Interlude I

The warm box hums, low and even, and the warmth comes up through the floor of it into the place where she has settled, which is not a place she chose so much as a place that offered itself, the way good places always do.

Light moves across the front of the box. Not fast. A slow climbing thing, green, then a flicker of something brighter that comes and goes and comes again, no rhythm to it a body could set a paw by, which is itself the interesting part. Things that repeat are for sleeping through. Things that don't are for watching.

Feet pass, twice, unhurried, and a second, heavier set behind them, and neither pair stops long enough to matter.

Something in the box flickers harder than before — a bright climbing thing, there and gone — and she does not startle, because startling is for creatures who mistake noticing for danger. She only watches, ears forward, tail still, the whole of her narrowed down to the small bright place at the edge of the glass where the light did the thing it doesn't usually do.

It will do it again. She intends to be here when it does.

She sleeps, eventually, but not far, and not for long, and when she wakes the box is still humming, still warm, still hers, and nothing at all has been decided, which does not trouble her in the slightest.