Miles sat curled up in his chair, the day pressing down on him like a thick blanket. The gun was still there, on the table, unchanged, unmoved. Like most of the things lately. Faint light slipped through the blinds, casting long shadows across the wooden floor.

He didn’t need to think hard to know this wasn’t the first time he’d been like this. Time passed. Maybe a year or more, but it all felt like a blur. Some days rushed by like seconds. Others dragged on so long he felt stuck in October forever.

After Nina died, time stopped making sense. The calendar on the wall showed months, but they felt meaningless. The days came and went, but none of them mattered. The gun, too, seemed to carry the weight of something old, like it had been passed down with grief still clinging to it.

He reached for it again, hands slow and careful, like feeling his way through a dark room.

Sometimes he wondered: would it end the pain? Would it bring peace? Or was it just another trick his mind played?

The clock ticked softly. The room was still, almost peaceful. Miles stared at the walls. Old memories returned in flashes, like yellowed pages from a book no one read anymore.

Then, the cat appeared.

A black shadow slipped through the half-open door. Its eyes caught the fading light, sharp and quiet. It walked with quiet grace, moving across the room like it belonged there.

The cat jumped onto the bed without a sound. Miles watched it, half expecting it to speak. Instead, it just stared at him with calm eyes.

“Why do you keep coming back?” he asked.

The cat didn’t answer—just a low purr.

Maybe he saw it the first time after Nina died. Maybe it only started showing up after he lost everything. The cat never stayed long. Just enough to remind him of something.

It turned and slipped out the door again, leaving it slightly open. Its exit felt like a message, like it meant something more.

Miles didn’t move for a while. There was something about silence that wrapped around him like a blanket, too quiet, but not empty.

A ship rocked in a storm. Waves slammed against it, thunder crashing above. Four people were on board: a girl, a boy, a merchant, and a man.

The girl stood at the front of the ship, hair flying like a flag in the wind. She looked strong, unmoved.

“Should we get ready to drown?” the boy asked, scared.

She didn’t look at him. “Then we drown.”

“We should turn back.”

“There’s no back.”

“I can steer!” the merchant shouted, grabbing the wheel.

“No one ever said the sea could be trusted,” the girl said, staring into the waves.

Thunder boomed. The world held its breath.

Back in the room, Miles was sitting with a pen hovering above a blank page. The story seemed to come from somewhere inside him, like he wasn’t writing it but remembering it.

“He’s the boy,” he whispered, “hoping to grow up someday.”

His father, the merchant, was always lost in storms. And Miles had been drifting through life ever since.

Did he mean to write all this? Or had it just come out?

He reached for the gun again. His fingers brushed it.

A soft click.

His breath caught.

Did he even lift it? Did the boy on the ship see a ghost?

Was it loaded? Was he losing it?

What now?

“It never made me content,” the girl had said. “But we keep going.”

Miles stood and walked to a stack of papers. His story. His notes.

He bent down, petting the cat that had come back.

“The letter’s not for you,” he told it.

But touching the cat brought warmth. A real, living warmth.

“I won’t disappear,” he said softly. “Not completely.”

He had written his silence, his grief, his missing pieces.

One last line:

“My grief doesn’t end.”

The cat watched.

The gun lay still, its body lined with tiny nicks and old bruises in steel, marks of being gripped hard, thrown harder, used and unused, again and again.

And in the stillness that followed, nothing else needed to be said.