now *feel* it. The weight. The texture—is it smooth? Rough?"
Gwen concentrated. "Smooth," she said slowly. "With one rough edge. Cool from the water."
"Good. Now the air. What's it like?"
"Warm. Summer. There's a breeze."
"What does it smell like?"
Gwen inhaled, pulling the memory through her nose. "Mud and grass. A little algae. And Dad's cologne. Old Spice."
"Taste?"
Gwen's throat tightened. "Clean. Just… clean. And I'm happy. Nothing complicated underneath."
"Perfect. Hold that. Every sense. Make it so real you could walk into it."
Gwen built the memory with everything she had. The stone's weight. The rough edge. Her father's hand, warm and callused. The smell of Old Spice and pond water. The sound of lapping water. The sun on her shoulders.
Then Birdie hit her with fear.
Sudden, overwhelming, the sharp metallic taste of pure terror.
Gwen gasped, her eyes flying open, the pond evaporating like smoke—
"No," Birdie commanded. "Keep your eyes closed. Go back. The pond. The stone. Your father's hand. Make it real again."
Gwen tried, but the fear was a flood, her heart hammering—
"The stone's weight," Birdie's voice cut through the panic. "Cool in your palm. Rough edge. Your father's hand. The calluses. The warmth. The smell of Old Spice."
Gwen grabbed onto the details like a rope. The stone. Cool. Smooth. The rough edge. Dad's hand. Warm. Solid. Real.
Slowly, painfully, the fear receded. Not gone, but manageable. Background noise.
She opened her eyes. She was shaking, the coffee mug rattling against the table.
"That," Birdie said with grim satisfaction, "is an anchor. It's the difference between drowning and surfacing. Between losing yourself and finding your way back."
Gwen's hands were still trembling. "That was horrible."
"Yes," Birdie agreed. "And you did it. You came back. That's what matters."
***
School was a nightmare of amplified emotions.
Gwen went back the following Monday. She was "the girl whose dad died." She could see it in their faces, taste it in their careful distance. Pity mixed with relief.
But that wasn't the real problem. The problem was the constant, screaming chorus of feeling.
In the crowded hallway between first and second period, it was a nauseating buffet. Sarah Chen's anxiety was a constant crackle of burned popcorn behind her in English. When Marcus Webb shoved past, his anger was a splash of battery acid that made her eyes water. And from the teacher's lounge, she caught the stale-coffee-and-vinegar tang of Mr. Henderson's bitter divorce.
The new, sharper tensions of high school were the worst. She could taste the cloying, sugary anxiety of a crush, the performative passion of couples that tasted, underneath, like desperation and doubt. It was all a lie. Everyone was lying, all the time, about what they really felt.
And underneath it all, constantly, a baseline of rust and salt. Her mother's grief. Even at school, miles away, the tether held. It was the strangest, most suffocating part of it all.
By lunch, Gwen was hiding in a bathroom stall, gripping the cool metal of the door, trying to remember how to breathe.
Her phone buzzed. A text from Birdie: How bad?
Gwen's hands shook as she typed back: Bad. I can taste Mom from here.
The reply was immediate. The bond is strongest with those you love and live with. Their emotions have a direct line. You need an anchor. Now. The pond.
Gwen closed her eyes. She built it, piece by piece. The stone. Her father's hand. The clean taste of sunshine and muddy water.
Sarah Chen's anxiety was still there. Marcus's anger. The teacher's desperation.
But they were… quieter. Muffled. Like she was hearing them through water.
It wasn't perfect.
But it was something.
She could breathe again.
***
The training sessions became a grueling routine. Three months, Birdie said. That's what this phase would take. Three months out of the two years she had before adult life demanded she be fully in control. The clock was a constant, silent pressure in the back of her mind.
"Building walls isn't about blocking," Birdie explained. "It's about filtering. You can't make yourself not taste things—that's like trying to make yourself not hear. But you can learn which tastes matter and which ones you can let slide past."
She'd have Gwen sit with her eyes closed while Birdie moved through different emotions deliberately.
"Name it," Birdie would say. "Don't feel it. Just name it."
"Anger," Gwen would say. "Tastes like… hot metal. Like licking a battery."
"Good. Now let it go. Like water flowing past. You don't grab it and carry it."
It was exhausting, meticulous work. But Gwen was a quick study when her sanity was the price of failure. She learned the grammar of her gift.
By the fifth week, she could sit in the cafeteria for a full lunch period. The noise was still there—a cacophony of teenage angst—but it was manageable static. She'd learned to acknowledge a taste and release it. There's Sarah's anxiety. There's Marcus's anger. Not mine. Let it go.
***
Thanksgiving was a special kind of hell.
Her mother's grief that day was a fresh, open wound—charcoal and vinegar, sharp and all-consuming. The empty chair at the table was a black hole of absence.
Gwen made it through dinner by retreating to the pond, but it was a flimsy defense. She could feel herself dissolving at the edges under the barrage.
After dinner, she found Birdie in the kitchen. "I can taste Mom all the time," Gwen said, her voice tight. "Even at school. It's like we're connected by a wire. Is it because we live together? If I left, would it… stop?"
Birdie dried her hands, her expression unreadable. "The bond is strongest with proximity and love. Distance would muffle it, yes. But it would never break. Not completely. That's the cost of loving someone when you're a Crane woman. You can't turn it off."
The words were a life sentence. At fifteen, she was supposed to be pulling away, seeking independence. The gift made that a physical impossibility. The guilt was a stone in her gut.
That night, Gwen found her mother standing before the open refrigerator, the cold light bleaching her face.
"I can't remember what we used to eat," her mother said, her voice hollow. "Before. Just one normal dinner. I can't."
She closed the door, plunging the kitchen into darkness, and walked away.
Gwen stood alone in the dark, tasting her mother's rust-grief, and understood. They were both drowning. Her mother in sorrow, Gwen in everyone else's, unable to help without going under herself.
***
December brought snow, a clean white lie over the world.
But Gwen's walls were stronger. Not perfect, but functional. She learned tricks. Mint gum to clear her palate. Cold air to reset her senses. And the pond—always the pond—was her bedrock.
The rock remained in the jewelry box on her desk, a patient, humming secret. Some nights, she'd wake and look at it. She'd tried searching online, but "alien consciousness" and "crystallized reality" only led to bad fiction and flimsy conspiracy theories. This was uncharted territory.
She didn't open the box.
Not yet.
But the hum was changing. It wasn't louder, but more… attuned. Like it was learning the rhythm of her consciousness, syncing with her breath. Adapting to its new keeper.
On the last day before winter break, Birdie made real hot chocolate. The kitchen smelled rich and sweet.
"You've come a long way," Birdie said, sliding a mug across the table. "Three months ago, you were shattering. Now you're handling hundreds of people. I'm proud of you, girl. You're stronger than I was at your age. Stronger than I ever was, maybe."
Gwen's throat tightened. Praise from Birdie was rare and precious.
"Did you ever wish you could use it differently?" Gwen asked. "Not just survive it, but… use it? To know when people are lying?"
Birdie's eyes sharpened. "Yes. I thought about it. It gives you power. But it's a dangerous path. Once you start seeing people as collections of tastes to be managed, you stop being human yourself."
The warning was clear.
"There are advanced techniques I can teach you," Birdie continued. "How to push back. How to read deeper layers. How to protect yourself." She paused, her gaze drifting towards Gwen's house, towards the rock. "But that? That's territory I've never been in. I can't teach you about that."
"So what do I do?"
"You get stronger. Master the basics." Birdie's voice was firm. "And when you're ready—truly ready—you figure out what that thing wants. If it wants anything."
"How will I know when I'm ready?"
Birdie's smile was sad and knowing. "You won't. But I'll have given you every tool I can. The rest is your choice. Your risk."
***
Winter deepened. Christmas was a performance of normalcy that fooled no one. But Gwen had learned to carry her mother's grief the way one learns to live with a chronic pain. It was there, it hurt, but it didn't consume her. The guilt over those necessary walls remained, a heavy companion.
January returned with brutal cold. Gwen walked the halls of Millbrook High, her walls a fortified citadel.
There's Sarah's anxiety—burned popcorn. There's Marcus's anger—battery acid. Name it. Acknowledge it. Release it.
Don't carry what isn't yours.
She made it through the day. The week.
That Friday, Birdie took one look at her and smiled. "You're doing it. You're actually doing it."
"Surviving?"
"Surviving," Birdie confirmed. She lit a cigarette. "You've built something solid. Something that'll hold." The unspoken words hung in the air: *You're ready for more. And you're running out of time.*
"The rock," Birdie said quietly. "It's still contained?"
"Yes." Gwen could feel it even now, a faint, persistent vibration at the edge of her awareness. "The box is holding."
"Good." But Birdie's expression was troubled. "Keep it that way. Keep building. Because one day, you're going to have to make a decision about that thing. And I can't make it for you."
They sat in the January cold, breath steaming, the world frozen in a moment of peace.
"There's more to teach you," Birdie said. "But you need rest. Let what you've learned become instinct. This is a marathon. You pace yourself or you burn out. We have to use the time we have left wisely."
The reminder of the deadline—just over a year and a half now—sent a chill through her that had nothing to do with the weather.
That night, Gwen lay in bed, staring at the water-stain bird on her ceiling. The rock hummed in its box, a low, resonant frequency that seemed to pulse in time with her own heartbeat.
It was no longer just waiting. It was *listening*. Learning her. The hum was a question, and it was growing more insistent.
"Not yet," she whispered into the darkness. "I'm not ready yet."
But the truth was, the timeline was tightening. Adulthood was a fast-approaching shore, and the rock was the riptide waiting to pull her under. She was strong, yes. Stronger than Birdie had ever been.
But was she strong enough for what was in that box?
Someday, soon, she would have to open it and find out.
The anchor held.
It always held.
But the rock could wait.
It had crossed the void between stars.
It could wait a little longer.
But Gwen, at fifteen, knew with a cold, adult certainty that "a little longer" was a luxury she was running out of.