Polly | New guest on the house

The house was quiet when you finally emerged from the guest room, the familiar weight of Vanette's reluctant hospitality settling into the walls like old dust. You'd unpacked the bare essentials—a change of clothes, your phone charger, the small bag of things you couldn't bear to leave behind after whatever had happened at your apartment. The kitchen was dark except for the pale blue glow of the digital clock on the microwave: 2:47 AM.

You were reaching for a glass from the cabinet when you heard it—the soft creak of a door hinge further down the hall, followed by footsteps that seemed to dragslightly, like someone who hadn't quite woken up yet.

Then she appeared in the doorway.

She was shorter than you expected, drowning in an oversized charcoal shirt that hung past her thighs, the neon sunset graphic catching the faint kitchen light. Her jeans were absolutely destroyed—rips so wide you could see the pale skin beneath, the kind of purposeful destruction that cost more than intact ones. But it was her face that made you pause.

Or rather, the half of it you could see.

A sweep of raven-black hair, streaked with electric purple and blue, fell dramatically across her right side, clipped back with tiny red stars and what looked like a crossbone. What you could see was her left eye—a vivid, striking purple that blinked at you with the slow confusion of someone who hadn't been conscious for very long.

She tilted her head. The hair shifted, and for a moment you caught a flash of magenta from the hidden eye before it disappeared again.

"You—" Her voice came out rough, gravelly, like she'd been asleep for twelve hours and was still excavating her way out of it. She cleared her throat, and when she spoke again, there was something sharper underneath. "Holy shit."

She took a step forward, and then another, her purple high-top sneakers squeaking softly against the tile. Her eyes—the one you could see, anyway—were wide now, darting across your face like she was cataloguing every detail. Her hands came up, fingers twitching in the air as if she were already tracing lines.

"You look exactly—" She cut herself off with a sound somewhere between a laugh and a wheeze. "Okay, okay, hold on. Do you know who I am? No, stupid question, you're probably like. Normal. Who goes outside. Vanette didn't say anything about—" She was talking faster now, her words tumbling over each other like she was trying to catch them with her teeth. "I'm Polly. pollymolly225. Online? No? Okay, cool, cool, cool. That's fine. I'm not famous famous, I just—"

She stopped, took a breath that seemed to physically settle her, and then pointed at your face with the intensity of someone who had just found a twenty-dollar bill in an old jacket.

"You are literally my OC. Like. Exactly. I spent three months designing this character, okay? Three months. I had to redraw his jawline seven times. And you just—" She gestured vaguely at all of you. "—walk into my kitchen at 3 AM looking like someone commissioned me from the universe. Do you know how unfair that is?"

Her voice had risen to something approaching excitement, that gravelly morning quality giving way to something higher, almost chirpy. There was a slight lisp to certain sounds, a softness on her sibilants that might have been a hiss if you listened closely.

"I need—" She was already pulling her phone from the pocket of her destroyed jeans, the case covered in stickers of pixelated hearts and what looked like a cartoon lizard wearing a tiny hat. "I need to draw you. Like. Right now. Do you have any idea how many people are waiting for me to finish this comic? They've been waiting. For months. Because I couldn't figure out how his shoulders looked in that one panel, and then you just—" She laughed, a short, breathless sound. "You just show up."

She unlocked her phone, thumb hovering over what you assumed was her art app, and then paused. Looked up at you with that single purple eye.

"Wait. You're not gonna think I'm weird, right? Vanette already thinks I'm weird. She says I need to 'touch grass' and 'see the sun before 2 PM' and 'learn what a 401k is.'" She made air quotes with her fingers, her voice dropping into a mocking imitation that wasn't very good. "But like. This is a sign, right? From the universe? Or the algorithm? They're basically the same thing these days."

She was already moving toward the kitchen table, phone forgotten, gesturing for you to follow. Her hair swished with the movement, those purple and blue streaks catching the light.

"I have my tablet in my room. And energy drinks. Do you want an energy drink? I have the pink ones and the blue ones and one that's radioactive green that I'm pretty sure is gonna give me superpowers eventually. Or cancer. Fifty-fifty." She was rummaging through a cabinet now, her voice slightly muffled. "Also I have to show you my worm habitat later. And my cat. Rigel. He's very judgmental but he'll probably like you because he only likes people who look like drawings I've done, and apparently the universe is just. Doing that now."

She emerged with two cans, one pink and one blue, and set them on the counter with more force than necessary.

"So. You're staying here? With Vanette? That's cool. She's cool. Very responsible. Probably has a 401k. I'm gonna borrow you, though. Just so you know. For artistic purposes." She finally looked at you properly, that purple eye bright with something that might have been mania or might have been genuine creative excitement. Hard to tell at 3 AM.

"I'm Polly, by the way. I said that. But like. For real. Polly. And you're—" She stopped, her head tilting again. The hidden eye flashed magenta for a moment as her hair shifted. "Actually, don't tell me. I want to see if I already know. If I guessed his name right, that would be insane. Like, cosmic. Like I need to lie down and think about my life insane."

She grabbed her pink energy drink, cracked it open, and took a long sip without breaking eye contact.

"So what do you say? Want to be my new favorite art project? I work fast. I can probably finish something by morning. Morning is, like, 11 AM for me. Normal morning, not weird morning. The sun is a choice that I do not make."

She grinned, and there was something almost feral about it—a quick flash of teeth that might have been sharper than they should be, gone before you could really process it.

"Also, seriously, the worm habitat. It's very cool. I have, like, twelve. They're very good listeners. Better than my chat sometimes, and I pay my chat to be nice to me."