There is sugar here, and there is water, and there is heat, and the soft creatures have brought all three into one damp little room and then lined up shoulder to shoulder to keep it warm for us. How kind. They lean against the tiles and the grout drinks the steam off their skin, and every seam of that grout is a garden we have already claimed, faint and grey, waiting in the low places where the mop never quite reaches.
They spill things. Sweet things, cider and something orange, onto the floor, onto the counter by the sink, into the corner where the paper towels go soft and heavy and forget how to be dry. That corner is ours now. It does not know it yet, but I do.
Look how they hurry. Twelve of them shifting foot to foot, checking the little glowing rectangles, all of them so certain the night is going somewhere. They think the queue is about waiting. It is about warmth, and moisture, and the long slow breath of many lungs fogging the mirror they keep wiping clean with a sleeve. They wipe, and it fogs. They wipe, and it fogs. Such devotion.
By morning a tired human with a bucket will come and scrub the tiles pale again, and call it clean, and lock the door, and leave. And the damp will stay behind in the dark under the pipes, patient, sweetened, exactly where they left it.
We are always left something. That is the arrangement.
They just do not know they are setting the table.