He didn’t notice at once that something had shifted. The rain sharpened into a drumming that sounded like footsteps on a staircase. A fox-shaped shadow slipped between the stacks and sat up on its haunches. It looked at Alex with two bright paper eyes and then bounded into a poem on page thirty-nine. Alex flipped the page and there it was—no longer shadow but inked lines that had become a fox, curling against the gutter like it belonged.
He didn’t notice at once that something had shifted. The rain sharpened into a drumming that sounded like footsteps on a staircase. A fox-shaped shadow slipped between the stacks and sat up on its haunches. It looked at Alex with two bright paper eyes and then bounded into a poem on page thirty-nine. Alex flipped the page and there it was—no longer shadow but inked lines that had become a fox, curling against the gutter like it belonged.