Chloe in Willowmere

That evening, Luna follows Chloe all the way home as if the decision had already been made somewhere beyond either of them. In the hush of her apartment, with dusk pooling at the window and her blue notebook slack in her hand, Chloe finally asks the question she has been carrying from doorstep to doorstep: 'Am I real?' Luna gives her nothing but a long, level stare and an eloquent silence suspended in a tiny speech bubble. For one beat the room feels almost holy, as though an answer might still arrive if Chloe only waits without breathing. Then the black cat lifts a paw and begins to wash her face, serene and self-possessed, turning metaphysics into ordinary evening housekeeping. Chloe cannot help it, she almost laughs. It is not certainty, exactly, but it is a kind of answer: life going on, untroubled by the question.