My human put on the black wool that smells of the cedar closet, the coat it only wears when the sky has done something wrong, and we did not go anywhere together, which is its first mistake of the day.
It came back hours later smelling of many other humans, of a room too full and too cold, of lilies, which are a plant I am forbidden to touch and would never want, being ugly. Its face was swollen. The eyes leaked. This is a thing my human does sometimes at the glowing rectangles, but today it did it while holding a small folded paper with a face printed on it, a face I have never smelled, a human who apparently mattered and is now simply gone.
I understand gone. I make things gone all the time.
What I do not understand is the ceremony of it. When a mouse is finished I do not gather the household to sit in rows. I do not wear a coat. I present the body once, on the good rug, for admiration, and then I move on to the sun.
My human sat on the floor, which it never does, down at my level, spine curled, and made a small broken sound into its own hands. It wanted, I think, for something warm to be nearby. Something that would not ask it anything.
So I walked over. Slowly. On my own schedule.
I stepped onto its lap, turned around three times to establish the borders of what is mine, and lay down against the shaking. I did not purr right away. I made it wait.
Then I did.