Ivy struggled against Leah’s firm hold, but had no leverage. Mr. Bramley droned on from the podium, his voice a steady murmur about the structure of state governments, the separation of powers—words that had once felt like barriers of adulthood and dignity, now crumbling around her like sandcastles before an incoming tide.

The world didn’t pause for her shame.

Leah lowered her, setting her down onto the soft, oversized mat. The plastic beneath the cartoon clouds was cool against the backs of Ivy’s thighs, making her shiver despite herself. She squirmed, the diaper crinkling in the indistinct murmur of the classroom, the scent of baby powder and the faint sourness of her accident curling in the air, shame slipping over her.

Leah’s fingers darted to her sides, giving her a playful tickle that made her jolt and yelp. Another burst of giggles rippled from the students sitting closest to the front.

“Someone’s still ticklish, huh?” Leah teased, her voice bright and warm, so terribly familiar. “Just like old times, Ivy. Except now you’re even cuter.”

Ivy’s mouth opened; a half-formed protest died in her throat. The tape of her diaper ripped open with a sharp, decisive noise, and the sudden cool air against her bare skin drew a ragged gasp from her. She twisted her head to the side, fixating on the whiteboard, the cluttered posters, anything but the faces watching her.

The students kept their focus split with eerie discipline, taking notes, whispering answers, and yet stealing glances at her as though this humiliating spectacle was as normal as morning attendance.

Leah worked with efficient hands, lifting Ivy’s legs with one hand while sliding the soiled diaper free with the other. Her movements were clean, practiced, and eerily affectionate. She hummed under her breath, an off-key tune Ivy recognized from long ago—something they used to sing while walking home after school, when life still had boundaries that made sense.

The clean diaper, thick and crinkly, slid beneath her hips.

“There we go,” Leah said, dusting a handful of powder between Ivy’s thighs. “Fresh and clean.”

Ivy squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, the shame crushing her ribs. But closing her eyes didn’t help. It only made the sensations sharper—the tug of the tapes being fastened snug around her waist, the rubbery bounce of the mat beneath her, the soft murmur of voices, the faint scrape of pens and pencils.

She opened her eyes to see Leah beaming down at her, hands smoothing the front of her taped diaper with a casual pat.

“All done, sweetheart,” Leah said, her voice thick with a too-sweet affection that twisted Ivy’s stomach. “You’re such a good little girl.”

A fresh ripple of heatwarmth washed overflooded Ivy’s face, hot enough she thought she might combust. She wanted to scream. To demand that Leah remember who she was. Not this babbling, bouncy caricature laid out for public consumption.

But Leah only smiled wider, brushing a strand of hair from Ivy’s forehead with two fingers. “Come on now,” she said. “Everyone’s waiting.”

Mr. Bramley turned from the board, nodding toward the mat without missing a beat in his lecture. “Thank you, Leah. Please make sure little Ivy gets settled for the next activity.”

The class nodded as one, some murmuring polite acknowledgments, as if Leah had just refilled the copy paper or rearranged textbooks.

The mat crinkled as Leah hoisted her up again, settling her against one hip with a bounce that made Ivy’s freshly diapered bottom puff in a cloud of baby powder. Another giggle bubbled from the rows of desks.

The lesson continued—history folding over humiliation, education twined with degradation—while Ivy was paraded back toward the front rows, a living exhibit of her unraveling.

Leah lowered herself into a seat with the casualness of someone settling in for a long lecture, tugging Ivy down with her. She gathered Ivy into her lap like a child’s favorite doll. Ivy felt herself pressed back against Leah’s chest, an arm draping lazily across her front, holding her snug against the warmth and solid thrum of another’s heartbeat. She could smell Leah’s shampoo—apple and something floral.

Ivy’s cheeks burned. The kind of burn that crept up her neck and settled behind her ears, making her scalp prickle. Her freshly powdered diaper puffed softly beneath her as Leah shifted her knees, bouncing her with a slow, steady rhythm that mimicked the gentle rocking of a mother soothing a baby during a sermon or a grocery line. A movement that communicated not urgency but patience. A movement that said: You’re not going anywhere.

Ivy glanced sideways, desperate for something—anything—that would root her back to reality. The faces staring at the board, pretending to take notes, belonged not just to the contestants she vaguely recognized but to pieces of her own life. Emily Harper, who used to share her locker. Mateo Ruiz, who sat behind her in algebra and always had a permanent ink stain on his thumb. Others, too—faces dredged up from dusty corners of memory, stitched into this place as if they had always been part of it.

One girl, seated near the front, caught her eye and waved with childish enthusiasm. Bethany Carter. Ivy hadn’t seen her since third grade—back when recess was the battleground and pinky swears could forge or shatter alliances. Bethany’s smile now was sweet, almost syrupy, and her hand wiggled in a slow wave meant for infants and puppies. She even let out a coo, soft and high-pitched, that sliced through Ivy’s chest like a blade wrapped in velvet.

Ivy whipped her head away, cheeks blazing hotter.

She tried to pull inward, to make herself smaller, but Leah only chuckled under her breath and shifted her hold, snugging Ivy closer, bouncing her a little more firmly on her knee. The rhythmic bounce provided a steady contrast to the monotonous lecture. The motion made the thick padding between Ivy’s thighs crinkle loudly in her ears, even if no one else seemed to react.

Mr. Bramley never missed a beat.

He spoke about the legislative process, his voice a steady drone above the squeak of dry-erase markers and the soft rustling of notebooks. He mostly faced away, occasionally turning to nod vaguely, ignoring the absurdity. As if Ivy, perched in Leah’s lap, dressed in a diaper, bouncing before the whole class, was no more remarkable than a backpack left on the floor.

Ivy squeezed her hands into fists against the soft fabric of Leah’s jeans.

This isn’t real. It can’t be real.

Yet the pressure of Leah’s arm was real enough. The heat radiating from her skin, the faint pulse she could feel through her back. The casual way Leah patted her diapered bum every few minutes, as if reassuring herself Ivy hadn’t slipped away.

Another small bounce.

Another giggle from somewhere behind her.

Ivy forced herself to breathe, counting the seconds, trying to find something solid to anchor to. But everything here was too solid—the feel of the cotton shirt stretched across Leah’s chest, the faint whir of the projector fan above them, the sterile scent of floor cleaner mixed with the powder still clinging to her skin.

The world wasn't crumbling around her.

It seemed to reinforce itself. Every time she searched for a flaw, it seemed to grow more solid, more real. Building walls brick by brick, decorated in pastel clouds and smiling animals, until Ivy couldn’t remember whether it had ever been different. The protest in her throat eventually seemed foolish, small, and absurd.

Leah leaned down, her breath tickling the fine hairs at Ivy’s ear. “You’re doing so good, baby girl,” she whispered, the words thick with something that sounded almost like pride. “Just sit pretty for a little while longer.”

Ivy wanted to scream. To shout that she wasn’t a baby. That she didn’t belong here, in Leah’s arms, in a diaper. But the words crumbled before they reached her tongue. All she could do was sit there, cheeks burning, limbs stiff, her body rising and falling with every gentle bounce of Leah’s knee, while the lecture rolled on and the faces of her past watched in calm, unwavering acceptance.

The world around Ivy trembled first, like the shimmer of heat rising from asphalt. Then, without warning, it folded inward—walls bleeding into each other, desks elongating, ceilings stretching until the very air seemed thinner, lighter. She blinked against the vertigo, heart hammering against her ribs, and when her vision cleared, she was no longer in Mr. Bramley’s tight, square classroom.

The space had grown vast, a yawning lecture hall rising around her in steep, amphitheater rows. Gleaming wood panels, brushed steel railings, distant projector lights humming against the far-off ceiling—this was her college. The great lecture theater where she once sat, clutching half-completed assignments, guzzling vending machine coffee, whispering about exam answers with friends.

She looked up, breath catching, and found herself perched high in Finn’s lap.

The familiarity of him slammed into her—broad shoulders, messy hair, that smirk always one word away from trouble—but something was wrong. Leah had vanished without a trace, and Finn’s arm was snug around her middle, anchoring her against him with casual possession.

“Finn!” she gasped, twisting her body toward him, grabbing at his shirt with trembling fingers. “Finn!”

He chuckled.

“Easy, baby girl,” he murmured, voice rich with indulgence. “Let Daddy focus on his classwork.”

The words hit harder than a slap.

Daddy.

The title rang in her ears, echoing against the vaulted ceiling, settling cold and heavy in her bones. Her hands trembled against his chest, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breath, the warmth of him—and yet the stranger that stared down at her wore Finn’s face, his voice, his familiarity like a mask stretched thin.

“What do you mean?” Ivy demanded, her voice cracking in her throat. She searched his eyes, desperate, clawing for something true behind the gentle authority, the casual affection. “Finn... what’s going on?!”

But he didn’t falter. Didn’t even look annoyed.

He simply smiled and shifted her slightly to resettle her more comfortably against his chest. One arm stayed wrapped around her while the other moved across a wide-ruled notebook balanced on his lap. His pen scratched as he took notes, as if holding a diapered, blushing Ivy against him was simply another part of the afternoon’s responsibilities.

“Quiet, baby,” he said, almost absently. “Do you need your pacifier?”

“No!” Ivy barked, struggling, trying to twist free—but her limbs felt clumsy, her balance betraying her, every movement pulling her deeper into the absurdity. “Finn! Snap out of it! This isn’t—this isn’t real! Please—just listen to me—”

The pacifier appeared in his free hand as if conjured from the folds of the world itself, and with the same absentminded tenderness he might use to tuck in a blanket, he plopped it into her open mouth.

The rubber bulb filled her mouth, silencing her.

Ivy’s eyes widened in horror as she instinctively began to suckle.

The lecture rolled on around them—professors’ voices blending into a low tide of theory and analysis, the scratching of pens, the clack of laptop keys, the whisper of air vents. Students leaned over their desks, comparing notes, sipping coffee.

She sat in Finn’s lap like she belonged there, a sleepy toddler tagging along with her Daddy to big-kid school, cradled in the crook of his arm. He took careful notes on economic policy, constitutional law, and the inevitable erosion of identity in the face of authority.

Ivy’s fingers clenched in the fabric of Finn’s shirt, her heart battering itself against her ribs.

Finn shifted beneath her, the broad plane of his chest rumbling with breath, and then, almost too quietly to trust as real, he spoke.

"Did you get our note?" he asked, voice low, threading between the droning lecture and the scratch of pens across paper.

Ivy stiffened, pacifier still bobbing between her lips. Confusion flared through her like a struck match. She twisted toward him, heart lurching against her ribs, only to find him staring down at her with a sharpness that didn't fit the languid bounce of his knee or the absent strokes of his writing hand.

"Our letter?" he said again, quieter still, as if the words themselves might fracture the thin skin of this moment. "From..."

He didn’t finish. His mouth tightened slightly, and then, like a puppet’s string jerked taut, his gaze slid away. His body settled back into its mechanical rhythm—one arm wrapped around her, the other scratching neat, methodical notes across his notebook as if no conversation had ever taken place.

Ivy sat frozen in his lap, the pacifier heavy against her tongue, her breath shallow.

What letter? she wanted to shout. From where?

The lecture pushed forward, each word sliding past her ears without landing. Terms about federalism, about judicial review, about rights eroded through slow and silent erosion—drifting like smoke without ever touching the ground.

She looked around, panic clawing its way up her throat.

The faces in the rows around her seemed stitched together from two different lifetimes: old classmates she hadn’t seen in years, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with contestants from the Trials, their heads bent over notebooks, their fingers typing, their expressions bland and obedient. Some smiled when they glanced her way—warm, knowing smiles that held no malice but somehow carried the weight of expectation as if she were exactly where she belonged.

The air smelled of carpet cleaner, cheap paper, and burnt coffee, the dry recycled chill of overworked air conditioning brushing against her bare calves. Finn’s warmth pressed against her back. The pacifier shifted in her mouth as she swallowed around it, a humiliating, rhythmic reminder of her helplessness.

Something was wrong.

Deeply wrong.

Not just the diaper taped around her waist, or the way Finn bounced her with absent affection while copying bullet points from the board. No, it ran deeper, entwined in the very fabric of reality itself. Ivy could feel it now, sharp and pulsing at the edge of perception—something twisting behind the faces, behind the chairs, behind the words they were supposed to memorize.

The warmth bloomed first, spreading between Ivy’s thighs in a slow, inevitable pulse. She gasped around the pacifier, cheeks igniting with fresh humiliation as she realized what was happening. Her body relaxed against Finn’s lap without her permission, the thick padding soaking up the betrayal with a soft, muffled squish she could feel more than hear.

Finn didn’t so much as flinch.

If anything, he adjusted her, settling her weight more securely against him, one hand smoothing the rumpled fabric of her skirt over the swollen shape of her diaper. His other hand continued its lazy, steady dance across his notebook, pen scratching notes about civil liberties and procedural justice, as if Ivy wetting herself was nothing more than a footnote to the day’s lesson.

And in some terrible, hidden place inside her, Ivy supposed it was.

She was just a baby, after all. That’s what babies did.

Her breath caught as the thought wormed deeper, insidious and cloying. She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing the idea away, but the sensations were harder to deny: the heat trapped against her skin, the soft crinkle of her diaper each time Finn bounced her on his knee, the slow, steady lull of helplessness creeping through her muscles.

Then, a new sound, a long, mournful whistle, low and rising, pulled her out of her daze. Ivy’s eyes snapped open. A bell followed, clanging hollowly through the thick, recycled air of the lecture hall, growing louder.

Students sat frozen around her—pens poised mid-word, laptops blinking cursor lights onto slack, staring faces.

And at the front of the room, the far wall began to ripple—lines bending, colors bleeding—until it cracked open, folding itself into the shape of a dark, yawning tunnel. The rumble that followed was seismic, shaking the bolted-down desks, making Ivy’s bones vibrate where she sat. She could smell it now, too: the rich scent of coal smoke, old oil, and damp iron.

A great, gleaming steam engine roared into view, its black bulk pulling a single polished carriage behind it. Brass fittings flashed in the overhead lights. The locomotive hissed and shuddered to a halt, its final piercing whistle rattling the windows.

The carriage door swung open.

The sterile lecture hall peeled away like paper burned at the edges, replaced by cracked concrete platforms and cast-iron benches, with flickering lanterns swinging from invisible drafts. A train station—one Ivy almost remembered from some childhood trip.

Finn tightened his hold around her and rose to his feet.

“Come on, baby,” he said, his voice warm and sure. “This is us.”

Before Ivy could protest, before she could gather the pieces of herself left scattered across the collapsing reality, Finn hoisted her into his arms. She yelped around the pacifier, hands clutching at his shoulders, diaper squishing embarrassingly against his forearm.

He carried her down the steep stairs of the lecture hall—now a cavernous waiting platform—while the frozen students stared ahead, unmoving, unseeing, their eyes glassy and blank.

And the only movement, the only sound, was the hissing engine and Finn’s steady, certain footsteps.

Ivy twisted in his grip, frantic, searching for some anchor, some crack in the illusion she could wedge herself into—but the faces around her remained statues, the world blurring at the edges, funneling her vision toward the waiting carriage.

She tried to speak. But the pacifier robbed her of words, turning every desperate sound into soft, helpless babble that barely rose above the echoing clang of the station bell.

Finn hugged her closer.

“You’re doing great, baby girl,” he whispered against her hair, voice so heartbreakingly tender it made her chest ache.

And without a flicker of doubt, he carried her toward the open doors..

The moment they crossed the threshold of the carriage, the last tattered remnants of the lecture hall dissolved behind her, swept away like sand in the wake of a tide. The air shifted—fresher, warmer, thick with the scent of wild grass and the faint copper tang of train smoke. Sunlight poured through the windows, slanting golden across polished wooden floors and velvet seats, casting long, blurred shadows that danced with the rhythm of the train’s slow breathing.

The meadows stretched in all directions, a living tapestry of swaying green and bright blooms, stitched together beneath a sky the color of paint.

“All aboard!” the conductor called, his voice carrying with a strange, hollow cheer, immediately punctuated by the sharp blast of a whistle.

The doors hissed closed.

Ivy rocked in Finn’s arms, clutching at him for balance. He smiled down at her, adjusting her with a little bounce as he strode deeper into the carriage, boots thudding against the wooden floor.

The seats stretched empty on either side, rows of plush cushions and polished brass fittings gleaming in the sunlight. The carriage swayed with the train’s movement, the world outside blurring into impressionistic splashes of green and gold, a painting set loose to move.

And there, toward the back of the train, framed by a window washed in sunlight, sat a woman.

She sat on one of the wide velvet benches, her legs tucked up beneath her, her head resting against the window. The light caught in her hair, weaving gold into chestnut, outlining the soft curve of her face in a way that made her seem almost unreal. She wore a simple sundress, pale yellow with white trim, and in her hands, resting against her knees, was a folded piece of paper.

Ivy’s breath caught, her whole body going still against Finn’s chest.

It was Clara.