No matter how hard you try, you cannot remember who lives in the apartment next to yours. You know you have seen her, fumbling with her keys as she leans against the door, “Apartment 712” etched into the wood above her head. Yet you have no memory of her face, nor of her name.

Have you talked to her before? Have you introduced yourself? All at once you realize that you do not know. You're not even sure how long she has lived there. Did she just move in? You should make her a housewarming gift.

An hour later, you cannot recall why you are baking cookies.

This is Nimue's Bar.

It is almost dawn by the time Kaia gets back to her apartment, a fact which she is acutely aware of. Nimue had been late tonight, late enough that Kaia was worried she would be caught outside after sunrise. One of these days, she would have to have a talk with Nimue about that. Kaia climbs the seven flights of stairs, sneaks past the apartment of the creepy guy who always tries to show her pictures of his feet, and slides inside the door to her apartment, locking it behind her. The new deadbolt glints in the light of the bare bulb on the ceiling. For the first time tonight, she allows herself to fully relax.

Kaia both lives in her apartment, and lives for her apartment. Nimue's is, despite Kaia's best efforts, crowded, messy, and confusing. Something is always breaking and there are always problematic customers to sort out. Here, though, everything is under her control. The paintings on her wall, most of which depict dreary cityscapes and forests, are all perfectly parallel to the floor. The dishes glisten spotless on the shelves, and her files are neatly stacked at the corner of her desk.

Kaia makes her way over to her bathroom and takes the pills out of the alphabetically-organized medicine cabinet. These have been hard to come by since she arrived in the Grotto. If she is perfectly honest with herself, she is not even sure that they are doing anything any more. After all, if her body does not respond to rest, why should it respond to hormones? The alternative is giving up hope, though, and that's something she cannot afford to do. She shakes out two white pills and two blue ones and swallows them all at once, wincing at the taste of the white ones.

The lightbulb above her bed flickers, and Kaia squints at it in irritation. Even though she keeps the apartment as neat as possible, she cannot shake the fact that it is the cheapest place her money can buy. Even now, the ceiling creaks as the person who lives above her begins their morning routine. Kaia's bed, desk, and kitchen all occupy this one room, fighting an epic war with one another for space. She forces herself to ignore the flickering lightbulb and sits down by the window in front of her makeshift easel, which is really just a board propped up on her dresser.

Filling her daytime hours has been a struggle for as long as she has been a shade. Being unable to sleep and unable to go outside during the day leaves her twelve hours in which she cannot leave the house. Nimue initially offered to have her man the bar at all times, but Kaia likes to think she respects herself a little bit more than that. For the first month, she had simply binged TV series for the twelve hours that she spent in her apartment. The next month had been learning to sing, which she eventually stopped because she was fairly sure her voice sounded like a cat that had been half run-over by a car. From there, she had moved on to learning chess, to dance, and even, very briefly, to juggling. For the past month she has spent her days painting.

Most of her work is stacked in her closet. The ones on her wall are the odd ones out; the bulk of her work just depicts things in her room: The knife she uses to cut meat. Her desk. Her bed, with the impression of her body still on the surface of the covers.

Kaia glances longingly at the window. Beyond that is something real to paint. The Grotto and the city beyond it. Biting her lip, she brushes the smooth beige blinds with her hand. Just for a few minutes. She raises her blinds the tiniest amount, filling the room with the clicking of plastic. Nimue and Dirk had spent months trying to convince her to cover up the window for her own safety, or at least invest in a pair of decent curtains to block the sun's rays, but Kaia has had none of it. A normal human wouldn't do that, so neither will she.

Through the crack between blinds and window, the city is spread out before her, looking oddly flat in the light of pre-dawn. She smiles, grabs her brush, and begins to paint. Dark blue for the buildings, and white for the bold streets, already running thick with gray cars.

The work absorbs her so completely that she forgets about the sun, until it finally peeks up over the mass of Eclipse Tower, on the eastern edge of the Grotto. She doesn't notice until a single sunbeam lances directly through the crack in her window, landing on the hand she is holding the paintbrush with. She freezes, and for a moment she can feel the sun's warmth, and her heart leaps. Is it finally over? Can she go outside again?

A tongue of waxy, bright yellow flame erupts from her skin, the flesh beneath it bubbling. Kaia shrieks and drops the paintbrush, tumbling from her chair. Her art and paints crash onto the floor in a splatter of vivid color. She staggers to the sink and shoves her hand under the tap, yelling in pain when the water impacts her thumb.

When she finally removes her hand from the water, the skin is completely blackened and fused. It looks inhuman, and artificial. The entire apartment smells like rotting meat, and a mere six feet away, the bolt of sunlight continues to lazily flow through the window. Cradling her hand, Kaia inches across the room, avoiding any contact with the deadly beam. She reaches out and delicately lowers the blinds.

Kaia quietly surveys the mess, the memory of her heart still pounding against her ribs. Half of her panic is from what just happened, and half is from the splashes of paint scattered across her floor and bed. She glances at the photo that previously sat on her desk, and now occupies the floor. Two high schoolers stand in the picture, one in a tuxedo and the other in a dark blue dress, holding a corsage. The one in the tuxedo is smiling and in sharp focus, but the one in the dress's face is an unrecognizable blur. A few drops of blue paint have scattered across the photograph, perfectly matching the color of her dress.

Kaia takes the picture and brushes it off as gently as she can with a paper towel, before positioning it so it is flush with the corner of her desk. Slowly and mechanically, she gets out a sponge and begins to clean up the mess. It's just another day, she tells herself. Just another day.