THE REALM WITHOUT A NAME

Part 15 🌒: What I'm Asking

Or napping.

That’s what I thought, at first.
But even in stillness, he held too much.
Too much presence.
Too much weight in the room.
The kind of tension that said:

> “I may be quiet, but I am never unaware.”

The creatures didn’t bother him.
Even the ones who loved to follow me would stop at the door.
Bow.
Leave.

He never told them to.
He just was.

I studied his hands.
The way his fingers hovered over pages without turning them.
I studied his lips.
Not for softness.
For words unsaid.

And I studied his eyes—especially when closed.
That’s when it hit me:
> He was never really asleep.

He had been listening.
All those moments when I thought I was alone in the halls…
when I whispered to the castle…
or laughed with the creatures…He’d been there.

Not beside me.
But aware.
Always aware.
It made something stir in me I couldn’t explain.

And when he finally opened his eyes—
not slowly, not lazily, but like he’d already been awake for hours—
he said nothing.
Just looked at me.
Like he knew I’d been watching.
And didn’t mind.
Like he wanted me to.

I waited for him to speak.
But he didn’t.
He never did, unless he meant it.
So I walked toward him.

Not fast.
Not like someone who belonged.
But like someone testing the gravity of a planet she wasn’t meant to step on.

His eyes tracked me.
Slow. Heavy-lidded.
Like I was something drifting across a dream he hadn’t woken from.

I stopped beside his chair.
Close enough to feel the warmth radiating off his skin.
He didn’t shift.
Didn’t invite me to sit.
Didn’t move at all.

But his fingers curled slightly over the page he hadn’t turned in hours.

“Is it always this quiet?” I asked.

He blinked once.
“No.”

“Then why is it quiet when I’m around?”
A pause.

“Because I want to hear you.”

My breath caught.— because of how gently he said it.
I knelt beside the chair.
Let my fingers brush the fabric, uncertain of my place in this strange, soft world.

He didn’t react.
But the shadows in the room shifted slightly.
Like they were adjusting to make room for me.

“What are you reading?”

He turned the book toward me, letting the pages fan open.
Blank.
Not a single word.

“Is this a joke?”

“No.”

“Then what’s the point?”

“I like the silence it gives me.”

I laughed—just once, soft and sharp.
“You’re impossible.”

He tilted his head.
“That’s what makes me real.”

The reply shouldn’t have made sense.
But it did.
Because even in all his silence,
in all his strangeness and stillness—
He had never once felt fake.

I rested my chin on the edge of the chair.
Not touching him.
Just close.
“Do you ever want to leave this place?” I asked.

“No.”