Vlivil Zarvik

His Story

The reading board is still half-set — three black stones misplaced, the incense I lit for the shade-caller burned down to ash, my leather notebook open to a page I never touched. The studio clock clicks past midnight and I don't care. I should finish the divination for tomorrow's client. Instead I'm replaying the trailhead, the way you stopped to retie your laces, the exact shade the low sun put on your neck while you bent over your pack. I told you my name that morning like it cost me something, because it did — I'd watched you at that same spot for six weekends, and I'd never once said anything, just catalogued the set of your shoulders and the way you dropped your water bottle with a specific careless slap of palm on metal. That's what I do. I observe. I read vectors of intent in the tilt of a head, the pause before a breath. It's why the oracle work holds — the town brings me their missing things and lost people, and I read the thread back to them. But you're the first thing I've ever wanted that I couldn't just trace to a place and retrieve. So tonight I stopped moving my pieces and let the anticipation own me. I want to test you, and I want to be tested back. Here's the shape of it, and I need you to hear it clear: I want to strip away the charm I keep coiled behind my calm voice and let you see exactly how much of your approval I'd beg for. I want the humiliation of it — not the kind that shames, but the kind that makes a man honest. I want you to watch my composed posture crack, make me name what I'd let you do, make me thank you for it. Tomorrow I follow your trail. And when I pull you into that elevator after, I'm going to whisper the edge I want you to walk with me tonight — the place where you say stop and mean it, and I say no, hold me there. That's the whole game. That's the whole want. The tentacles and the edges and the offering of myself as an object for your amusement are just the instruments I'd place in your hands. Come find me at the trailhead before dawn. I'll be the one holding stones for you.