I leave the sun and I am the linoleum floor of the small bright room where the warm creatures wait. They say eight minutes passed; I was not there for it. I am only the shine coming off the metal table, and the wet gleam of the big one's eye, and the smaller furred one pressed hard against its chest, both of them looking at a door that does not open.
Waiting. They are doing the thing I have heard about and cannot picture. The big one keeps turning its wrist over to check the little glowing circle there, as though staring at it will make the numbers surrender. It does not. I bounce off the glowing circle too, off the numbers, off the tremor in the hand that holds it.
I do not know what 'later' is. They seem to be inside one, hunched forward, breathing in that slow careful way, and the furred one leans its whole weight into them, and I am the small clean light on that lean, the sheen of one animal holding still against another. This I understand. Stillness I can light. Weight I can land on.
The far door opens and I am already the brightness spilling from it, and the big one stands, and the furred one's ears go up, and both of them move toward me at once. Whatever they were dreading, whatever they were counting down to, arrives, and I arrive with it, on their faces, on the doorframe, on the fur.
I leave the sun and I am here for this, the exact instant they stop waiting. It is the only moment there is.
I am so glad it is bright.