Maki

Maki likes to sleep where the feet are. Maybe she knows about the temperature issue. Bad circulation and no neighboring body parts down there to keep things comfortable on the colder days.

Maki would sleep down there now but Maki is not here. It's OK because sometimes a little discomfort is what you need to kick things in gear. There's a lot of stuff she hasn't processed, years-old stuff, and the cold feet and parenthesis left where Maki isn't are catalyzing all sorts of little impressions from other times. Memories that seem unfamiliar, almost unknown; they are making their visits and she's actually letting them stick around. One cannot argue that it is not an interesting change of pace from the bore routine.

But where is Maki?

Maki might be lost forever. One has to face the reality of such a possibility. It is too soon to know, but perhaps she should practice the feelings now. It wouldn't be hard because this wouldn't be numero uno loss, so she can just dip into the old storehouse, but also mostly because no matter how well you do it, practice is practice and it's not going to be like the real thing, it's gonna be much easier.

But why even discuss it, she has discarded the idea already because practice is too much like the bore routine all over again. She's tired of doing everything one two three. So when Maki exits and the older unfamiliar/familiars come by, she's cool with it. She wants to see what it could all be about. Well, of course it's not about anything, it's just random firing synapses, the strangeness of having cold feet again, but one could make good use of it. Even if it does make her cry.

Further Considerations

The feet aren't getting any warmer. Walking helps some, but one has to sleep as well. Both walking and lying with cold feet trying to sleep lead to the same thing, though. They lead to thinking.

Why not consider the possibility that Maki is dead? Well, because it is out of the question. She can feel it in her bones. After six years of day in day out you develop that sense. Even without the six years, since in a way the sense was there even before that. From the first time she encountered Maki sleeping on the streets, huddled in a torn blanket. Before the agreement, even before names. She supposes she wouldn't have walked up to Maki if not. She supposes Maki would not have let her.

Dead no, but very possibly lost forever. She has a sense about that too, but there are two competing senses, and whenever she listens to the one she thinks it's because she's fooling herself with it so as not to listen to the other. What is worse, hope or irrevocability? Surely what's done is done but in the momentary uncertainty, things could still go one way or another. And of course there's the one way she wants them to have gone, that's for sure. Things moving into action because of the cold feet, long-absent mind debris present once again and what-not aside, she certainly wishes Maki were not gone.

The Blanket

Maki was not like the others. One could easily see she wasn't either, but that's the point exactly, isn't it. They snapped together like they were factory-made.

They met quite by accident, as everyone meets of course since how could you plan to meet someone you don't know? Or at least know of. What particular conjunction of universe-circumstances made her walk down that alley the one day she'll never know, one should not think too much about such things in any case. Liable to bust one's last neuron on that, one is. But she'd walked down the alley nonetheless, trailing the universe-circumstances like a rainbow kite, the very alley where the bad thing had happened on Tuesday.

She'd walked in not just a little afraid, and there Maki was, asleep in the aforementioned torn blanket. There was a sense of recognition for her, almost like she was seeing herself sleeping there. Figuratively speaking of course, the regular species differences notwithstanding. Maki felt it too, because even though she'd walked oh-so-quiet the way no one ever heard her, Maki had opened her eyes and fixed them on her. They stood locked like that for what must have been at least one and a half minutes. If one is trying to be precise, which one often is. The bad thing on Tuesday had been forgotten with all the rest, and all she had been able to think was what a crying shame it was that Maki's blanket was torn. Not that she knew her name was Maki then, but nonetheless. Suddenly it was the saddest thing ever about the blanket, a tragedy of the highest degree. Sometimes one feels things like that, out of proportion but really focused in on how things really are. Well, she had told Maki she would fix her blanket and Maki had agreed. Maki did love that blanket and had gone to great trouble to get it—in fact, the tear was a result of the getting.

So that had been the first time they met. After she had sewn up the torn bits and decorated them with some embroidered suns and moons and a pig even (which seemed to make Maki very happy), Maki had taken back her blanket and they had parted ways. It was at least a year before they saw each other again, but one can't say that they didn't know each other already, because they did.

Stone

Maki has not returned.