The Keeper will tell you what happened. I'll tell you what's coming.

Something has started moving through the house.

Not loudly. Not yet. A country has an appointment. People are tidying themselves around it.

Still.

This does not feel like waiting for a match. It feels like waiting for a room to remember what it was built to hold.

There is a softness to it, which is the dangerous part. Not confidence. Not dread. Something closer to a hand resting on a door that has not opened for a long time.

I keep noticing the same small silence. It arrives after the joke. It arrives before the boast someone had to boast.

No one has named it yet.

That is usually when it is closest.