Orion stretched in bed, he was midway through having a lovely dream about spending hours on end in a boundless forest. Every time he saw a squirrel, he was successful in pinning it down and cheekily carrying it back to his human, big black tail thumping hard against the air. On one instance in his dream, he even managed to catch a bird.

He ran back to the main trail and was met only by cheers, “Oh Orion, you good dog! Look what you brought me! A real life robin! You know what we can do with this right? We can take it home and put it in a display case! Or it could be a lovely little coffee table decoration, I think the red feathers would accent lovely with the sofa’s throw pillows! Or, we could just cook it! What do you say about a little barba que for the best dog there is?”

Orion was especially pleased by that last request. Unfortunately, his owner never did seem nearly that pleased when he managed to catch a mouse under their porch deck and trot inside with his head held high. Instead, he was immediately given a bath targeted at removing the blood from his mouth (a horrible waste of insanely cool looking blood), and then he was kicked outside while his owner tried to wipe something up from the hardwood floors.

Nevertheless, a dog could dream. So Orion did just that, his tail beating hard against the air to his right side, always only wagging on his right side. And the big black lug of a mutt was lucky for that, because on the other side of the bed, Sarah was sleeping, and his wagging tended to wake her up. She seemed to have had an extremely busy day at work yesterday, seeing as how she walked in the house lazily, whole-heartedly shut the door to the howling wind behind her, kicked off her work shoes mid-stride, and pored the dog an extremely generous portion of food. Which, of course, he ate in one sitting.

Orion watched as she trodded, her back hunched from hours of staring at a piercingly magnetic blue computer screen. As if without a care in the world, she flipped the covers up and fell into the bed, all in one impressive motion. Now she lay above him, sprawled into a free-fall paused mid-action. Her mousy dirty blond hair was spread into a staticky mess around her face, cheeks rosy red with deep and fulfilling sleep. Right above them, her bright jade cat eye glasses fixedly askew, one side pressing into her fair skin.

She was midway through a long and drawn out snore when came a jaunty rapping on the front door. Orion reacted first because, of course, nothing mattered more than deep sleep except the pleasure of greeting a stranger with a terrifyingly deep bark. The noise pierced through Sarah’s dreamless rest, but didn’t leave her feeling any more awake.

Sarah reluctantly pushed up on one elbow, the rest of her body seemingly limp in bed.

“Ms. Pricklegrove! Hello? Anyone home?” A voice that seeped with an offensive amount of exuberance for such a disagreeable time of morning rang out past the door.

“Wha—?” Sarah snapped her head lazily toward the door before registering the request, “Uh, yes! Yeah I—Oough!”

Sarah’s attempt to step out of bed, drunk with a chronic desire to sleep 24/7, was met with the full force of gravity. A loud thump summoned a whimper from Orion. Of course he wanted to check on Sarah, but he wanted to—had to—keep his eye on this exciting stranger and make sure she didn’t go away.

“Mrs. Picklegrove, everything all right in there?” The voice called back with a bit of a laugh and a tone that suggested a very wide and toothy smile was currently plastered onto the woman’s face.

“Uh ye-yes!” Sarah yelled back. I’ll be there in just a moment, ah dammit!” she twisted her neck back to see that her foot had been caught in her nausea-reminiscent green-colored sheet. It was now torn where her foot remained twisted in a knot of fabric. Had the been on sale at the dollar store anyway? Yes. Had they always had an extremely unappealing chemical smell to them that never quite washed out? Even with the employment of heavily perfumed “tulips by the seaside” detergent? Yes. But still, she wasn’t the kind of person who enjoyed replacing things until they were really broken. She assumed now she should replace these, if she must.

Sarah’s bare feet padded pitifully across the creaking wood floors as she tipped to the side to grab at the eccentrically designed quilt which she had acquired at a garage sale a few years ago. No, it didn’t keep her warm ever. And no, it did not even look good in the house. She was sure it wouldn’t look good anywhere, but that sort of thing, obviously, didn’t matter to her much. She’s leave interior design cares to her more fashionable sister.

Rolling her neck and stretching out the stuff joints in her fingers was more a mindless habit now for Sarah, and one that did nothing to alleviate the nagging strain in each of her bones. The cold January weather seemed to be working against her efforts anyway. Office work was wearing, and she currently was not wearing it well. Blush-colored lines wrinkled from the stiff pillowcase rumpled around her forehead and a deep red line from where her glasses had sat smudged into her soft cheeks, Sarah opened the door to the blue hue of a barren front yard. Barren, that is, except a woman in a sharp pink pantsuit, the unbuttoned blazer hanging unbuttoned like a powerful flag against the wind. And it was worn with more confidence and gusto than Sarah had ever seen any man wear a tuxedo.

Of course, the only time that had happened was at his brothers now meaningless wedding, where most of the men there had worn solely sweats and a video game t-shirt for most of the year. But this woman, she looked like something as suave and pronounced as this was the only outfit that ever truly worked on her. The pressed button-down underneath was a zealots green, buttoned all the way up to the nape of her neck and concluding in a dashingly large silk collar. She smiled a flash of her perfect white teeth at Sarah. Sarah’s matted and formless hair waved sadly in the wind, catching it from all angles where it say above her head. Beside her, vibrant balloon strings which had just been tied to her cobweb-covered sconces vibrated with the gust.

“Hello! Ms. Pricklegrove, it is so lovely to see you at last! I’m here with the Channel 9 Sunup Stories with some very exciting news for you!” She bounced in her heels, ostensibly on her third expensive latte of the day already.

Sarah didn’t know how she hadn’t seen it before, but then again, she didn’t know how to function on only ten hours of sleep to make up for four previously sleepless nights. She blinked back the fog in her head as she looked alarmedly at a large television grade camera hoisted over the shoulder of a man’s black puffer and pointed at her. Behind him, she could see someone reaching deep into the back of the Channel 9 News van grappling for a hold on something. He was only visible past his waist now as one loafered foot tipped high in the air behind him.

“Uh—“ Sarah paused, eyes flicking between the unexpected scene laid before her, “Hey, hi.” She waved meekly at the camera directly. She really hated cameras.

“What’s this all about again?” She stumbled through the question, gesturing vaguely towards the balloons and the woman, who seemed to be competing for dominance of the rainbow. Of course, the cheery reporter already had green and pink in her grasp, looking like a Strawberry Shortcake ready to tackle the business world with her charisma alone.

“Well Ms. Pricklegrove,” Ms. Shortcake began, not missing a beat, “It seems luck is in your favor today! The results for the 2022 Channel 9 News Travel Raffle tickets have come in, with your name alone victorious!”

The man in the loafers and drab charcoal suit walked up behind her, trying to fix strands of his jelled back hair into place. Trying, that is, unsuccessfully. At the same time, he was fighting desperately to stop a gargantuan poster board rectangle from acting as a sail and blowing him away with each blow of the teeth-chattering air. At the smell of his leather shoes clacking down the chipped walkway, Orion shoved his head past Sarah’s now heavily mangled khaki pants, ruffles from a deep sleep.

“Wha—what?” Sarah slowly looked down at the poster board in front of her. It looked like one of those giant checks you see on TV when people win the lottery in advertisements. Except this one was formatted like a plane ticket. She read each like silently in her mind.

In playful font, she made out, “Winning Traveller: Sarah Pricklegrove!; A 14 day pre-paid plane ride and vacation to any catalogued destination of your choice with one guest; 2022 Channel 9 News Travel Raffle.”

The disoriented and shivering woman moved downward toward Orion, who was now dying to sniff at and most likely pounce on this large new toy. She shoved the large dog backwards and creaked the door’s gap closer to the frame, standing as if pressed into a corner.

“I don’t understand,” she mustered, eyes narrowing on the poster and looking to each face for an answer. All of their masks; however, seemed completely impenetrable. The camera man’s face was perky covered and focused, the poster man seemed nearly as tired and cold as Sarah, staring mesmerizedly at the balloons, and Ms. Shortcake’s smile was fixedly strained.

“Have you chosen your destination from the catalogue yet, Ms. Pricklegrove? Tokyo? Barcelona? Ooh! Perhaps Barbados?”

“I—I haven’t seen any such catalogue before!” Sarah shook her head, still trying to rid all the fuzz from it. She may still be immensely groggy, but this? She wouldn’t have forgotten entering a raffle for a free two week vacation. And it had been—well—longer than she’d like to admit since she’d last gotten drunk, so that definitely wasn’t it.

“I’m sorry,” she forced messily through her shyness and panic, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of this raffle before.”

“Haha, oh dear, you are charming as a verb! Even so early in the morning, ah! I love some good humor at the job every now an then, not very easy to come by, I can assure you.” Her laughter trailed off as she durned back disappointedly toward her coworkers, both ever-unmoving. Ms. Shortcake cleared her throat briskly.

“Anyway! Probably time to get out of your—hgmn—hair,” the reporter made a strangled noise in her throat, as she probably noticed Sarah’s tangled mane for the first time since their meeting.

“We’ll let you get onto calling that special someone and letting them know you’ve won an exciting travel opportunity for two!” She nodded directorily toward the poster man, who slid the ridiculous paper through the gap in the door with a start. Orion immediately leapt for it, sinking his teeth deep and shaking his whole body from head to toe pads like he was dancing.

“Orion! No. That’s not ours!” Sarah felt energy leap into her system finally. What was happening here? It was decisively a very big mistake that needs to be set right. She grabbed at the torn poster as Orion forcefully prepared for another bite. She slid it out through the gap again, gasping back against the cold as her bare feet landed on the patio for the first time.

“Wait!” She called as she snapped her head upward to see the van packing up and rolling away.

“There’s been a mistake! This was meant for someone else, I didn’t even enter your raffle!” She waved the poster high over her head, it’s stiffness now broken as the bits where Orion had chewed bent helplessly.

The van’s engine revved powerfully. Before pulling off, Ms. Shortcake rolled her window down, one hand on the poster man’s shoulder, obviously telling him to not drive off quite yet.

“Oh, dear, I almost forgot! Make sure you scan the QR code to set up your account and everything! Wouldn’t want to miss out on a chance like this just because of some technical confusion!” She beamed before rolling her window up.

“No, that’s what I’m telling you! There’s been a technical confusion! I’m not—“ Before she could finish calling desperately to the winters morning, the van pulled off with a screech of gray smoke, and that was that.

Sarah looked down again to the mangled poster in her aching hand.

“Winning Traveler: Sarah Pricklegrove!” she read again silently in her head. If Sarah was sure of something, it was this: she had never been one for winning anything, and she certainly wasn’t a traveler.