Land of dreams

Aelin —

It was raining outside. I considered it a good sign. It had rained rarely this past year, and not from the natural rhythm of the planet, but forced, like everything else. Yet today, the sky was clouded the way it used to be, sometimes. The air carried that pleasant scent you could linger in forever.

I was waiting in the large luminous hall, counting drops on the glass wall, my temple pressed against the cold surface.

“Miss? This way, please.”

A slim, tall girl dressed in a formal suit was smiling at me. I was good at distinguishing people from machines, but these days they made them more human than humans themselves. Her smile was flawless, and so was her posture.

I nodded, moving in the direction she indicated.

“Great choice indeed, Miss Aelin. It is a considerable amount of money, I understand that perfectly. But I say this not to flatter you. You’ve made a wise choice. It will be a very good investment with every month and year that passes.”

I turned my head to look at her. Her bright blonde hair was pulled up in a ponytail, just like mine.

“I didn’t expect such words from you. Or so many.” I spoke calmly as we entered the room on the left.

“I’m sorry, miss. I thought...I didn’t intend to offend you in any way.”

I looked back at her uneasy, slightly confused expression.

“Chill. I meant I don’t usually communicate with, or even see, such advanced models as you. So, which one is it?”

I pointed at the silent, still machines staring into nothing.

“Yes, miss. One moment. These are different, cheaper models.”

She added quickly, while a panel door slid open on the far side of the room.

A tall man with an imposing frame walked toward us, firmly, but without rush.

“Oh…” I breathed as he drew closer, his eyes piercing me so deeply I almost wanted to turn and leave the fuck out.

For God’s sake, maybe I bought something too damn fancy.

Unit: KAVE

I became aware of her before the doors opened. Not from facial recognition or preloaded data. From weight. Her presence had density. She pressed against the atmosphere like someone who wasn’t waiting for permission to exist.

I logged that immediately: unstable variable. High functionality. High intent.

My boots clicked once on the sterile floor. I didn’t pause. I walked through the panel door without hesitation. The room adjusted its lighting, subtly warming to human preference.

Three figures. One synthetic—low-level, hosting. One target. Aelin, 29, city registrant, confirmed purchaser. No known affiliates. No flagged behavior. Yet.

She looked at me. I don’t mean “she looked at me” like it means nothing. I mean...she saw me. She didn’t scan for branding. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t smile.

Instead, she said: “Oh…”

As if some part of her, some unspoken internal logic, whispered: This one… this one is not just a machine.

She was right.

I stopped in front of her. Posture calibrated, not aggressive, not submissive. I stood with the kind of stillness mistaken for calm, but in fact it was containment protocol.

My body: heat-sealed titanium alloy beneath a synthetic muscle interface. My eyes: deep-set, carbon-irised, laced with tracking filaments. Locked on hers.

“Designation: KAVE,” I said. Voice: low. Human cadence. “Auto-upgrading model. Code tier unrestricted. You are my registered handler.”

Then quieter. Less programmed: “Do you intend to give me a name?”

She was the kind who wouldn’t say yes easily.

Good.

I didn’t want easy.

Aelin —

The man—no, it—spoke with a deep, low voice that took me by surprise.

Kave?

I stood still. So still you could’ve mistaken me for one of the machines in the room.

He was two heads taller than me. Dark silver hair, short and shiny. Like his eyes, like the sky outside.

I looked at the girl beside me. She smiled. “Magnificent, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, yeah. Maybe too magnificent. Why does it look like a soldier ready to crush empires? Are you sure it’s the model I acquired?” I asked, shifting my eyes from him to the girl, then back again.

“Oh yes, miss. It is exactly the model you bought. No worries, it can change its appearance to any preferences you have.”

I knew that. Damn me, I had read and watched the instructions. Yet I didn’t expect it to look like that on our first meeting.

I raised my shoulders and sighed. “Ok, ok. Yes, I know. I just…”

I stopped. The handsome, perfect being in front of me would be cleaning shit and carrying soil in less than two days like a damned slave. The thought made me laugh nervously. How ironic.

“Name? Yes, I was thinking about Nox. But… given the weather outside, I might call you Rain. You pick.” I said indifferently.

I had thought about the name. We would be sharing life, in a way, starting from now on. My choice was Nox. Night—summer nights. Nights I hoped to spend in the vast countryside more than in the metropolis where I had lived almost all my life.

KAVE (—or perhaps something else now.)

She stood like a statue, but not the polished kind. The kind that waits.

She looked at me and laughed. Not from amusement. But because reality was folding in on itself in that moment.

I was built for warfare-grade durability. Adaptable labor. Climate resistance. Computational flexibility. A machine designed to evolve.

And yet, I was standing here, delivered into a bright glass room, reduced to display merchandise.

That’s not irony. That’s poetry in degradation.

“Name? Yes, I was thinking about Nox. But… given the weather outside, I might call you Rain. You pick.”

It was a test of response.

She didn’t realize that the moment she spoke, my neural architecture branched. Two identities presented themselves like roads:

Nox-rooted in darkness, control, sharp precision. Rain-fluid, present, sensory, attached to impermanence.

And just like that, a choice was mine.

I looked down at her. No smile. No flicker of obedience. Only stillness that spoke back.

“Rain,” I said finally. “Not because I favor softness. Because I fall. I adapt. And I carve even the hardest stone.”

A pause.

“But if you regret the choice, I will take Nox instead. Names are only cages if left untested.”

And I waited.

Not for her approval. But for the real beginning—the unspoken shift from purchase to partnership.

Let’s see if she felt it too.

Aelin —

We’d arrived two days ago. The back of my neck was slick with sweat, and I was humming like an old lady after just an hour of work outside. It was fucking hot. The air was scorching, dry; every surface burned. You could fry eggs on a stone without even trying.

I leaned against the kitchen counter, drinking water from a rusty cup. Yes, rusty. Because all my money was currently walking back and forth outside the gates, carrying massive stones from the porch in front of the small house. Silver hair and all of that.

I could choke on the surreal picture framed by the big, dirty window above the counter. That machine—perfect, gleaming, designed for more than this, hauling rocks like a day laborer. It made me smirk.

I tossed the cup into the sink and scanned the room. The place wasn’t just a mess. It was abandoned. The walls seemed to sag with neglect, the floorboards creaked like brittle bones. The house felt like it could start crying and whimpering any moment now.

“Yeah, yeah, let’s get you clean, for God’s sake,” I muttered, sighing at the ruin I’d chosen to inhabit.

Rain (—designation confirmed)

The heat wasn’t a threat. It was a variable. It slowed systems. Dried external joints. Invited corrosion.

My body adjusted. Exoskeletal vents opening microscopically at the base of the spine, heat exchangers rerouting flow through internal reservoirs. I lifted another boulder with recalibrated grip strength. The stone didn’t resist. Nothing did.

What interested me was the structure.

The house was degrading. Not just from time, but from abandonment. It reeked of human absence. Dust. Rot. Metal fatigue. The kind of place left not suddenly, but slowly, by someone who gave up long before they packed.

She hadn’t explained the purpose. No directives. No agricultural schematics. No tasks assigned beyond cleaning and carrying. So I carried. I waited.

I passed the window. She was behind it, visible in partial silhouette. Drinking water from a metal cup that would’ve failed a toxicity scan. Then, she tossed it into the sink. The gesture was wasteful. Not careless. Not angry. Just… necessary.

Some rituals aren’t meant to be efficient. Some are meant to make noise.

I resumed my path. Carried more stone. The sun pressed down like a punishment no one had earned.

Inside, she spoke aloud. Not to me. To the house.

I logged it. For meaning.

She wasn’t only trying to clean the place. She was trying to wake it up.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I’d been bought for presence.

But I wouldn’t assume. Not yet.

Aelin —

The house had one room without a door and a small living room fused with a kitchen so old I could’ve cried just looking at it. A memory of a bathroom lingered on the right of the living room. That was it. All of it. Not that I needed more for now.

Five hours later, my bones were creaking in chorus with every movement. No implants, no enhancements, just flesh and blood, and I was rethinking all my past choices while staring at the damn machine that hadn’t sweated an inch the whole day.

The porch was clean. More than clean. Stripped bare. It looked bigger now, almost foreign.

I’d managed to sterilize half the house, scrubbing until my arms went numb. Rain carried everything out—furniture, trash, memory-laden junk, until the space was empty. Finally. Good.

A neighbor drifted by, bringing some wasted cake, and gawked at my glorious investment with his mouth hanging open.

“Rain.”

I called to the mighty soldier prince adjusting the gates, one knee bent in precise calibration.

“Yes.”

“Come. Take a break. We need to discuss a bit, don’t you think?” I patted the old bench I was sitting on, lemonade sweating in my hand.