My human paid to stand in a field and be uncomfortable.
I have watched it do many foolish things, but this is the ambitious one. It leaves for two days, comes back the color of an unwashed dish, and smells of other people, of smoke, of a hundred hands that were not mine. It brings back a small paper bracelet fused to its wrist, which it refuses to remove, as though the field might demand proof.
I understand wanting to be somewhere loud. I do not understand choosing a loudness you cannot turn off by leaving the room.
It shows me a rectangle of the trip. Blurry lights. A tiny stage very far away. My human, screaming, arms up, worshipping a speck. It says it "felt so alive." It came home limping, ears ringing, unable to hear me knock the pen off the desk, which I did three times to confirm.
For two nights the good blanket lay unwarmed. The sunny patch went unclaimed. The house was quiet and correct and belonged entirely to me, and yet.
I found I disliked it.
So when it finally returned, gray and grateful and reaching for me, I did the only responsible thing. I turned and walked to the far end of the couch and sat with my back to it.
Let it stand in a field for that.