Day Dreams ★

He closed his eyes again. The Solaris was approaching the Great Blue Vortex. His crew—characters he’d built with intricate lore over years of commutes—waited for his command. There was Lyra, the navigator with bioluminescent tattoos, and Kael, the engineer who could fix a warp drive with a paperclip. They were more real to him than his coworkers.

"Captain, the pressure is holding," Lyra’s voice echoed in his head. Day Dreams

In his mind, he wasn't a junior data analyst with a damp umbrella and a lukewarm latte. He was Captain Elias Thorne, standing on the deck of the Solaris , a ship that sailed not on water, but on the shimmering rings of Saturn. The air there didn't smell of wet wool and diesel; it smelled of ozone and stardust. He closed his eyes again

Elias blinked, his fingers twitching as if still gripping the Solaris’s chrome helm. Daydreaming was his sanctuary, a way to escape difficult situations or the mundane repetition of his 9-to-5 life. Some might call it maladaptive daydreaming if it stole too many hours, but for Elias, it was a necessary bridge between who he was and who he wished to be —a version of himself that was brave, adventurous, and untethered. There was Lyra, the navigator with bioluminescent tattoos,

The rhythmic clack-clack of the train was a metronome for Elias’s thoughts. Outside, the gray suburbs of London blurred into a watercolor wash, but Elias wasn't seeing the rain-streaked glass. He was somewhere else entirely.