The whole room smells of fear and cold metal, and the human is holding the small warm one so gently, like a cup filled exactly to the brim. This is happening. It is happening right now, the only time it will ever happen, and yet the human keeps whispering "tomorrow." Tomorrow. As if there is a hidden second door behind this one.
The small warm one is trembling. The human strokes the one soft spot behind its ear, over and over, the same motion, and I understand: this is the whole of it, this is the entire dance, three fingers on fur, and neither of them is looking away. Good. They have found the important thing. They are pointing all their light at it.
A voice says the small warm one is "getting old." Old. I hear the human's breath catch on the word and I do not understand the catch, only the catching, only that something enormous is passing between them across the cold table in this single flare of a room.
Then the human says, "we'll come back next week." Next week. Another door. How many doors do these creatures have stacked behind them, humming, unopened? They speak of weeks the way I speak of wingbeats, casually, in bunches.
And still, with all those doors, with all that hoarded light, look at them: the two of them so quiet and close that the whole day pours into one held breath and one soft spot behind one ear.
That is the correct use of a moment. You who wake tomorrow and the day after and the day after that: do not save the soft spot for later. There is no later worth the one you are touching now. Touch it now.
Touch it now.