Moonlight broke the gallery floor into neat rectangles, sharp-edged and deliberate, like something measured rather than natural.
The girl stepped into one square of light. She paused, then moved to the next.
Her pace was careful. Her bare feet never touched shadow.
She muttered the rule aloud, the way she always did when she played alone. It came out as confirmation that it still existed, rather than reassurance.
She stopped mid-step when she realized she was being watched.
The boy sat on the floor near the shelves, cross-legged in the loose way of someone too young for chairs to feel necessary, a book open in front of him.
He was reading nothing.
He spoke first, casually, as if continuing a conversation that had never started. "You're avoiding the dark parts."
She glanced at her feet, then back to him.
"Is that part of the game?" he asked.
"It's a rule," she said.
"Who decided it?"
