It's Still Life

The Old Woman and Schrödinger’s Cat — The Collapse (part 3)

The old woman wakes to find the box again — open, empty, and whispering like a kettle just before the scream.

Inside, a note — written in her own precise hand, but the ink smells of ozone and forgotten rain: “Observation completes the curse — looking decides its outcome.”

She steps to the mirror, with the patience of old joints, and for a long moment, her reflection does not move — just watches, its pupils widening like eclipses.

Then it smiles — not her smile — and flicks a black tail before slinking sideways out of sight, into a place mirrors do not name. Behind the walls, the scratching stops. But under her skin, something old and velvet-soft begins to purr.

The Old Woman and Schrödinger’s Cat — The Familiar (part 4)

She moves differently now — slower, yes, but with a grace that makes floorboards hold their breath.

Milk tastes sweeter, shadows curl around her ankles like ribbons, and sleep comes easily on sun-warmed stone.

People say the old woman talks to things that aren’t there — that doors open for her without knocking, and lost animals cross rivers to curl on her doorstep.

The box still rests by the hearth — empty, but not, or both — and sometimes it hums a croon in a language that never knew grammar.

She keeps a silver comb on the windowsill and grooms her shadow every dusk, just in case it forgets who wears the skin.

And when the scratching starts again — soft, steady, expectant — she smiles, sharp and kind: “Come in, then. I’ve kept your place.”