That was . . . way too much emotional labor to endure without a drink to get her through it. Joy tries to clear her mind, focusing on the feeling of being blank, on the sounds surrounding her: the chirping, the wind, the faint creak of metal. Just Joy and nature with a side of technology. She pulls out her phone, takes a quick picture of herself to immortalize the moment she decided to commune with a porch swing, and opens Rule of Thirds. She’ll have to post a picture to her main grid soon, lest the algorithm AI gods forsake her, making her engagement rate plummet. Her powershots, though, have been a hit.

Everyone wants to know who the grinning Silver Fox is.

She’s replying to comments when she hears a scratching sound. Joy looks around for the source and doesn’t find it, but then she hears it again, louder and more insistent this time. She places one foot on the ground to stop the swing from moving. Eyes wide and unblinking she scans the area again, slowly coming to a sitting position.

More scratching. And a crunching sound. Something rhythmically swishing through the grass. They’re not footsteps—they’re not heavy enough—but it sure as fuck isn’t the wind.

It’s an animal.

Joy’s brain goes into hyperdrive—it’s a bear or a raccoon or a fox or a coyote, because they don’t fear people at all. They’ll steal your food and eat your pets. It’s scratching against the side of the house. It’s digging, trying to find a way in. Not in the mood to play Mother Nature with anything on four legs that isn’t a domesticated cat, Joy slides off the bench, careful not to make a sound. She lands in a crouch, backing away slowly toward the front door to go inside where it’s safe.

One brown ear flicks into view through the railing. Joy freezes, unblinking. Another ear. And then a brown face with a black muzzle.

She gasps. It’s a deer. A deer is staring at Joy and she’s staring at it and it’s staring at her. It’s watching her with those wide dark eyes, just as frozen because it wasn’t expecting to see her there either.

Joy gasps again—farther back there’s another one! This deer doesn’t notice the first one keeping an eye on Joy and calmly makes its way toward the wooded area across the gravel road. It stops to eat something on the ground, but she doesn’t think it’s grass.

They must have gone down to the lake for water.