The nightmare comes first.
I am in the kitchen, but it’s not right. It’s stretched impossibly long, the walls curling like soft dough, and the floor sticky beneath my paws. The air is thick with a sour, yeasty fog. And at the center of it all, the jar waits.
It is more significant than before. Taller than Mum, towering over me, its glass pulsing like a living thing. The sourdough inside churns and bubbles, whispering in a language I do not understand yet somehow know.
Ferment. Ferment. Join us.
I turn to run, but Mum and Felix are already there, their eyes glazed over, their hands kneading dough that grows up their arms, pulling them in, making them one with the mass. Schmutz is perched high above, but her tail is twisted, her fur flecked with flour, her voice a distant, eerie hum:
It’s history, Franzi. It’s tradition. It’s inevitable.
The jar lurches toward me, the air growing heavy with the scent of fermentation, my legs stuck as if I, too, am proofing—
I wake up gasping, claws dug into the blankets. My tail is the size of a pinecone. The kitchen is silent.
But the jar is still there.
The house is quiet. Too quiet.
Mum sips her coffee, absently stroking my back, her fingers tracing slow, thoughtful circles between my ears. Schmutz sits on the windowsill, tail curled neatly around her paws, her gaze fixed on nothing in particular. The world moves outside, but inside—something is missing.
I thought victory would taste sweeter. But now, in the eerie calm that follows, I realize I have done something irreversible. I have won, but at what cost?
Mum and Schmutz had… fun. I saw it, even if I refused to acknowledge it. The laughter, the shared excitement, the warm, flour-dusted chaos. The ritual of it. And now, that ritual is gone.
Mum is with me again—entirely with me, present, attentive, showering me with endless affection—but there’s a quiet sadness in her eyes. Schmutz, traitor that she is, does not gloat. She, too, stares out the window, ears slightly angled back. A house without sourdough is a house restored to balance.
And yet… something lingers.
The first nightmare arrives that evening. I am standing in the kitchen, but the counter stretches infinitely, jars bubbling, lids rattling with ghostly laughter. The Ancient Dough Relic looms, whispering. You cannot erase history, Franzi. You can only delay it.
I wake with a start, my tail puffed, my chest heaving.
And then, in the dead of night, I do something unthinkable.
I creep into the kitchen. The trash can lid is closed, but something calls to me: a scent, a presence, a whisper of unfinished business. Carefully—too carefully—I hook a paw under the lid. A dull thud. The faintest hint of fermentation. Still alive.
My ears flatten. I stare. The war is over. I won. Didn’t I?
And yet…
In the morning, Mum finds it on the counter; the jar is miraculously intact, wiped clean of coffee grounds, and placed neatly as if it had never been thrown away at all.
She gasps. Felix frowns. Schmutz lifts her head, eyes narrowing. I sit beside it, my posture is purposefully neutral, my tail flicking ever so slightly.
Mum hesitates. “But… I thought—”
I lean in, sniffing the jar, then wrench my face in dramatic disgust, gagging audibly. My entire body shudders. A low, pathetic retching sound escapes me, just loud enough to make Mum’s heart shatter with guilt.
“Oh, baby,” she croons, scratching behind my ears. “Does it still smell bad for you?”
Schmutz gapes at me, horrified.
Felix chuckles. “Guess we’ll have to be careful where we put it.”
Mum thinks for a long moment, then makes a decision.
“I’ll just… do it in the mornings,” she murmurs. “And only before breakfast. I can adjust.”
Adjust.
A new order has been established. A balance that tilts in my favor.
Schmutz knows. She knows. And yet, she says nothing. Because I have done what she could not—I have bent time itself to fit my needs.
I sit tall, proud, basking in Mum’s endless affection. The sourdough has returned but under my terms.
It is a compromise I can accept.
