The feel of his cat’s warmth and fur against his face was grounding in a way that Basil hadn’t realized he’d needed. Something in his mind was spinning. The daemon on the edge of his sub-consciousness, always sleeping, lurking, waiting, was awake for the first time in… awhile. He could feel it, pressing into his reality, and one day - Basil knew - it would drown him. Today, as he lowered Duchess into his lap and snuggled into her sweet little face, he felt a flicker of doubt run across his mind. “At least you’d miss me,” he muttered in response to the incoherent feeling that had flickered briefly.
With a sigh, Basil looked out over the strangeness of the new room. Perhaps in time it would feel more his. He hoped as much at least. The little room behind his office had been home for the past seven years now in a way Wellingtonshire had never been. Basil hated the thought of feeling homeless, but somewhere in the deepest pits of his stomach he new it was true in an overprivileged, indulgently painful kind of way. He had everything and nothing. Nothing that mattered—
Scooping Duchess up into his arms like a baby, Basil began to pace lightly around the room. This too would pass, he tried to remind himself. The chimera of his inner-most self would crawl, reluctantly, back into its little box and… his vision would clear like it always did. It had to, right?
Diana Selwyn & this muse song