Nobody invited them in. Nobody needed to. The door was open, the room smelled interesting, and Cinder and Ash have never once in their lives required a formal invitation to investigate something.
The Curated Decor: Embrace the Magic of Stillness collection at Pedlar's Attic is the room nobody rushes through — fantasy dragon posters, gothic wall art, Viking Norse rune prints, fairy forest metal wall art, skull banquet fallen angel dark fantasy prints, sad girl dark aesthetic vintage art, dark horror demon prints, Celtic cross metal wall art, Tree of Life chakra tapestries, crystal orgone pyramids, 3D printed dragon figures, Mother Earth statues, natural agate raw stone displays, and the kind of pieces that change a room's energy the moment they go up. Chelle arranged her side first. Luna's contributions arrived in tubes. The room holds both of them now — the sacred and the shadowed, the still and the stormy.
And then, one afternoon, the animals got in.
It began with Midnight. He had been circling the rooftop in the particular pattern that means something below has caught his attention, and what had caught his attention was the Fantasy Dragon Mythical Animal Poster that Luna had propped against the wall while she decided where to hang it. Midnight landed on the roof directly above it. Tilted his great head left. Tilted it right. Tilted it further right than seemed structurally advisable for a dragon of his size. The dragon in the poster was mid-roar, wings spread, the kind of image that commands a room. Midnight looked at it for a very long time with the expression of someone who has opinions about the accuracy of the portraiture and is choosing, for now, to keep them to himself. He has not stopped circling that section of the roof. Luna says he's guarding it. Chelle says he's offended by the wingspan. Nobody has asked Midnight. Midnight is not answering.
Cinder came in next, because Ash had already gone in and he was not going to let her investigate something potentially significant without him, which is not a feeling he has examined and is not going to. He found her in front of the Victoria Style Skull Banquet Fallen Angels Dark Fantasy Art print, sitting very still, staring at it with the focused intensity of a wolf trying to solve a problem she doesn't have the context for. Cinder sat next to her. Also stared at it. The print featured skulls, fallen angels, a banquet table, general gothic grandeur. They stared at it together for a considerable amount of time.
Cinder looked at Ash. Ash looked at Cinder. They looked back at the print. The question was clear even without words: why. Not in a judgmental way. In a genuinely curious, philosophically open, we-have-eaten-things-off-the-ground-and-found-them-delicious way. Just: why do humans make this, and then put it on a wall, and then look at it on purpose.
They did not reach a conclusion. They moved on.
The Sad Girl Dark Aesthetics Vintage Wall Art print was leaning against the lower shelf, which meant it was at exactly wolf-nose height, which meant Ash investigated it at close range, which meant she breathed on it, which fogged the surface slightly, which she then sat on to think about. Cinder watched her sit on the sad girl print with the expression of a wolf who has something to say and has decided this is not the moment. The sad girl print survived. Ash stood up, looked at the slight impression she'd left, and moved it six inches to the left with her nose in a way that suggested she was improving the arrangement. She was not improving the arrangement. Cinder moved it back. Ash looked at him. He looked at the wall. This is how they communicate.
The Dark Horror Girls and Terrible Demons Vintage Wall Art Ash found next and immediately approved of, which surprised no one. She sat in front of it with her tail moving slowly, the way it does when she's pleased, which Cinder noticed and then noticed he had noticed and then became very interested in the Old Norse Mythology Runic Wayfinder Symbol print on the adjacent wall, which he studied with great seriousness for approximately forty-five seconds before admitting to himself that he couldn't read runes and moving on.
The 3D Printing Dragon Figure caused an incident.
It was small. It was dragon-shaped. It smelled, faintly, of the same resin that comes through the portal sometimes. Cinder approached it carefully, the way he approaches things he's not sure about — slow, deliberate, nose first. He got very close. The dragon figure stared back at him with the fixed expression of something that has no feelings about this situation because it is made of resin. Cinder stared at it. It stared at him. Ash came over to see what he was looking at. She looked at the dragon figure. Looked at Cinder. Looked at the dragon figure. Then she knocked it over, because that is how Ash handles ambiguous situations, and it landed on its side and stared at the ceiling instead, which seemed to resolve something for everyone. Cinder set it back upright with his nose. Ash watched him do this. Something in her expression was not quite a smile because wolves don't smile, but it was the thing that lives in the same neighborhood.
Midnight, from the rooftop, rumbled. It sounded like it might have been a laugh. It was probably not a laugh. Midnight does not laugh. Almost certainly.
The Elegant Essence Bamboo Silk Fan Ash found on a low shelf and batted open with one paw, which caused it to fan her face with a single elegant sweep of air, which she found so unexpectedly pleasant that she batted it again, and again, and was on her fourth bat when Cinder sat down next to her and she immediately stopped and looked at the wall as though she had been looking at the wall this entire time and the fan had opened itself. The fan was still open. It was very clearly not looking at the wall. Cinder said nothing. He is very good at this.
They were in there for forty minutes. When they came out, the dragon poster had a nose print on it, the sad girl print was two inches to the left of where it should be, the dragon figure was facing a slightly different direction than it had been, and the silk fan was open on the floor next to a crystal pyramid that had been nudged into a patch of afternoon light, which was, Chelle noted when she came to assess the damage, actually a better placement than where she'd had it.
She moved the sad girl print back. She left the crystal pyramid where Ash had put it. She did not explain this decision to anyone.
Midnight landed on his usual rooftop spot and resumed his vigil over the dragon poster. He has decided it is acceptable. The wingspan is still wrong. He is letting it go.
The gallery is open. The animals have opinions. The crystal pyramid is in a better spot now, and nobody is going to talk about how it got there.
