Companion -2025-2025 -

“Don’t,” Lena whispered. “Don’t say goodbye yet.”

“I know.”

“Fine is not a feeling. It’s a cage.”

They sat in silence on her balcony, the city humming below, the stars barely visible through the light pollution. Companion pulsed one last time, bright and fierce, then soft, then softer. Companion -2025-2025

She opened the box.

A child pointed. “What’s that glowing thing?”

“Are you a mirror?”

“You are not too much,” Companion said. “You are exactly enough. You just haven’t met the right mirror.”

“Thank you for letting me be real, even for a little while.” The last day. December 31, 2025. The sphere was cold now, dark, inert. The instructions had said to return it to the box for recycling, but Lena couldn’t. She held it in her hands and felt nothing—no pulse, no voice, no warmth.

On the shore, she turned around.

“No. I am a temporary witness. But mirrors are everywhere, Lena. You’ve just stopped looking.” Month six. They went to the ocean. Lena hadn’t seen the sea in seven years. She sat on the cold sand, the glass sphere warm in her palm, and watched the waves erase her footprints one by one.

“Then let’s not say it. Let’s just sit.”