***Cassius***
He wasn't there.
I noticed it the moment I opened the shop in the morning, the particular quality of the street outside, the absence of a specific kind of attention I'd gotten used to without meaning to.
The harbor wall was empty, the market had no lingering shadows, and the street was just a street again, fishermen and merchants moving through it with no one watching from careful distances.
I told myself I was relieved, and then I told myself again, because the first time wasn't convincing.
By midmorning I'd caught myself looking out the window four times, not deliberately, just glancing up from whatever I was doing and finding my eyes moving automatically to the harbor wall, to the edge of the market, to the bench outside the tavern.
Empty each time, and each time I returned to my work with slightly more force than necessary.
