London - Liz and Jamie have gone to bed, and I sit writing by lamplight as the kittens chase one another across the carpet and the fridge splutters and grumbles and a television set plays in the next flat along.
The city is overwhelmingly vast, as it always feels when I first arrive. Too many lives, too many happenings; how is there space in the universe for all these thoughts? All these people believing they are each of central importance, buying their bagels, choosing their handbags, fretting over whether to take that job offer, how to wear their hair next weekend, who's going to notice the spot on their chin. Each a shimmering ocean of complexity, a cosmic spiral of atoms, and a hundred thousand of them all pouring forth down this road. Mad. Wild. Unfathomable. Too much to take in.
Day of newborns today, baby Cleo and boisterous kittens. Held Cleo for a long time, her tiny head pressed against my chest, her breath quickening and slowing as she dreamt. Ju and Dan look tired. Eyes strained, movements slower, getting only an hour or two in shifts a few times a night. Cleo only sleeps in their arms, they have to sit up fighting drowsiness through the long lonely hours of the night. And operations, and specialists, and anxiety over every single thing. And the happiest they've ever been in the lives.
And now kittens with heavy eyes, play fighting ending, clambering up to the sofa and between my legs. Curling into one another, Rey (no, Arya) licking affectionately at Arya (no, Rey)'s ear. Fuzzy cloud-soft fur, twitching whiskers, stretched belly-gangled bodies flopped in sighing savannah sleep. A million billion cats and people, all atomic identical emptiness, and each one unique.
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