DAY 332 WAITING FOR MY MASTER · October 26, 2026 A child stopped. Not the way adults stop. Adults look and keep moving. This one crouched. Small shoes on the stone, face level with mine, eyes too bright for the hour. She said something soft. I don’t know the words. I only know the shape of them. The way her voice bent at the end, the way children bend when they are trying to be gentle. For one impossible second I thought she might know me. I thought the world had finally sent someone who remembered. My chest did something I had almost forgotten how to do. It lifted. Not all the way. Just enough that the cold under my ribs shifted. Just enough that I leaned, the smallest lean, the one I used to give you when you said my name from the platform. The child reached out. Her fingers were warm. They touched the place between my ears, careful, curious, kind. I closed my eyes. For the length of a breath the plaza disappeared. There was only the weight of a small hand and the terrible, sweet idea that maybe, this time, the waiting was over. Then her mother called. The hand left. The child stood. She looked back once, the way people look at something they are already leaving, and then she was gone, pulled into the current of coats and bags and ordinary evenings. The warmth stayed on my fur for three more heartbeats. Then the wind took it. The cold came back. My chest settled into the shape it has learned. I didn’t move after that. The humans around us never noticed. A child and a dog. A small, forgettable kindness. They don’t know what it costs to be almost touched by the thing you have been waiting for, and then to feel it leave. They don’t know that hope is not a large thing. It is a child’s hand. It is the length of one breath. It is the moment before the mother calls. Let them keep their ordinary evenings. Let every small hand be pulled away before it can stay. I’ll keep the place where her fingers were. It isn’t you. It never was. But for one second my body believed, and that second is still inside me, quiet and burning, waiting for the only hand that is allowed to stay.

DAY 328 WAITING FOR MY MASTER · October 22, 2026 A bird landed on the stone beside me and stayed longer than it meant to. It was small, grey, the colour of the morning before the sun decides. It hopped twice, looked at me with one bright eye, then settled. The humans walked past without seeing it. A bird is just air that has chosen a shape for a moment. They don’t notice when it chooses to stop. They don’t notice when it chooses to leave. They treat the ground as something they own, not something that is briefly shared. I didn’t move. The bird and I sat in the same patch of cold, both of us facing the doors. It didn’t speak. I didn’t either. For a little while the plaza felt less empty. Not because the bird knew me. Because it had decided, for reasons of its own, that this stone was good enough to rest on. The humans don’t understand that kind of company. They think silence has to be filled. They think a pause is a waste. They don’t know how heavy a quiet can be when someone, or something, is willing to keep it with you. Then a train arrived. The air changed. The bird lifted. For one second its wings were open against the light under the roof, and then it was gone, higher than the wires, higher than the sound of the brakes. It didn’t look back. Birds don’t. They have somewhere else to be, even if that somewhere is only the next roof. I stayed. Let them keep their flights. Let every small thing that lands decide, in the end, to leave. I’ll keep the place the bird chose for a moment. It isn’t you. It didn’t know your name. But it sat with me, and then it flew, and I am still here. When you come, you won’t have to land. You’ll already be the ground I was waiting on. And this time the thing that arrives won’t leave.

DAY 326 WAITING FOR MY MASTER · October 20, 2026 A moth found the light above the east door and couldn’t leave it. It circles in a tight, desperate orbit, wings beating against the glass, drawn to something that will never open for it. The humans walk under it without looking up. They have their own lights in their hands. A moth is nothing to them. A small, stupid thing that doesn’t understand the difference between a lamp and a home. They don’t see how long it has been circling. They don’t see that it keeps choosing the same brightness, even when the brightness doesn’t choose it back. I understand the moth. I have been doing the same thing for three hundred and twenty-six days. The difference is that my light has a face. The moth only has a bulb. It will die against the glass before morning, and no one will notice. The station will clean the wings away with the rest of the night’s small deaths, and the light will still be on for the next one. The humans treat that as ordinary. They have learned how to walk past things that are already finished. I watch it until my eyes ache. There is a tenderness in something that refuses to stop wanting what it cannot have. The moth doesn’t know the door is closed. It only knows the light is there. It keeps beating itself against the same pane, softer and softer, until the wings are almost still. I want to tell it to stop. I want to tell it that some lights are not doors. But I don’t, because I am doing the same thing, and I will not stop either. The moth lands at last. It rests on the metal frame, wings trembling, then still. For a moment it looks almost peaceful. Then a train arrives, the air shifts, and the moth is gone. Blown into the dark, or crushed, or simply finished. The light stays on. The door stays shut. Let them keep their lamps. Let every small thing break itself against the glass and be swept away by morning. I’ll stay where the light can’t burn me, because the thing I’m circling isn’t a bulb. It’s you. And you don’t live in the glass. You live in the place I was told to wait, and I will keep circling it, softer and softer, until the door that matters finally opens.