Julia - Lilu |top|

Julia stared at the words. Her breath caught. For three years, since the divorce, since her mother’s illness, since she’d quietly stopped returning anyone’s phone calls, she had been anything but brave. She had made a beautiful, silent prison of her life. The high walls, the ordered shelves, the single meditation cushion—they weren't peace. They were a hiding place.

That’s when she heard the sneeze. It was a tiny, indignant sound, like a pebble dropped into a well. julia lilu

Lilu blinked. Then, with a delicate paw, she batted at her own chest. The locket swung. She batted at it again, looking from Julia to the locket, to Julia. Julia stared at the words

She is brave. She just needed a tiny, rain-soaked pirate with emerald eyes to remind her. She had made a beautiful, silent prison of her life

Julia peered into the alley beside her shop. A cardboard box, sodden and collapsing, sat wedged between the dumpster and the wall. Inside, shivering and soaked to a wiry, impossible thinness, was a cat. But calling her a cat felt like calling a hurricane a breeze. She was a skeleton in a patchy grey coat, one ear torn, her eyes two defiant emeralds in a mud-streaked face.