Page 66 of The Puppetmaster

He softly shakes his head, his face tensing. “Nothing happened.”

The silence that follows between us is too heavy to bear. I don’t know what to do, whether to touch him, to seek his attention, to bow down at his feet, to apologize. If we were a normal couple, I’d probably lean against his shoulder and just enjoy the moment, because other than his weird mood, it really is wonderful.

“Aren’t you going to punish me?” I ask eventually.

He casts me a quick look from the side. “For what?”

“For leaving my room without you,” I respond, furrowing my eyebrows.

He didn’t even notice? Really? What the hell is going on with him?

Suggesting a nod, he turns his attention back to the yard in front of us.

“Oh yes, I will,” he promises. “You know you’re not allowed to do that.”

There’s no menace in his voice, no ominous threat that would cause my heart to jitter with excitement. He just recites the words mechanically, as if he feels forced to do so.

“I know,” I say, deciding to tickle him a bit more. “I just wanted to know what it’s like.”

Finally, I seem to draw his attention toward me. Raising an eyebrow, he asks, “Know what what’s like?”

“This. Sitting here in the morning all by yourself while the city is still waking up around us,” I say. “Like you do every morning.”

Our eyes meet, and I expect to see something in his that isn’t there. He doesn’t look alarmed or concerned at all, or in any way curious as to why I’d even know about his regular early-morning sessions.

“You know, I’ve seen you,” I push further. “Every morning around five, way before the day starts. You sit here in this exact spot for about an hour, and then you go back inside.”

“Didn’t know you were an early bird,” he simply says, still seemingly unimpressed by my revelation.

“I’m not. I just noticed on one of my first nights here because the light woke me up,” I tell him. “And then a few other times since then. And without fail, every time I was up at that time, so were you, sitting down here all by yourself.”

He looks at me as if to ask “so what?” but doesn’t give voice to the question.

“Why are you up this early?” I dare to ask. “What are you doing down here every morning?”

He shrugs, drawing out a deep sigh as he sinks deeper into the bench.

“It’s just a habit I’ve adopted,” he says. “It’s still nice and quiet out, no one wants anything from me, I have nowhere to be, nothing to do. It’s a good time to think.”

“About what?”

He smirks at me. “You don’t need to know that.”

We sit in silence for a few moments, and I’m surprised to find him accepting my offer to share the blanket and snuggle up to him underneath it. We’ve never cuddled like this before, not when there was no play preceding it. My heart is speeding with excitement while I try to contain it. The moment feels so intimate, so special, as if we just crossed a line that has separated us ever since he took me in as his puppet.

A line he maybe never crossed with any of his other puppets before.

I shouldn’t be thinking such nonsense.

“My mother actually used to do it,” he says eventually, baffling me once again. He has never brought up the topic of his mother voluntarily. “That’s one of the very few things I remember about her,” he goes on, his voice streaked with somberness. “She’d get up early for Fajr, the dawn prayer.”

My eyes journey up to him, but he averts my gaze. “So… you pray?”

He shakes his head. “No, I don’t. I’ve just inherited that one particular habit from her, I guess.”

My heart feels heavy with two rivaling emotions—the palpable sadness about the early loss of his clearly beloved mother, and my own happiness about him finally opening up to me.

“Why are you telling me this?” I want to know.

---