Chloe in Willowmere

Morning comes softly to Chloe's apartment, and with it a smaller, steadier kind of courage. Sitting by the window with Luna close at hand, she looks again at the question that has followed her for days and hears herself say, almost with surprise, 'Maybe I've been treating it like a door when it's only smoke.' The thought does not resolve, but something in her does. She admits, quietly, that it has taken enough from her, and when she closes the blue notebook she is not surrendering so much as choosing scale, choosing the living day over the endless inward turn. Luna remains what Luna always is, a sleek black witness to human weather, rubbing against Chloe's ankle as the room brightens. By the final panel, Chloe is at the window again, looking outward, ready to let Willowmere back into her heart.