Morning is a thin enamel over the teeth of the night. The room blinks at the new light and pretends it never swallowed him whole.
He sits up slow. Fur flattened on one side. Whiskers kinked like bent wire. The tail gives a cautious sweep - counting corners - counting exits. A swallow. A breath. A laugh that tries to be ordinary. It comes out as a small bark.
Under the laugh: the pressure. Not a thought. A hand without fingers. A weight that knows the shape of his ribs better than he does. It leans in, patient, tasting the day through him.
Outside: birds. Cheap, bright signals. Inside: the old red hum. It does not match the sky. It does not care to.
He pads to the sink. Water runs. The sound is clean enough to lie with. He watches the surface shiver and waits for it to show him the thing behind his eyes.
Nothing. Of course nothing. The best parasites wear silence like velvet.
He lifts a paw and there is a second lift - half a beat late - like an echo learning how to be flesh. He flexes claws. The claws flex back. He stops. He starts again. Testing the leash. Testing the leash’s patience.
A memory slips in. Not his. A taste of iron. A warm throat. The snap of tendon. A moment of certainty so sharp it could cut stone. It arrives without context and leaves him with a dry mouth and a heart that will not slow down.
He shuts his eyes. He tries to pray. The words fall through the floorboards. Something underneath laughs without sound.
There is a narrow choice offered like a gift: be good - or be efficient.
He presses his forehead to the cool porcelain. He thinks of friends. Of names. Of soft voices in the dark. He tries to fill the skull with them until there is no room for the other hunger.
The hunger does not leave. It just rearranges itself. It becomes polite. It becomes a whisper shaped like his own desire. It says: just a little. It says: just today. It says: let me steer, and you won’t have to feel the shaking.
His paws tremble. Not fear. Effort. Like holding a door shut against a storm that learned the lock.
He opens the door anyway - a crack - to breathe. To live. And in that crack the red finds purchase. A gentle claw. A gentle certainty. A calm that isn’t his settling into the muscles, into the jaw, into the eyes.
He looks up. In the glass: two steadinesses. One of them is borrowed.
He bares teeth at his own reflection. A warning. A promise. The tail lashes once, hard. The room listens. The day listens. The thing inside him listens most of all.
It does not retreat. It only waits - thrilled by resistance, fed by it - as if the fight is the flavor.
<aside>
Standard: Reverie I Reverie II Reverie III Reverie IV Reverie V Reverie VII Reverie VIII Reverie X Reverie XI Reverie XII Reverie XIV Reverie XVII Reverie XVIII Reverie XIX
Special: Reverie VI - Entaxis Reverie IX - Parataxis Reverie XIII - Exotaxis Reverie XV - Positive Scototaxis Reverie XVI - Negative Scototaxis Reverie XX - Palintaxis
</aside>