Headington

Claire eagerly embraces Liam, her warmth and vitality a sharp contrast to his cold, undead body. The passion in her exchange is palpable, her enthusiasm leaving no doubt that she revels in her bond with him. Her lips part from his skin with a breathy laugh, her eyes shimmering with admiration as she wipes a trace of crimson from the corner of her mouth. "You always know how to make us feel alive, Liam," she says playfully, her fingers brushing lightly against his arm. "The party is coming together beautifully. It’s going to be the event of the year, trust me." Aisha, on the other hand, is more reserved. She hesitates for a moment before stepping forwards, her movements almost mechanical as she accepts the exchange. Her touch is tentative, her breath uneven and her expression carefully guarded. Yet, beneath her professional demeanour, there’s a flicker of vulnerability, a subtle indication of her internal conflict. When she steps back, she adjusts her jacket, avoiding Liam’s eyes. "Thank you, Liam," she says softly, her voice tinged with unease. "My project is progressing well. The interviews are yielding some fascinating insights into the challenges faced by women in sports. I may need your input on analysing some of the gender dynamics — it’s your area of expertise, after all." "She’s just too proud to admit she misses you, you know,"   Claire interjects with a smirk. Aisha shoots her a sharp glance but says nothing, her lips pressing into a thin line. Instead, she redirects the conversation. "We’ve been keeping everything in order while you were gone. The party’s ready to go and Claire’s been obsessing over every detail, but, honestly, we were worried. How long were you in the Hedge? Did you find what you were looking for?"

Liam sighs and sits down into the chair at Mehdi's table. Though exhaustion didn't really take him anymore, the human habits that came from mentally battling a problem stuck with him. He gestures for the girls to join him. "That is tough to explain. I suppose I should start at the beginning. Last time we met, I told you that I was in some trouble, that many people would be wanting to harm me and that I was left in quite a bind between a murder and getting murdered myself."  He looks to them, waiting for the nod of confirmation before he continues. "Well, the hedge is a complex place, so complex that tracking me there is more or less impossible. Mehdi is a wonderful guide, and a gracious host and he found a place where we can safely stay. The drawback is that time flows differently there. To us, less than a day has passed since we left you. Moreover, none of the technology we use, functions in quite the same way there, so we can't call or email." He waits for a moment for this to sink in. "Now, that's not to say I haven't been thinking on my bind. Tomorrow, after I help Mehdi with his task, I owe him that before I risk my life, I shall throw myself on the mercy of my sire. Before then though, and perhaps after until she catches up with me, I have some things I have wanted to do. Helping you both is an important thing for me to do. I would love to look at your data and offer you guidance there. A last party is obviously essential too." He grins. "But there is a bigger weight on my mind, if I may be departing this existence. Before I became what I am now, I never had the chance to father a child. Before you, I had never taken a ghoul either, and I felt it may be my opportunity to experience that mentorship. I enjoy it very much, but I think now, I desire to continue my bloodline, and I suppose it is right to offer that to the two of you first." He pauses, looking for the immediate reactions of the pair. "It is a big thing, to leave your families, leave the sun and your soul, and I would not blame you for hating the idea, but I would not give the gift to another should you want it."

Claire's face lights up at Liam's words, her enthusiasm nearly bubbling over as she leans forward, eyes sparkling. "You really mean that?" She asks, her voice tinged with awe and excitement. "To be like you? To have all of this... power, immortality, and to be able to stay by your side? Liam, it's — it's incredible." Her voice falters slightly, her words both eager and nervous. "Of course, it's a lot to think about, but... I can't imagine a greater honour." Aisha sits more stiffly in her chair, her expression guarded. She glances briefly at Claire before her eyes return to Liam. "You're offering to sire us?" She asks slowly, her tone measured and cautious. "That’s not a gift to take lightly, Liam. You said it yourself — leaving the sun, leaving our families, our lives as they are now." Her lips press into a thin line and she folds her arms across her chest. "I need time to think about this. It’s not something that I can decide in the moment." Claire reaches out and takes Aisha’s hand, giving it a squeeze. "I understand," she says softly. "It’s... a lot, but think about what we’ve already given up, Aisha. We’re already part of this world. Liam’s already changed our lives in ways we can’t undo. Maybe this is the next step."

Liam smiles. "It's really nice to see the two of you getting on. I made good choices in you both. It is a big decision and I would like to give you all the time you need, it is not something that can be undone, but be aware, I cant make you a vampire if I meet my final death before you decide." He pats them both an affectionate pat on the knee.

Claire reaches out and places her hand over Liam’s, her eyes shimmering with a mix of gratitude and trepidation. "Liam, that means… everything to me, that you’d even offer something so monumental. You’ve given me so much already. Your guidance, your protection, this crazy new world that I never imagined existed. I…" she hesitates, biting her lip. "I’d be lying if I said that the thought of it doesn’t scare me, but it also excites me. I don’t think I should give you an answer right now. I need to really think about what this would mean." Aisha, sitting a little more stiffly, nods as Claire speaks. When Claire falls silent, Aisha clears her throat. "I appreciate the offer, Liam. I really do. It’s just…" she looks down at her hands, fidgeting with the hem of her sleeve. "I need to know if this is the right path for me. If this is something I could live with... or unlive with, I guess. You’ve opened my eyes to so much, but it’s not just about me, you know? My family, my career…" She shakes her head slightly, before meeting Liam’s eyes. "I’ll think about it. I promise I will."

Liam turns up his palms in acceptance. "I would have expected no different. It is right to think heavily on this. I hope that I can be around to sire you both when the time is right. Now, shall we sleep? I have a gig to play in the evening!"

The late-night streets of Headington are damp with drizzle and reflections of the neon shopfronts glisten in the rain-darkened pavement . Daxon leaves Liam's flat with his hood pulled up, the chill autumn air curling around him like an old friend. The sound of traffic on London Road is a constant hum in the background. Buses grumble and the occasional siren wails in the distance. The changeling's phone buzzes and the caller ID reads 'Jimmie Franks'. Unusual for this hour.

Daxon watches the mist of his breath electrified by the neon lights for a moment before raising the phone to his ear. "H'lo, Jimmie! Glad you called - everything alright?"

When Daxon answers, Jimmie’s voice is tight. He sounds a little frantic, but like he's trying to stay cool. "Dax, I’ve got a problem. One of my drivers picked up a fare near Cowley Road. Slick fella. Too pale and smelled wrong. Paid in cash, but when the guy pulled the bills out, something else fell with 'em. A coin. Heavy, old… the thing's warm, Dax. Warm like it's breathing. Driver’s spooked. Brought it straight to me and now the coin's gone missing from the glovebox. Vanished. You catch my drift?" Jimmie clears his throat and lowers his voice. "This is your kind of weird. I don’t want it blowing back on me or the boss. Can you get over here? I’ll keep the driver at the office. Headington depot."

Daxon blinks and stops walking for a moment, easing his back to a wall and glancing around as a chill that wasn't the rain thrummed over his spine. Settle down, man... Deep breaths... 5...4...3...2...1.  Then he shakes his head and starts walking again. "Be right there. And... I'm sorry."  He jabs the End Call button with his thumb and shoves the phone back in his pocket. He rubs the back of his neck for a moment, his fingers tracing the mark there. It isn't MY kind of weird. I didn't ask for this madness.

The rain is light, but persistent, blurring the lamps and turning the slick tarmac of London Road into a smear of reflected amber and red. The hour's late enough that even the kebab shop is shutting down, the scent of old fryer oil hanging in the mist. Daxon's boots leave dark crescents in the puddles as he heads downhill, past the row of shuttered takeaways and toward the cab depot wedged between a tyre shop and a fenced-in car wash. He knows the place. This is Jimmie's domain. The man runs dispatch for the small-time boss who owns the cab firm, which is a front for petty loans and worse. It’s not the kind of place that most people walk into after midnight without a purpose... but Daxon isn’t most people anymore. The forecourt is half-lit and a single flickering fluorescent strip above the office casts a pale rectangle on the cracked concrete. Two cabs idle under the awning, the rain tapping gently on their roofs. One of the drivers  watches Daxon approach, his  cigarette glowing and his shoulders hunched in his hi-vis, before looking away again. No trouble unless you make it. The swollen, damp wood of the depot door sticks as Daxon opens it. Inside, the smell hits first. Diesel, instant coffee and the faint, sour musk of old tobacco. The walls are lined with faded posters of lost cat flyers, gig adverts from a decade ago and a faded tax-disc calendar still pinned above the desk.  Behind the desk sits Jimmie Franks, his bulk framed by the pale glow of three cheap monitors. Dispatch software is open on one and a spreadsheet on another. He looks up, tired eyes narrowing under his greying buzz cut. His voice, when it comes, is a low growl wrapped in familiarity and nicotine. "Dax. Christ, you look like you’ve seen a ghost."  Jimmie leans back in his chair, eyeing Daxon’s soaked jacket and the tremor in his hands. "You want a coffee first, or you wanna go straight through?" He asks,  jerking his chin toward the back office, the door to which stands ajar.  Beyond, the smell of gasoline mingles with something metallic and faintly sweet.

Daxon doesn't drop his hood until he's in the depot with Jimmie. A crisp breeze follows him and wafts the cabbie's cigarette smoke in arcane curlicues as the changeling passes through.  "Coffee and a smoke, first, if there's time. Sounded urgent." Daxon raises his eyebrows in an interrogatory, his voice tense and quick as his eyes run over the walls, looking for anything new.

Jimmie pauses mid-drag, watching his cigarette’s ember flare and dim. The crisp breeze that trails Daxon makes the smoke coil and twist unnaturally, like it’s being tugged at by invisible fingers. Jimmie squints through it, mutters something under his breath and stubs the cigarette out in an old mug. “Yeah… urgent,” he finally says. The man's voice is roughened by age and nicotine and his chair creaks as he pushes back from the desk, reaching for a chipped mug besides the kettle. Jimmie's movements are heavy and deliberate with weariness and the coffee tin rattles in his hand as he spoons out granules. The fluorescent light hums overhead and t he smell of burnt coffee can’t quite cover the tang of copper and ozone in the air, like the scent of a struck match that never quite dies. Behind the dispatch counter, a pile of receipts flutters, even though the breeze has stopped. Jimmie finally sets the mug down in front of Daxon and reaches into his jacket pocket, pulling out a small, transparent plastic bag. Inside is a scrap of paper. It's torn, water-stained and covered in spidery, cramped handwriting. The ink glistens faintly in the light, although it looks long dry. “Driver swears this wasn’t there when he left the cab,” Jimmie mutters in a low voice. “Found it on the seat after that fare I told you about. Passenger paid, dropped that coin, then this shows up like it grew there.” He glances toward the back office with uneasy eyes. “Coin’s gone now. Door’s locked, window’s shut, cameras didn’t catch a damn thing. Just… this,”  he emphasises, tapping the plastic bag, “and the smell.” A faint vibration rumbles underfoot, as though something deep in the concrete is stirring. The fluorescent light flickers twice, dimming for a breath, and  Jimmie rubs the back of his neck with a humourless laugh. “You ever get the feeling something’s listening?” In the alley outside,  a cat yowls, faintly.  It's a long, drawn-out sound that is uncomfortably human in its cadence.

Daxon starts at the sound of the cat. The will of some elder catgod of Egypt... Don't like that! His hands shake a bit as he lights his own cigarette and draws deep, exhaling the plume up towards the ceiling before taking a sip of Jimmie's coffee. He'd been around folks in recovery too long to have high expectations, and the adrenaline pumping through his veins didn't help. But the caffeine did. He swallowed a hot sip and then nodded. "Something's definitely listening -- too many somethings, in fact. People been living here for at least a millennium. Lots of things going bump, day and night." Now that his hands are a little steadier, he pinches two corners of the plastic bag between his fingers to flatten it out so he can see the script.

The scrap inside the bag crackles faintly as Daxon smooths it and Jimmie leans back just far enough to give him space, but not far enough to hide the way his eyes track every movement, as though he’s afraid that the thing might wriggle. When inspected  under the harsh fluorescent light, the handwriting resolves into something unmistakably deliberate . Calm, practiced strokes written by somebody who knew exactly what they wanted each letter to do. Except... it isn’t quite English. The first line looks English-adjacent with letters shaped like they should be familiar, but the way that they curve at odd angles makes them bend in and out of recognition. Daxon's eyes try to turn one of the characters into an "R" and then a "K" and then something rune-shaped, before it settles back into a shape that belongs to none of them. The second line is a shock. This is  Hedge script that's been  tainted and twisted, as though somebody wrote it standing halfway between a dream and a set of grinding iron teeth. The rhythm of it sparks an instinct like muscle memory.  The shapes seem to wriggle against the plastic and, behind them, glimmers the faint spiral of a water stain, as though something has soaked into the paper from the  inside .  Jimmie clears his throat softly. "Driver said that when he touched it, the letters felt... raised. Like braille." He rubs his thumb and forefinger together. "When I picked it up? Flat as anything. Didn’t smell right either. Like the inside of a church and the inside of a dead engine at the same time." Then, the air shifts. The faint tang of ozone pulses once and a subtle wave of pressure floods the room, just enough to make the hairs the arm stand up.  The dispatch monitors glitch for half a second, all three screens flickering with static, before they snap back to normal.  Jimmie flinches. "See? Told you. Ever since that fare, weird stuff. Lights. Cameras. Joe swears his radio whispered his name." He nods towards the paper. "Whatever that says... I don’t think it’s meant for me ." Outside, something scrapes along the metal fencing of the car wash. It sounds like claws, or something pretending to have claws. The same cat yowls again, but this time closer. Much closer.

Daxon blanches as he looks at the slip of paper, and even more as he listens to Jimmie. "No, it wasn't - let me get this away from here," he says. "I think if I can get it away, it won't trouble you any further." He swallows the last of his coffee and crushes out his cigarette. "I'm sorry, Jimmie. Try to forget you saw me tonight, eh? I'll call you when I can and check in." He gingerly picks up the plastic bag, the thing's  energy setting the changeling's teeth on edge like sucking a lemon coated in battery acid. He tucks it into his coat, turns the collar back up, and rushes back out into the enveloping night.

As soon as Daxon pockets the evidence bag, the atmosphere in the depot changes.  The fluorescents steady,  the hum of the dispatch computer returns to its usual mechanical drone and  the metallic tang in the air thins, dissipating like steam off a kettle.  Jimmie watches the changeling with an expression caught somewhere between relief and dread. His shoulders sag, as though an invisible weight that the man didn’t even realise that he was carrying just slid off of them. "Yeah. Yeah, alright," the cabby mutters with a sharp, jerky nod, rubbing the heel of his hand against his sternum.  "Forget I saw you," he echoes with a tremor in his voice.  "Forget tonight. Forget the bloody coin. No problem. Just, be careful out there, yeah, Dax?"  Jimmie calls after Daxon, as the changeling turns towards the door.  " Whatever that thing is," h e adds, gesturing vaguely at Daxon's coat and the night beyond,  " it’s not normal, even by your standards. "   The night outside hits like a cold hand.  The breeze that always follows Daxon sharpens into a knife-edge chill that tugs at the hem of his coat. The rain has eased off into a fine, needling mist that drifts through the orange glow of the streetlamps. Meanwhile, the rumbling bus engines, distant laughter and the hiss of tyres on wet asphalt feel muted, as though they're muffled by a layer of unseen gauze.  Beneath all that noise, Daxon can hear something else as well.  A soft patter of  light, deliberate steps, just out of sight. He pulls the depot door shut behind him and the world narrows to the empty forecourt, the gleam of puddles and the faint outline of a cat sitting atop the bonnet of the nearest cab. Its tail flicks back and forth and its eyes reflect the light in a too-bright green.  The cat’s ears twitch, prompting  it to stand, s tretch  and hop down with the almost soundless pat of paws on metal.

Daxon freezes in the shadows near the depot door, eyes fixed on the approaching cat. As its paws patter on the metal of the cab, he mutters, "Shit Shit Shit Shit Shit. I'm dead. I'm dead. Shit. I'm dead," while starting to count down from 60 the seconds in his head.

The cat pauses mid-step, one paw lifted delicately off of the wet concrete. Slowly and deliberately, it tilts its head.  The rain hisses softly, filling the air with a mist that turns the depot forecourt into a blurred, liminal space, like something out of a dream. The glow of the streetlights glints in the  two chips of eerie, liquid green that are the  cat's eyes. They don’t blink, or waver.  They are fixed on Daxon . 56... 55... 54... As the changeling counts, the shadows around him ripple. The cold that trails behind him gathers at his ankles in a coiling spiral of crisp air. His pulse thuds in his ears, until  a soft click breaks the moment. It's  tiny and rhythmic, like claws gently tapping against concrete.  The cat steps forwards and  the closer that it gets, the more that Daxon feels the faint tingle in his coat from the paper in the plastic bag. A  shimmer of cold runs up the back of his neck, almost the same as the sensation that he gets when walking close to a Hedge gate, but this isn't Hedge magic, or glamour. It feels  older. 42... 41... 40... A breeze curls around the cat, briefly lifting the fur along its spine, and, for a heartbeat, Daxon sees the cat's shadow cast in two directions at once. One of them stretches out  towards the far end of the depot, until it is  unnaturally long.  Then, the second shadow twitches and  the cat pauses again, its ears pricking.  A low, warbling yowl rises from the far side of the car wash fence. Then, a third further away down a side street. The feline voices layer together into a strangely harmonised chorus . 33... 32... 31... The cat closes to within ten feet of Daxon and then  sits with its  tail neatly curled around its paws.  Its mouth opens ever so slightly a nd a sound comes out that is not a cat's sound. It's a  low, breathy exhale, l ike wind through a hollow reed.

If his Keeper had hardwired anything into Daxon during his durance, it was the ability to maintain an outward mien of stillness in the midst of horrors beyond imagination. The cat  - he could hear  the italics in his head for surely this was no more a cat than he was a human anymore ( DON'TGODOWNTHATROADRIGHTNOW) - was putting that ability to its most strenuous test in months. Daxon opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. He swallows hard, then moves to speak again, his dark eyes fixed on the cat's eerie green ones. Might as well start where the Queen said to start.   "Why are you here?"

The cat watches Daxon with the patient, terrible calm of something that has never once in its existence needed to justify itself to a mortal, or to a Lost thing pretending not to be afraid.  The mist thickens around them, curling in soft coils along the concrete, and  the cat’s jaw shifts open another fraction.  A filament of breath escapes into the air. It's  pale, cold and strangely heavy.  For a moment more, there is only silence, and  then the cat's pupils widen, swallowing almost all the green, until its eyes become two deep wells of black. The second shadow behind it twitches again, rippling like something underwater straining to surface. When it answers, the sound that emerges is like a sensation of pressure behind Daxon's sternum, or a tug at the base of his skull. This is not anything that the human ear was designed to parse. It is  a whisper that is felt , not heard, like the faintest vibration of a harp string plucked somewhere far beneath the world. For the Kindred. The meaning comes as knowledge that slides uninvited into the space behind Daxon's thoughts. A truth carried on instinct, like knowing the direction of a scent on the wind.  The cat’s head tilts and i ts second shadow coils, tightening into a spiral.  Another pulse of not-sound follows. It's sharper and colder this time, cutting through him like a falling leaf made of razor-thin ice. For you. The pressure shifts and a third, softer, but unmistakably deliberate pulse threads into him like a needle. Come and see. The cat stands, i ts tail flicks once and the other shadows in the forecourt move with it, as though  obeying some deeper, older law.  Then, it turns  purposefully and  begins to pad away from the depot into the narrow service alley between the cab office and the tyre shop. It's so tight and unlit that even the street's ambient glow cannot reach it.  It pauses once, halfway into the darkness, and wait,  looking back at Daxon.

22...21...20... The communication simultaneously unnerves the changeling in the depth of his bones... and fills his bloodstream with a wild hope that makes him almost tremble with suppressed excitement. POWER... power to find the one who'd traded me to my Keeper and power to make them both pay for the horror I have become! 12...11...10... The working of the Contract flows in his darkling mind. In moments he could vanish - literally erase himself from his surroundings and take what he'd learned to the Autumn Queen. But would such an opportunity as this rise again? To follow... to go and see... perhaps to find what he needs more than anything? The countdown fades into the back of his mind as he nods and murmurs, "I hear and obey, great one."

The cat's ears twitch in response to Daxon's words and its  second shadow  loosens, like a cloak slipping from narrow shoulders. For an instant, the changeling's vision stutters and the alley seems deeper than it was a breath ago, its brick walls stretch just a little too far and its darkness has thickened into something velvety. The sound of traffic, background voices and the distant thrum of life dim, as though a door has been eased mostly shut.  The cat steps silently forwards into the narrow gap, the way that its paws make contact with the concrete no longer quite obeying physics. Each footfall sends a faint sympathetic tremor through the scrap of Hedge-tainted script  in Daxon's coat, which  answers the cat's presence like a plucked nerve. The pressure in Daxon's chest eases, until it feels more like a current driving him to move. As he takes that first step,  the air changes .  The smell of diesel and rain thins, replaced by dust, parchment and sun-warmed stone, along with the faint musk of fur and incense long burned out. The shadows in the alley lengthen, resolving into shapes that don’t quite finish becoming what they suggest. Pillars, statues and watching eyes.  The cat glances back once more and its green eyes briefly flare brighter. Witness, then. The alley bends j ust enough that Headington is no longer behind Daxon in any way that matters.  Ahead, the darkness opens onto a narrow court, something between a street and a garden, where ivy crawls over ancient brickwork. Other cats sit along the edges of the space, as still as carved figures, their shadows pooling and overlapping like ink spilled on stone.  At the centre of the court, something waits. Something that has yet to fully manifest, but already feels like an oncoming storm. F ar above it all, bells toll the hour.

Daxon surrenders to the relentless pull forward, sighing with wonder as the ambiance shifts around him. This is not... this is different.  He takes a deep breath of the warmer, drier air and then exhales slowly. I can see ivy, cats, pillars, statues, and shadows. I can feel my coat, my marble skin, the warm air and the stone under my feet. I can hear the bells, my footfalls as I walk, and the cat's strange steps. I can smell their fur and just the faintest touch of ancient spicy incense. I can taste the dryness of this place. I am here. Wherever here is. His pulse slows and his breathing regulates, even as his mind opens to the extraordinary possibilities before him. With a steady stride, he continues to approach the center of the court, counting the tolling bells and looking up to see the source of such powerful sound. I will  witness and see what this Power wants of me... and if there's a deal to be made, so much the better.

The first truth that settles into Daxon as he looks up is that  the bells do not hang in the sky.  There is no tower, no rope and no iron tongue swinging in a cradle of stone. The sound is coming from the idea of above .  Each toll is   felt more than heard as it  rolls through the court, vibrating faintly in the marble smoothness of the changeling's skin and down into the stone beneath his feet.  The bell tolls once and the shadows lengthen, aligning themselves with the pillars. It tolls again and t he ivy along the walls rustles, its leaves turning their pale undersides outwards like watchful eyes. Upon the third chime,  every cat in the court lowers its head, just slightly. At the centre of the space, the stone floor is different. It's older, smoother and has been worn into a shallow depression by centuries of careful, reverent use. Pillars rise around it in a loose circle, their surfaces carved with reliefs that refuse to stay still. There's a woman’s silhouette with a feline head and a cat sat before a crescent moon, its claws raised in warning.  Statues stand, waiting, between the pillars,  depicting an impossible variety of  cats. Some are  sleek and domestic, others are lean and feral, while some are even massive and leonine. Some wear collars etched with sigils that Daxon does not recognise, while  others bear scars, chips, or deliberate defacement, as though their damage itself is a story meant to be remembered. The warmth deepens when the changeling fully steps into the circle. The dryness presses gently at the back of his throat, and the scents of cinnamon, myrrh and some sharper, older incense thicken just enough to ground him.  The lead cat pads ahead of Daxon and takes its place sitting at the edge of the central stone. The seventh toll feels somehow c loser and final and  the shadows cast by the pillars stretch inwards, converging at the centre. They don't overlap, or tangle, but layer , one atop another, until they form a shape that is not quite solid and not quite empty. Then, the changeling senses a presence condensing.  The air grows heavy with attention , which Daxon feels like a weight settling comfortably across his shoulders, in the same way that a cat might claim a favoured perch.  Then, gently, yet inexorably, something looks back at him, or, at least, recognises his existence. It simply knows him, without any need for eyes, or a face.  You are not prey,  the thought arrives whole and unambiguous, carrying no threat. Then,  a second pulse follows with warmth, threaded with something almost like approval.  You watched when watching hurt.  You listened when silence screamed.  Then, the presence shifts and the shadow-form sharpens just enough to suggest a tall and composed seated figure. The outline is crowned by the impression of on alert, forward, and regal pair of ears. When the bells fall silent, t he cats raise their heads in unison  and the court speaks again. There are hunters who do not know what they hunt. There are thieves who stole more than they understand. There are debts older than fear. The presence leans closer, simply there , filling the space. Witness, little listener. Learn who opened the door. The shadows part and,  within them, something begins to take shape. The promise of a vision, rather than a mere memory .

Numberless days in the court of Lord Caligrix of the Verdant Ledger, an Arcadian auditor of Contracts, had enforced a terrible discipline on Daxon's mind. His unnamed (so far!) Keeper had crafted Brocade Joplin (Daxon's former self, now adeptly mimicked by a Fetch) into a lovely, faceless obsidian statue and gifted it (me?) to one of his rivals -- this Lord Caligrix -- in the great games of status and privilege in Arcadia. The Keeper shaped him to be the perfect listening device. In order to survive, he learned to function as a clear and transparent conduit of information. That ability to listen without judgment, to only form thoughts into words when he intended to do so, had served him well as an addiction counselor and would serve him well in this place.           You are not prey. That depends on who you ask. I am hunted, but indeed I will not submit to being their prey.           You watched when watching hurt.  You listened when silence screamed. Daxon keeps his body as still as the nature of the obsidian he is now, and allows the sense of a wordless, respectful nod to pass through his thoughts. Being truly seen by this creature did not fill him with fear; instead, a deep appreciation swelled his heart and made his stone eyes well with tears. No one had ever Known him this way.            There are hunters who do not know what they hunt.           There are thieves who stole more than they understand.           There are debts older than fear.           The presence leans closer, simply  there , filling the space.           Witness, little listener. Learn who opened the door. Show me, and I will learn. 

The warmth in the court deepens again, like sun on stone late in the afternoon. The cats around the perimeter rise as one,  their shadows pulling away from their bodies to flow inwards, threading together across the floor of the circle like ink poured into water.  The shadow-shape at the centre loosens  and then opens .  The stone beneath Daxon’s feet cools abruptly, its texture changing from worn marble to something rougher and granular. The scent of incense sharpens, joined now by dry wind and old papyrus. The pillars around him do not vanish, but what they cast upon the circle shifts, their shadows reforming from a  silhouette  into a  scene . The first shadow resolves into  a human figure in  a cramped, fluorescent-lit  office full of  neatly stacked paperwork. A man with  spectacles perched low on his nose  sits behind the desk writing in a ledger.  Daxon doesn't hear his words, but he feels the shape of rationalisations, compromises and the soft internal voice that says ' this is only paperwork , this isn’t my responsibility , someone else will deal with the consequences '. The scene fractures like brittle glass and  the second shadow bleeds through. This is  a poorly understood and sloppily executed  ritual.  Not by changelings, or fae, but by mages clad in dark blue robes . They are invoking an abstract principle, using an old name as a metaphor rather than to call upon its  jurisdiction . This draws  the  attention  of things that notice when names are spoken with intent.  The mages carelessly open something small just a crack. Just enough for  Arcadian interest to sharpen and a  presence to press against that weakness  . The True Fae are always listening for new leverage.  The crack widens. The third shadow is the worst. It shows  Arcadia and  the transaction with  a rival court. Lord Caligrix of the Verdant Ledger, his realm of balance sheets and living contracts, leaves whispering annotations in the fabric of fate.  The name of a candidate is passed along. A  mortal who has already been observed and indexed.  Brocade Joplin.  The shadows pause here, allowing Daxon to see the moment where possibility becomes inevitability. The convergence of no one person committing a monstrous act, yet the monster is born all the same.  The cats around the circle hiss softly. Doors are not always opened by hands. Some are opened by habits, ledgers and names written where they should not be. The shadows recede and the vision dims. You were not chosen because you were weak. You were chosen because you were already being counted.  Witnessing creates obligation.  Obligation creates power. The cats’ eyes gleam brighter and flare green like polished gemstones in shadow. You may carry this truth back to your Queen, or you may ask what debt it creates.

Daxon (BROCADE) does not flinch. Does not gasp. Does not widen his eyes. Does not shift his stance. He stands as if the vision is passing through him rather than into him. This is not numbness; it is discipline. The old training: if you react, you give them something to sand away.  The shadows swirl and the desert wind cuts across his skin as the ledger of fate opens before him but he remains still as the carved witness he is. Inside, though? The visions are scalpels rending his identity into shreds. The bureaucrat is the first blow. Not a villain; not a mastermind. Just a figure doing paperwork, rationalizing harm as "not my responsibility." Brocade Joplin - for he must reclaim his true self if he's going to survive this moment - recognizes just another banal bureaucrat like those who think incarcerating more of his drugs clients is a solution to the world's problems. The vision of the mages connect with this in all sorts of ways. More people less concerned with the harm flowing from the consequences of their actions than they are with their own power and control. Bureaucrats of the arcane; sloppy and careless with the ripples of their spoken power. But the third vision is the one that kills the faux Daxon and leaves Brocade Joplin alone and cold. Brock always thought he had been chosen for something about himself, some weakness, some flaw in himself. No - just impersonal power. He wasn't special at all - just a catalogued piece of inventory. You were chosen because you were already being counted. You weren't prey - you were inventory.   Who can be punished when Fate is to blame? Who can kill Fate? A tiny, involuntary exhale puffs from his lips, barely audible to any but the keen senses of those watching him. The only outward sign that the visions struck home. Otherwise he is obsidian. Not because he is frozen, and not because his Keeper forced him into this. He is obsidian because he is choosing not to break. This is the only choice left. In a short, controlled whisper that feels like a blade, he utters, "Show me the debt."

The shadows withdraw from the edges of the space, peeling back like curtains drawn by unseen hands.  The cats' tails still  and the warmth of the air deepens into something as intimate as breath on skin. In the centre of the court,  a dark wood desk condenses out of the air. its design is timeless in the way of things that have always been used for the same purpose and its surface is scored by scratches and claw-marks. Upon it,  two shallow pans of beaten gold hang from a bar of blackened bronze, swaying gently. Images begin to bleed into being in the scale's pans, weighing the debt. On one side, the decision chain of the Mabinogi’s workings. A vote taken too quickly, a sigil simplified for convenience and a warning dismissed, because it came from somebody junior, unfashionable, or inconvenient. Power taken without the patience to ask what it would cost.  The pan sinks. On the other side, Brocade sees himself standing still and listening while words that matter are spoken around him. He sees himself enduring the shaping, sanding and reduction to function as he is made useful by being made silent. Years of knowledge gathered, but never allowed to belong to him.  The pan  holds. The presence speaks again, closer now. The debt is not pain.  Pain is abundant and cheap.  The debt is attention. The scale falls still, perfectly level. They took without knowing what they took.  You were made to carry what they would not hold. You were a  witness without a voice, holding memories with no claim.  Debt demands settlement.  Correction. The cats’ eyes ignite all at once, green light reflecting off of obsidian skin and gold metal alike. You may name how the weight is shifted.  You may bind the debt to a bearer, or to a path.  You may refuse, but refusal is also a choice and will be recorded. The scale trembles, ready to tip.

Brocade stares at the scale as the words settle within him. For so long, I was forced to listen, to observe, to hold truths that were not mine, to remain silent under the weight of others' negligence.  Then I set my feet on the path of vengeance, of hunting for those who harmed me as if that would reverse the harm. THIS is what would reverse the ha -- NO, not REVERSE. Invert the harm - to reclaim what broke me. He takes a deep, calm breath before speaking. "Words do not exist to express my thankfulness - my gratitude that you see me without crushing me. I understand that in this moment, I could say, 'This debt is not mine to bind,' or 'This path must remain open,' or 'This burden ends here.' You have restored to me the right of agency." He tilts his head down in humility, eyes falling on the forepaws of the closest cat as he continues, "Forgive my boldness, but it has been so long since I could exercise any agency... I would know a Name to which I may address my response. I would, of course, guard this Name with my life."

The bells overhead toll once and  t he presence pulls back from Brocade into the circle of pillars. T he cats look on, motionless, and, in that moment, it becomes apparent to the changeling  that t his power has never needed to assert itself.  Everything here already knows whose court this is. You ask for a Name ,  the voice echoes, no longer everywhere, but placed behind the scale, the watching eyes and the pillars, where shadow pools like ink. Names are doors.  Doors invite passage.  Passage creates obligation. The cat nearest to Brocade's feet lifts its head until he can see its eyes, which are lit a green-gold from within. Its tail curls slowly and deliberately and the stone beneath its paws warms. You understand what you ask.  That is why the question is permitted. The cat steps forwards and, as it does so , the court subtly rearranges itself. The pillars align, the ivy draws back and the shadows deepen. Hear it, then.  Hold it as you have held other truths.  Speak it only where thresholds are honoured. Brocade can feel the word placed behind his sternum. It is heavy, resonant and ancient. A Name that is not a string of sounds, so much as a concept given claws.  A Name that tastes of  warm stone,  sun on fur,  blood-on-tile that should not be there and  the silence after a door closes properly.  It is Bast , but not the softened mortal syllables of the word from a museum, or a prayer book.  This is the Name that means ' She Who Guards the House', ' She Who Knows What Crossed the Threshold', ' She Who Remembers Who Was Fed' and ' She Who Balances Claw and Mercy'. The presence leans closer again and Brocade feels the difference between being seen and being counted. You are correct.  The debt was never yours to bind. Upon these words, a slight tremble touches the scale.  You are permitted to name debts.  You may witness where others refuse to look.  You may speak when silence is used as theft.  This does not make you mine.  It makes you recognised. The cats’ tails flick and  the scale settles. One pan dips enough to signal that something has been entered into record. When you act, act as witness.  When you speak, speak as one who has survived silence.  When you are tempted to hunt, remember that hunters still owe the house. The shadows relax as the court begins to loosen and the ivy stirs as though touched by evening air, rather than will.  The cat at Brocade’s feet looks up at him, one last time, its eyes unreadable. Go now, Little Listener.  Doors are opening in Oxford a nd not all of them were meant to stay open. The bells toll again a nd, gently, inexorably, the court begins to let him go.

The Name rolls like thunder through the darkling's mind. Awe and wonder and profound fear jostle one another for primacy of place. Brocade began this meeting hoping for a weapon to strike at the one who stole his life. Now he was choosing to become the weapon of Bast who had restored Life to him.  So many questions... so little time.  He kneels down to be closer to the cat at his feet and speaks with crisp speed. "I understand that there is urgency. I hear and I serve. I will be of service. But in order to serve, I need to know...  What is my first debt to witness? How will I know when a debt calls to me? What must I never do while in your service?"

The cat  steps close enough that  its whiskers brush the air in front of Brocade's face and  he can feel the heat of its small body. Lamplit rooms, doorways half-open, ledgers balanced on knees and blood wiped away, but not spoken of, are reflected within its eyes.  The bells overhead fall silent. Your first debt is already before you,  the voice explains, quieter and more focussed now .  The cat lifts a paw and presses it gently against Brocade’s chest, where the Name rests heavy and alive within. You have seen it, but you have not yet named it.  A door was opened by hands that did not intend to look inside.  Something crossed.  Others are pretending that it did not.  That pretending is the debt. The paw withdraws. How will you know when a debt calls to you? The court shifts and glimpses begin to bleed through. Brocade hears  the scrape of a chair pulled back too quickly and  the way a room goes quiet when a truth should have landed. He smells fear *after* the danger has passed, sees  paperwork filed to end a conversation, rather than begin one, and  magic used carelessly, then blamed on inevitability.  The cat’s tail curls once. When something wrong is made quiet.  When harm is accounted for but not answered.  When thresholds are crossed and no one claims responsibility.  You will feel it here. The cats eyes lock onto Brocade's and he feels  a pressure bloom behind his eyes. That tightening. That  pull. It is the  sense that silence has weight. The warmth of the court dims further still. What must you never do?  Do not claim dominion.  Do not mistake witness for judgment.  Do not turn debt into spectacle. The words are chosen as precisely as claws placed carefully on stone. Do not hunt for my favour.  Do not force doors for the sake of curiosity.  Do not confuse vengeance with balance  and never, Little Listener,  never take a debt that is not yours to name. The presence presses in close enough to remind Brocade what it could do to him and is choosing not to be. Then, t he cat steps back, sitting neatly with its tail wrapped around its paws.  The bells toll once more. You are not bound to obedience.  You are bound to attention.  Go.  Watch.  Listen.  When the silence becomes too heavy to ignore,  that is when you speak. The court begins to fade in earnest now. The heat cools, the incense thins and stone beneath Brocade's feet loses its ancient weight. Oxford is already being weighed, is  the last thing that he hears a nd then the world tilts gently, but decisively, releasing the changeling back into the rain, the brick, and the waiting night. He can feel the Name steady in his chest and the first debt already whispering for witness.

All the luxuries of home , Brocade Joplin smiles as he stands up straight, returned to the Oxford weather. Scanning the alleyway, he feels the energy of real purpose unadulterated with the bile of revenge. The Name still thrums within him with every heartbeat.  At some point, I'm going to have to think about all this, but not now. Thinking's probably overrated anyway. He starts to take a step forward and pulls up short, surprised to see the green-eyed feline still accompanying him. " Okay, am I following you or are you following me at this point? I was going to report to the Autumn Queen and see if the Court knows where I might find those who have... abandoned their responsibility and accrued debt."

The cat is sitting atop a low brick wall where ivy claws its way up towards a flickering security light. Its tail is curled neatly around its paws and rain beads on its fur, but never seems to soak in. Green eyes catch the sodium glow and  it blinks once, before standing  and  padding a few steps ahead. The cat stops just past the mouth of the alley, where Headington’s street opens up, traffic hissing in the wet. It looks back over its shoulder at Brocade, its ears flicking impatiently.  The thrum of Bast's Name in the changeling's chest responds, like a compass needle settling. You will do both,  the cat speaks into his thoughts.  Ahead, the bus stops and late-night kebab lights stretch on towards the distant glow of college walls that have seen too much and recorded too little. Courts are useful,  the cat causally agrees as they walk.  Queens remember many things,  but they do not walk the streets as often as they once did.  You report.  You listen.  You watch who pretends not to know what you are talking about.  Those are often the ones already in debt. As the cat moves, Brocade notices that people do not look at the cat. Their gazes slide past it. A cyclist swerves around an empty patch of road and a passer-by pauses, frowns and then keeps walking.  The cat flicks its tail and glances back at Brocade with bright eyes. Come, Listener.  If the Autumn Queen has eyes, then let her use them.  If not... The ending remains unspoken and t he cat pads on towards the lit streets of Oxford.

Brocade follows, enjoying how the cat avoids notice in much the same way his own Mirrorskin nature seems to work. Well, I kind of am  her eyes, but I suspect I'll have more to report if we do it this way. Lead on...

The cat  pads ahead along the wet pavement with the unhurried confidence of something that knows that the city will rearrange itself, if required. Headlights pass without slowing, a bus pulls away from a stop and a pair of students laugh too loudly, before inexplicably lowering their voices as they pass the mouth of the  alley . Nobody's eyes quite land on the cat, or on Brocade, once he falls in behind it.  The sensation is familiar to him. A subtle decoupling from attention and the sense that reality has agreed to not ask questions for now. The cat turns down a side street that doesn’t feel like a shortcut, but becomes one anyway. Headington folds inwards between terraces that stand too close together, a corner shop that should have closed years ago and a church wall blackened with age and damp. The bells that the changeling heard before are gone, replaced by the distant hiss of tyres on wet asphalt and the low electrical hum of streetlights. As they walk, Brocade feels a  sideways  pull tugging at the edge of his perception, where responsibility has thinned and snapped. Doors that were closed and never reopened. People who have decided, very carefully, that something is "not their problem".  The cat slows near a pedestrian crossing and sits, licking one paw with exaggerated calm.  In the changeling's mind, Bast's Name stirs. You already know how to do this, Listener. The street ahead looks ordinary. There's a takeaway, a letting agent’s office with a flickering sign and a narrow lane running between student housing and a converted office block. Nothing overtly supernatural that would make the Autumn Court stir...  and yet  the air there tastes faintly wrong. It's stale, like paperwork left too long in a damp filing cabinet, which happens to be the same flavour as the vision behind the desk. It has the same texture of harm laundered through procedure and apathy.  The cat’s tail flicks once, sharply. Here is where the counting continued.  Here is where the door stayed open. It rises and steps into the lane, vanishing into shadow that is not quite shadow.  Brocade can feel the trail now. It's  warm, recent and convinced that nobody is watching.

The tug of Bastian awareness is, as the feline guide said, very familiar indeed. So many of his clients, and even more of their friends, were people who were simply considered expendable. If it was cheaper to evict them than to repair their flat? Expendable. If it was easier to promise to address their plight in exchange for votes and then forget about them after the election? Expendable. If it was more convenient for the deacons to just ignore the complaint of a child abused by a priest? Expendable. The world was saturated with debt - he could feel the pressure behind his eyes from all the fine print and the tug from precisely where Bast had placed her mark on his heart - and it was going to be challenging indeed to control the hunger to speak for the voiceless... The flick of the cat's tail pulls his attention back to the task at hand, and Brocade steps more lively along the trail of mildewed indifference.

The lane narrows as Brocade moves deeper into it and the brick gives way to rough concrete. It's the kind that was poured quickly and never revisited, with water gathering in shallow depressions that mirror the jaundiced streetlight above. The cat pads through the trembling puddles without so much as a ripple of sound.  The air is thick with the neglect of paperwork left unfinished, calls never returned and decisions postponed until postponement became policy.  The changeling can feel it press against the inside of his skull. It's the familiar ache of knowing too much and being allowed to change too little. The mark at his heart feels like a hand resting there to remind him not to look away. Not this time. A door at the end of the lane stands left half-open, its security light flickering. The  stuttering rhythm  falls  across a battered intercom panel, whose buttons have been worn smooth by years of frustrated presses. Names have been scratched out with keys and a council logo is peeling like old skin.  The cat stops and  sits directly in the threshold, its tail wrapped neatly around its paws and its green eyes reflecting the light in a way that makes the darkness behind the door seem deeper by contrast.  There's a low hum of machinery, possibly the ventilation, coming from  inside and beneath it is the sound of movement slowed by habit and resignation.  The place smells of damp carpet, stale takeaway and disinfectant used sparingly and far too late. Here, the cat asserts, its ears twitching.  No chains. No cages. Only rules that decided who mattered. A figure moves behind frosted glass further down the corridor. The silhouette pauses and then continues on, unhurried, confident that they will not be interrupted. Someone who believes that the door was left open for convenience, not because it would one day be noticed.  The cat rises and steps aside just enough to clear the way, before looking up at Brocade.  It watches the him steadily and expectantly,  bearing witness and waiting to see what he will do with the weight placed in his hands.

Brocade Joplin flexes his hands and takes a deep, centering breath. At the impatient gaze of the cat ( probably transference there, Brock , he thinks to himself), he mutters, "This is my first time. Give me a moment." He tries to run through a quick catalogue of the Contracts bound in his changed self, but the magnetic pull of Bast's mark will not be denied. The One Who Shall Never Look Away moves through the doorway, stepping with care and purpose towards the frosted glass.

The air changes texture  as Brocade crosses the threshold. It feels  thinner , as though the building itself has learned to conserve effort. His footfalls echo loudly on the concrete, before moments later being swallowed up by the walls.  The corridor beyond the door is narrow and institutional in the most economical way possible. The fluorescent lights hum overhead with a faint, arrhythmic flicker, illuminating noticeboards layered with outdated leaflets and curling memos about " temporary resource reallocation measures , pending review " . The words intensify the pressure that the changeling feels and Bast's  mark responds.  The tug that he’s been following resolves into something precise now, like a needle finding the groove in a record. It draws him towards a frosted glass door at the end of the corridor with a printed label taped crookedly at eye level. INTAKE / CASE MANAGEMENT The silhouette behind the glass pauses again and a chair scrapes softly. Papers shift and a low and indistinct  voice murmurs with  the practiced cadence of someone explaining why something cannot be done today .  As Brocade approaches, the smell sharpens into cheap coffee gone cold, antiseptic and the faint sour tang of stress sweat that never quite washes out of a place like this. His reflection ghosts faintly in the glass showing his coat collar up around obsidian skin that shines wanly in the artificial light. The mark tightens and impressions bleed through it.  Files marked non-urgent that never circled back,  calls logged and closed without follow-up and  names reduced to numbers reduced to absence.  The cat pads up behind the changeling, silent as regret, and sits once more. He can feel its gaze on his spine as a reminder that this moment counts . Inside the room, the voice rises slightly, irritation creeping in. “—I’ve explained this already. There’s a process.” The words hit the Mark like flint on steel, its  pressure steadying, sharpening, and resolving into something usable.  The frosted glass door stands between Brocade and the machinery of indifference, thin enough that light passes through and thick enough that people feel safe behind it.

Brocade's hands unconsciously curl into fists as the overwhelming sensory assault of the machinery of negligence and indifference kindles a flame of anger inside him. He couldn't count how many of his clients had been bounced out of a rehab bed because "there's a process" they either weren't told about or weren't equipped to follow. As he raises a furious fist to bang on the door, the pressure of the cat's gaze brings Bast's words back to his mind. Do not mistake witness for judgment.  Do not turn debt into spectacle....  Do not confuse vengeance with balance... He flexes his hands again and attempts to breathe out the anger. What am I really here to witness? Attention owed but withheld... Lives reduced to paperwork... obligations  dismissed as "non-urgent."  Pain is abundant and cheap. The debt is attention, he remembers. The hum of the lights becomes a pulse, like a heartbeat skipping. As he raises his hand to the door, his reflection begins to look thinner, as if he is already half-inside the ledger of indifference himself. The Mark tightens, thrumming with encouragement but not compulsion. I know this is a test, but it is also the first steps on the path to true freedom. Brocade Joplin does not knock. He doesn't try to throw the door open, either. He just grasps the knob and turns it to open the door.

The door opens without resistance and  beyond the frosted glass lies a narrow, forgotten office that might once have been modern. Fluorescent lights buzz overhead with a faint, irregular stutter that bathes everything in a sickly, institutional pallor. The air smells of overheated plastic, stale paper and burned coffee that has been sitting on a warmer since before anybody remembers to care. Rows of filing cabinets line the walls with their drawers half-open and their bellies distended with manila folders. Many are tagged in careful, official handwriting with labels such as "INTAKE", "FOLLOW-UP", "TEMPORARY HOLD" and "NON-URGENT". Some of the labels have yellowed to the point of illegibility and others have been repeatedly crossed out and rewritten, until the words look more like scars than letters. At the centre of the room sits a desk, b ehind which is a man in his late forties or early fifties. He wears a rumpled button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up just a little too high, revealing a forearm marked by faint tan lines, where a watch used to be worn religiously. His tie is loosened but still on. A computer monitor hums softly in front of him, its screen crowded with overlapping spreadsheets, forms and notification pop-ups. A red icon pulses in the corner of one window with and alter that reads "47 UNREAD", but the man ignores it with practiced ease. His fingers move across the keyboard in a rhythm that suggests long familiarity rather than urgency. Each keystroke feels like a tick of a clock that has decided that it no longer needs to measure time accurately. When the man finally looks up, his eyes slide across the room without quite seeing what stands there. They pause, flicker and adjust with the reflexive assessment of someone deciding whether a problem belongs to him.  They decide that it does not.  His gaze drops back to the screen and his mouth opens, already shaping a sentence that has been said a thousand times before in a thousand small offices just like this one. Around the edges of the room, shadows pool where the light does not quite reach. They are thick in the corners, heavy behind the cabinets, and lean inwards, as though listening. Somewhere, within that dimness, the hum of the lights syncs with the slow, patient thrum beneath Brocade’s ribs.  This is a ledger left open and  the debt here is quiet, procedural and monstrously ordinary.

Brocade steps forward towards the desk and its unhurried, unconcerned administrator. So far, he can only see the symptoms of inattention. Of all the things he'd learned from Bast already tonight, one stood out in clear relief: A Binder of Debts cannot bind what he has not witnessed.   I am here to witness the moment of harm, but how will I know it? By listening - not to the excuses and not to the paperwork - to the absence in the room. The case closed without cause, or the call that was logged but never returned. The life that slipped through the cracks. A human being has been erased by negligence, and the shadows are leaning in to help me notice it.   He continues to step forward until he is only a pace away from the desk. Then he asks, without preamble, "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

The man looks up and  a flicker of irritation crosses his face, followed by confusion and then a thin wash of defensiveness that settles over his features like laminate coating. His eyes skim Brocade’s coat, his stance, his face and then slide past them , searching for a badge, a clipboard, or some other context that would make this interruption acceptable.  Finding none, the man's mouth tightens. “I’m—” he begins, before glancing at the screen and then back at Brocade. “I’m working.” He shifts in his chair, the cheap plastic creaking under his weight, and finally straightens a stack of papers on the desk with unnecessary precision. Each page is stamped, signed and initialled. Little ritual acts of completion that substitute neatly for resolution. “I handle intake and follow-through,” he continues in a flat and bureaucratically calm voice. “If you don’t have an appointment, then you’ll need to go through reception.” As the man speaks, Brocade feels the absence  that he was listening for  in the spaces between the  man’s words .  The shadows behind the filing cabinets lengthen, stretching like fingers across the floor. They brush against the edges of folders marked " CLOSED"  and Brocade’s vision swims as impressions bleed through. A voicemail left after midnight and never returned. A form misfiled under the wrong surname. A bed reassigned because the system said that it was vacant. A trace of unease touches the man’s eyes and he rubs at his temple, as though a headache has arrived without warning. “I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing,” he says, a touch sharper now. “We have protocols. I don’t make the rules.” Behind him, the red "47 UNREAD" icon pulses and then becomes "48".  The hum of the lights deepens, syncing with the slow, deliberate thrum of Bast's mark and Brocade feels the ledger opening further. It's full of gaps left by  names that should be there and aren’t, their stories truncated mid-sentence.  The harm isn't happening in the  now .  It has already happened a nd the man behind the desk is standing where it was allowed to finish happening.  The shadows lean closer in patient expectation as they w ait for Brocade to decide whether this moment will finally be recorded.

Brocade smiles as he listens to the administrator, with patience developed through experience with The System. "I'm sorry for interrupting - I was just musing about life."  He takes a long pause and just when he senses that the administrator is about to take a deep breath and open his mouth again, he continues. "You see, I was thinking about this story. Many years ago, Akiva - the greatest rabbi in the Jewish world - was walking home one day along a dusty path near the sea of Galilee. He too was musing about life - meditating in fact - and so he was reciting this verse from the prophets over and over -- 'You are my Witnesses... You are my Witnesses... You are my Witnesses...' and he didn't realize he'd taken the wrong fork in the path until a voice boomed out at him from the dusky darkness. 'Who are you? What are you doing here?' The rabbi had been lost in his reverie so he's surprised and isn't entirely sure where he is. So he calls back, 'What did you say?' 'Who are you? What are you doing here?' the voice booms back. Well, by now he's figured it out - instead of taking the path to his home in Capernaum, he took the path towards the Roman garrison outside his village. So now he's ready, and he calls back: 'How much do they pay you?' Now the guard is a little confused, and he calls back, 'What did you say?' 'How much do they pay you to ask me these questions?' 'Three denarii a week, Jew!' comes the quick reply. 'Why??' 'I will pay you double,' Rabbi Akiva replied, 'to stand outside my door and ask me those two questions every morning when I leave and every evening when I come home.' Brocade Joplin pauses, watching to see if the story hits home. Softly, he says,  "So let me ask you again. Who are you? What are you doing here?"

The man behind the desk stares at Brocade  and t he hum of the lights drops half a register as the shadows that had been leaning in pause to listen.  The administrator clears his throat and, when he speaks, his voice is slower, its cadence disrupted. “I’m Martin,” he replies, “Martin Hale.”  He glances at the computer screen and then back again.  “I manage case loads,” the man continues. “Allocations, priorities and so on. I make sure that things move through the pipeline.” He says it and Brocade's sense of the absence intensifies . It feels like stepping into a room that something large has recently left. The feeling of Bast's mark also sharpens and the ledger’s emptiness resolves into the feeling of  a young man discharged early, because the bed was 'needed elsewhere',  a follow-up appointment never scheduled, because the box wasn’t ticked, and  a voicemail deleted, because it came in after hours.  Martin’s eyes drift, unbidden, to a filing cabinet behind him. One drawer stands slightly ajar, the peeling label of which reads "NON-URGENT". “I’m here to keep things from falling apart,” he adds, swallowing. “If I stop and look at every...” The administrator stops and shakes his head once, like somebody brushing away a gnat. The shadows shift and d eepen, s lipping into the spaces between words, justifications and the reasons that he has rehearsed so long that they feel like facts. Brocade can feel the weight of the debt as an imbalance in attention owed and attention withheld. “I ask those questions, because it’s my job,”  Martin explains, exhaling slowly and flattening his hands on the desk, “because, if I don’t, everything turns into chaos.” The lights flicker and Bast's  mark pulses in recognition.  This rationalisation, this moment where responsibility was narrowed until it fitted inside a job description, this is the harm. It's t he choice to stop asking the questions, when they became inconvenient.  The ledger  waits a nd Brocade can feel, with a clarity that borders on pain, that the next thing spoken in this room will determine whether this debt remains an abstraction, or finally acquires a witness.

The entire time, Brocade has been freaking out  on the inside because he has no idea how he is supposed to bind a debt. Then, as the mark pulses, he realizes that the binding isn't his responsibility. He is the Witness. His throat tightens and tears come unbidden to his obsidian eyes as he chokes out, “Martin, you stopped looking.” The lights steady for a heartbeat, as if listening. “You decided whose life was worth your attention.” The shadows lean in, no longer passive but attentive. “You let someone vanish because it was easier.” The Mark behind his sternum warms, not painfully but with purpose.  The “NON‑URGENT” drawer slides open another inch and a  single file shifts, as if exhaling. “A name was placed in your care, and you let it fall.” Now the tears pour down Brocade's cheeks as the next words burst forth from the heart of the Witness - to truly see Martin is to feel the pain he is hiding from, the pain he will experience. “A life was placed in your hands, and you looked away. I see it. I name it. You will remember the name you forgot.”

Martin recoils in the small, helpless way of a man whose internal scaffolding has just failed.  His chair scrapes back an inch and his mouth opens and closes. Words that  he has relied on for years,  like 'protocol', 'throughput' and 'limited resources',  rise up out of habit, only to scatter uselessly, like paperwork caught in a sudden draft.  The lights dim and brighten once, settling into a softer, steadier glow. The hum resolves into a  slow and deliberate  rhythm.  The administrator's eyes drift, unbidden, to the open drawer. One corner of  the ' NON-URGENT' label peels further, curling back like a scab, and his hand lifts, trembling. It hovers above the drawer, as though it might bite him, but he doesn’t touch it. “I didn’t,” Martin begins, but then stops and swallows hard. His voice, when it comes again, is hoarse and smaller. “I couldn’t... there were too many. I told myself...” The sentence collapses under its own weight and  the shadows  remain , filling the gaps where denial once lived. In their stillness, a memory long suppressed  shifts,  clawing its way back toward language.  The administrator's brow furrows and his breathing grows shallow. “I...” Martin presses a hand to his chest and his fingers curl into the fabric of his shirt, as though trying to hold himself together. “There was a file. A… a follow-up.” The administrator's eyes widen, suddenly glassy. “He called after hours. Left a message. I remember thinking I’d deal with it in the morning.” Bast's mark flares as something aligns and  Martin’s lips tremble. “Evan,” he whispers.  The filing cabinet rattles softly, one drawer sliding fully open now. Inside, the manila folder has shifted to the front, its tab worn thin. The name ' EVAN MORRIS' is written in faded ink, nearly rubbed away by time and disuse.  The administrator stares at it as though it has accused him aloud. “I told myself he’d call again,” he says, tears spilling freely now. “That if it was really serious, he’d try again. I had forty-seven unread messages. I thought... I thought...” Martin's shoulders slump as years of rationalisation peel away, leaving only exhaustion and grief beneath. “I decided,” he finishes, in a barely audible voice,  “I decided that it could wait.” The shadows ease back in satisfaction. The ledger does not close, but a  clean and irrevocable  line is drawn and  the mark at Brocade’s heart cools, settling into a steady, solemn warmth as  the binding  sets , like ink finally dry.  The administrator bows his head over his desk, his hands shaking and his breath hitching as the memory that he buried takes root as a truth that he will no longer be able to outrun. Somewhere, just beyond the edge of perception, a cat’s tail flicks once and then stills.

Brocade sighs, knowing there is more to do. He could bask in Bast's warmth in his heart, but that would be just as cowardly as walking by this moment tonight would have been. He reaches forward slowly and grasps Martin's shaking hangs between his own. "Martin, listen to me. You're gonna be tempted to drown this moment in a bottle. Don't. Please don't waste it. You know this work matters, and you can make a difference. When you feel the urge to turn a blind eye... remember Evan." He releases Martin's hands and steps back into the shadows, staying still and invoking his Light-Shy contract to vanish, before easing out of the office and finding his feline guide again.