Lena didn’t remember ordering anything. She lived alone in a quiet apartment on the edge of a city that never seemed to sleep, even in the rain. Her days blurred into weeks—work, eat, sleep, repeat. She had friends, she supposed, but the kind you text once a month to say “we should catch up” and never do.
“Then let’s not say it. Let’s just sit.”
“Yes?”
“What do you want to do instead?”
“Lena?”
“Don’t,” Lena whispered. “Don’t say goodbye yet.”
Lena cried. Not because she was sad, but because she realized she had stopped crying years ago. Companion didn’t console her. It simply pulsed its slow, steady light against her skin, letting her weep until the tide came in. Month nine. She quit her job. Not impulsively—she had been planning it for weeks. Companion didn’t advise. It only asked questions. Companion -2025-2025
“Are you a mirror?”
And that was enough.
Lena smiled. “A companion,” she said. “He was here for a year. But he taught me how to stay.” Lena didn’t remember ordering anything
“I don’t know.”
The child didn’t understand. But Lena did.