"Uh, mom, can't you tell that Elfangor isn't one of my friends from school? Can't you see that he's different? As in, not human?"

Maureen laughed, just like she had whenever Loren had said something she thought was particularly silly.

"Of course he's not human, silly. You think I don't know an Andalite when I see one?"

Loren shook her head in denial, there was just no way that her mother could know about Andalites! Sure, she was a hippie at heart, and Loren had kind of expected her to accept Elfangor without a lot of fuss and cajoling, but there was no way that she could know about Andalites. For one thing, if those weird Skrit Na guys had kidnapped her, the two of them would have spent weeks on end just discussing why it had happened and what it meant.

Her mom was a deeply philosophical person, so being taken offplanet by a bunch of aliens would definitely rate a ten on her scale of 'things that mean something', and the two of them had almost never kept secrets from each other. But, if this wasn't her, then that meant…

"You can't know about Andalites," Loren protested weakly, still trying to deny what she had started to suspect.

Maureen made a face, the same one that she had always made when Loren had teased her about being from the Stone Age.

"Just because I don't keep up on all the trends that you kids like to follow does not mean I'm from the Stone Age," Maureen said, smiling to take the sting out of her words. "I know an Andalite when I see one, thank you very much."

"Oh, god you can't… You can't know about Andalites," Loren said, tears beginning to well up in her eyes as she reluctantly put the pieces together.

"Loren sweetie, what's wrong?" Maureen asked, reaching out to touch Loren's shoulder.

As Loren remembered her mother doing so many times, when she had been crying or had just looked sad. But the last thing Loren wanted was to be touched by this shadow that was pretending to be her mother. She pulled back, recoiling before she could let herself be pulled into an embrace by someone who looked so much like someone she loved but wasn't, and could never be.

"Oh god, you're not even real. You're not real."

"Loren honey, of course I'm real," Maureen said, reaching for Loren again as she backed slowly toward the door.

"You're not my mother! You're not even real!"

Elfangor put his hand on Loren's shoulder, having learned that human's derive comfort from physical contact.

Loren, you are right. She is not your mother. She is a projection that was made from your thoughts and memories. The reason that she knows about Andalites is because you knew about Andalites when you remembered her.

These words, far from calming Loren, instead gave her a target for the irrational rage that was building up inside her.

"Get away from me! This is all your fault! Just leave me alone!" Loren screamed, somehow retaining enough caution not to slap Elfangor in the face.

Loren threw off Elfangor's comforting touch, then turned and dashed out of the kitchen. Racing up the stairs to her room and slamming the door once she was inside, Loren lay facedown on her bed, just trying not to scream or cry.

***

Back in the kitchen, Elfangor and Maureen were both standing together in stunned silence. Finally, after looking the way Loren had gone, Elfangor turned back towards the shadow/memory of a human woman.

I am sorry, he said to her, although he was not sure that she would understand why.

"Yeah, sure," Maureen said, also looking out the door Loren had run out of.

Loren's mother, can you show me where Loren's room is?

"Maureen," she said distractedly. "Yeah, it's the first room upstairs, on the right. Leave the door open a crack, okay? That's one of the house rules when Loren has friends over."

Elfangor nodded, trotting out of the kitchen to the stairs. Looking up at the staircase in front of him, Elfangor wondered what the purpose of this structure was. Perhaps it was simply a part of the human fascination with rectangular shapes, it certainly made it possible for them to add a second level to their dwellings. Turning them into vertical rectangles themselves.

***

Loren, now sick of just laying around and feeling sorry for herself, rolled out of bed. She needed to do something or she would explode, so she headed over to her softball gear. Softball was a good game to play when you wanted to hit something.

Picking up her softball bat and her mitt, Loren headed back for the stairs, not wanting to run into that copy of her mother. She didn't even want to deal with Elfangor right now.

Slipping out was fairly easy, as her pseudo-mother had left the kitchen, and Elfangor was gone as well.