A field of humans has gathered in the dark to twitch at nothing.
They wear little cups over their ears, and they sway, and they mouth open-jawed noises at each other, and above them there is no sound. Not the low hum of the box that hums, not the rain-noise from the ceiling vent, nothing. Just meat, moving. I have witnessed my human alone in the kitchen, moving like this, when it thinks the little cups have made it invisible. They have not. I see everything. I have always seen everything.
What fascinates me is the disagreement. One human jerks fast, sharp, a bird startled off a wire. Beside it, another rolls slow, like something drowning politely. They are all locked to a rhythm I cannot hear and cannot smell and therefore has been declared, by me, not to exist. They are dancing to a lie. Each of them alone inside its own private weather, certain it is being carried by the same river.
I know this feeling. I chase things across the floor that are not there, at three in the morning, and I have never once explained myself.
The tragedy is that not one of them is looking at me. A whole warm room, every lap potentially available, every ankle brushing past, and their eyes are shut, their attention poured entirely into the nothing between their ears. Unforgivable.
So when my human finally comes home, still humming, still bobbing, still elsewhere, I will do what must be done. I will step delicately into its lap, turn my back to it, and settle. Facing the wall. Giving it, precisely, the audience it gave the silence.
Let it dance to that.