Hunting for the right cup, she opens a top cabinet with one hand and turns off the stove stopping the kettle’s whine with the other. The ivy-patterned one is probably on the table next to her bed and Kika will be mad, but the water is ready and the clock is ticking. A flash of sunlight off the platinum edge of Tuor’s favorite bone china cup gives her pause, but no, absolutely not that one. To even think of the repercussions… She shivers, grabbing an icy blue one that matches the mood, and a pale gray one with lavender roses that had been a favorite of Tuor’s customers back when people still visited the shop and inspects them closer. Neither really speak louder; she opts for the more hopeful of the two and its matching saucer.

She pours a bit of the kettle water into the floral cup and swishes it around before dumping it down into the sink. Adding a teaspoon of black tea and filling it back up, she carries it into the parlor to let it steep on the table settling into her spot to focus.

“Good morning settee and parlor. Good morning apartment, and Kika, and Tuor. Good morning Baines Street, City Centre, and Melitown. Thank you for giving me guidance, shelter, and a place in this world, yesterday and the days before. I hope we can continue accompanying each other as we pass through time.”

Sipping the tea she listens to Baines Street wake; the scratching of the bodega’s sandwich board being stood up across the way, and the uptick in passing cars rustling the leaves on the maple outside. Thoughts on the task ahead, the persistent question of where Tuor has gone and when she’ll return take over, just in time as she’s sipped close to the leaf sediment. She tips the cup over onto the rose-trimmed saucer and turns it clockwise until the handle has passed three times. Righting the cup, she watches the dregs slide into place charting the near future in a personalized cipher that is all too easy to misinterpret. 

Near the handle and towards the top she sees double arrows, or, looking from another angle, perhaps it’s a candlestick? Both are tied to clarity, emotions, and relationships, while also warning of the arrival of bad news–just a matter of perspective. 

Bad news is bad news, she thinks to herself, whether you are the recipient or the messenger. Perhaps if she’s fortunate she’s being assured that sooner rather than later she’ll have to admit to Tuor that she’s been borrowing her books. On the other hand, bad news is not always news. Could be an introduction or a reunion.

“I should like it very much if this means the boss is returning soon,” she says to the quiet room, collecting her fortune and rinsing it down the sink. The hall clock sings out seven times as she hoists on her boots and swings her bag across her back before remembering the peeling burn between her shoulderblades and, wincing, grabs the thin gray button-down hanging on the peg, tucking it under the waterproof flap. 

Catching an unexpected spikiness to her reflection in the mirror next to the door, she pauses to flatten her hair down into its already unusual black and white banded length. She narrows her overly round eyes but when it does nothing to lessen the expanse of their glossy full darkness without the bright sclera of her human neighbors, she straightens her shoulders and nods at her now smiling face. The tips of her pointed canines glint in the morning light. “I’m off to finish the job,” she announces on the off-chance Kika’s returned from wherever she goes at night.