The house remained still. Everyone else asleep. For a moment, it held the shape of a sanctuary.
Then came the sound — a low, impatient mrrrow.
Melody sat beside her empty dish, glaring at him — the only other early riser in the house — watching him with the certainty of someone who’d been rehearsing this moment since before the coffee even thought of brewing.
Waldo laughed softly and bent to fill her bowl.
“Not a fan of change either, huh?”
As soon as the dish hit the floor, she dove in — all irritation forgotten the instant she got what she wanted. Simple, direct — no second-guessing.
He envied that. Not the food — the clarity. The way she didn’t waste a moment wondering if she deserved it, or what might happen when it was gone.
The kitchen light spilled across the counter in its usual, unremarkable way — pale, familiar, and without ambition.
He reached for the mug he always used first — not because it was the nicest, but because it felt right in his hand — and poured the coffee black.
Steam rose in a soft ribbon. He watched it curl, dissolve, then vanish, wondering if that’s how changes began: not all at once, but in a quiet fade, the way something familiar disappears before you notice you’ve been holding air instead.
He carried the mug to the table, passing the hallway mirror. His reflection caught him mid-step — a face that looked older than the night before. Not in years, exactly. More in the way someone can look further away from themselves without leaving the room.
He sat, sipping slowly, as Melody hopped onto the chair across from him, her tail curling around her paws like a quiet period at the end of a question. She stared at him between bites, as if expecting him to explain himself.
He couldn’t, not in any way that would sound like an answer. But he knew the question. He’d been asking it for months without saying it out loud: When did I start drifting?
The trouble with drift was that it never announced itself. You didn’t wake up one day and decide to be unmoored. It happened in inches, deceptively gentle at first. You adjusted. You told yourself it was temporary. You stopped checking the knots.
A car passed outside, its tires whispering over the damp street. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the day’s list started forming. He let it float, unpinned. He didn’t want to commit to what could be lost before it even began.
Melody jumped down, leaving a faint warmth where she’d been. He glanced at the empty space, then at his coffee, half-drunk and cooling. He thought of the days he’d woken with a certainty about what mattered — and how far away those days felt now.
The clock in the kitchen ticked its small, unremarkable rhythm. It was too early to be late for anything. And yet, part of him already felt behind.
He took another sip, letting the bitterness settle against the back of his tongue. The thing about coffee was that it was always honest. No matter how much sugar you added, it still told the truth.
He turned that thought over for a while, holding it like a small stone in his hand. It wasn’t profound. But it felt real. And real was worth holding onto.
Stories often start in a quiet room like this — where nothing much seems to happen, but everything is quietly shifting. The rest, you’ll have to find inside the book.
