Prologue
I sit where she writes.
This is not an accident.
The desk smells like paper, graphite, old ink, and the faint bitterness of a coffee she has forgotten again. The cup is cold now. It always is by the time she remembers it exists. She drinks it anyway, as if the temperature is part of the ritual.
I have arranged myself across the notebooks.
Six of them today.
Some are heavy with ink, pages pressed thin by words that only she understands. Others are empty, waiting. I like those best. They smell like possibility and patience. One notebook is labeled DND MAPS in her uneven handwriting. Another says DND STORY – PLOT TWIST, the corners bent from being opened too often. The rest are a mix—some filled, some barely touched, all important in ways that shift daily.
Between them are drawings.
Elves with long, sharp lines and tired eyes.
Human bodies sketched in fragments—hands, shoulders, the curve of a spine.
Dragons, always dragons. Wings half-folded, jaws open, scales drawn again and again as if repetition might make them real.
Other creatures I do not have names for, though I suspect she does.
Her hair is a mess today. It falls forward when she leans, and she pushes it back with the end of her pencil without thinking. She is quiet in the way that means her mind is loud.
I watch.
Then the chair moves. The room shifts.
I leave the desk and go to the window.
Outside, the yellow thing waits at the edge of the street. It is loud and large and always on time. The small human stands beside her, his bag too big for his back. She adjusts the strap. He does not look at the yellow thing yet.
I watch them from the window.
The door opens. The yellow thing breathes. The small human climbs the steps. She stands where he left her. She watches until the door closes and the yellow thing pulls away.
I remain at the window until it is gone.
Then she turns back inside.
We return to our places.
First, she feeds us.
Me.
The gray one—Neko—who pretends not to care but waits closest to the bowl.
The white one—Sebastian—who watches her hands more than her face.
Then she comes back to the desk. The pencil finds her fingers again. The words continue.
I take my place across the notebooks.
She does not ask me to move. She never does. She works around me, as if I have always expected to be here.
Perhaps I have.
The coffee stays cold. The maps grow more detailed. The dragons gain another layer of scales.
I close my eyes, but I do not sleep.
Someone has to stay.
