"Agh."

Taya flopped onto her bed and dangled her feet over the edge. Koneko was out visiting someone in her never-ending chain of relatives and the room was silent. She hadn't gotten her explanation yet. She had no idea why the Cat two doors over smiled so sweetly the other morning and handed her a loaf of bread. She had no idea why the sausage vendor interrupted a sale to wave to her when she passed by. She had no idea why Koneko wouldn't understand this was creeping her out and she had no idea how to explain that to someone who couldn't.

She closed her eyes.

"I want everything to make sense again."

She rolled her thumb against the back of the pendant, feeling the nuances in the metal that marked it as an antique. It wasn't even her pendant, she had no right to find the motion comforting. The puckered ridges of the metal setting, the invisible nicks in the stone, the slight tarnish across the back that made her finger drag, all stolen from a professor in a little town that she somehow set aflame.

"I wish I had someone to talk to."

She thought of blue eyes forever blocked by dangling strands of hair, of the rhythmic thumping of a wood staff along wooden floorboards, of hands that smelled like lavender as they brushed against her chin. What would he be doing right now? Cross-legged in the dirt, back to a tree, meditating in the last hour of daylight? Face turned flush, hair pulled back, training stance by stance until the routine runs like clockwork? Shoulders drenched, clothespins in his teeth, hanging out the bed sheets before the light dies and he has to bring a lantern?

She rolled onto her side and looked out the window at boxlike silhouettes.

"Someone who wouldn't send me away."

She wanted to think of the dream and his infectious smile, his rippling laugh, his eyes and how they watched her without intention. She wanted to remember how it felt to talk and know someone was listening. She wanted to feel comfortable enough to sit with someone and not worry what he thought.

She thought instead of how his voice went cold, how his conversation turned to weary pleading, how his smile died as he sentenced her to endless nights of dreamless sleep.

"I'm sorry."

The stone grew warm beneath her fingers.