You'd really think it would feel better to get confirmation from an authority like Merlin that you weren't going crazy.
At least not on this particular occasion. At least not in a way that the DSM-5 covered. Weird, but the diagnostic criteria didn't offer any distinction for hallucinations that also happened to be true.
No, Rosario, you're not crazy, you just happen to see stuff that nobody else can. Fuck. And for how long? Lyra— Lyra'd been a vortex for the unlikely for as long as Rosario had known her. Since they were grade schoolers.
She thought of a menagerie of constellations, and the kid Brody peering around Apollo at her: You used to talk to them.
All at once, the unnatural glow of the orb was too much. She dropped her gaze, staring down at her hands instead.
"Apollo... maybe said something like that," she admitted in a mumble. Her mouth twisted sourly. "Actually, he got his girlfriend's kid brother to say it. Prob'ly so I couldn't call him an asshole. Asshole."