The first thing Sierra noticed when she woke up wasn't the light of the sun, but the absence of a shadow.
For the few hours she had slept, her small apartment had felt physically different. Now, that weight was gone. The air felt more hollow.
She sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, and walked into the living room. The sofa was perfectly, almost aggressively, neat. The pink, sparkly blanket had been folded into a sharp-edged square that would have passed a military inspection, placed exactly at the head of the sofa. The grumpy cat pillow was beside it.
Then, she saw the scrap of paper on the counter.
She picked it up and Sierra stared at the word and felt a bubble of laughter rise in her chest, mixing with a strange, fluttering warmth.
She looked at the signatureM just a simple, sharp 'TL.' She stood there for a long moment, the note pressed against her palm, before the reality of her alarm clock snapped her back to the world of the living.
