The Bucket List

Chapter 1: The Drawer of Desires

The dust in Raven’s room tasted like secrets. Mira’s fingers skimmed over the cluttered surface of the bedside table, pushing aside empty tarot card boxes and a scattering of black-licked candle stubs. She was just trying to help, really. The entire apartment was a testament to her roommate’s chaotic artistry, but this drawer was a disaster.

With a sigh, she tugged it open. A jumble of fishnets, broken jewelry, and stick-on rhinestones glittered back. Something crumpled, a stray piece of notepaper, was wedged in the back corner. Probably a shopping list, or a forgotten poem. Mira pulled it free, smoothing the thick, ivory paper against her thigh. It wasn't a shopping list. It wasn’t a poem.

The handwriting was Raven’s—a sharp, angular scrawl in deep purple ink. The header alone stopped the breath in Mira’s throat: For Her, If She Ever Asks. Her eyes devoured the lines, each one a hammer blow to her quiet, predictable world.

The list went on, deeper, more explicit, detailing acts and hungers Mira had only ever glimpsed in the fringe novels she skimmed in the library. Her heart wasn’t just racing; it was a trapped bird beating against her ribs. Her skin felt too tight, too hot. She sank onto the edge of the king-sized bed, her weight disturbing a pile of silk scarves.

Raven. All black lipstick and razor-sharp wit, with a glare that could silence a lecture hall. She wore her darkness like armor, a fortress of ripped fishnets and chains. And this… this was the blueprint to the fortress gate. This was surrender.

A slow, unfamiliar heat uncoiled in Mira’s stomach. It wasn’t anxiety. It was possession. The sporty, diligent literature student, the one who always had her essays done early, who folded her towels, who called her parents every Sunday—that girl watched from a distance as someone else stood up inside her skin.

The key turned in the apartment door.

Mira’s body moved before her mind could catch up. A cold, sharp instinct took over. Her hand crumpled the paper into a tight, desperate ball and she shoved it deep into the pocket of her jeans. She snatched a random black scarf from the bed and began furiously polishing the already-clean surface of the nightstand, her breaths coming in shallow, quiet hitches.

“Mira?” Raven’s voice, a low alto edged with perpetual smoke, called from the living room. The thud of heavy boots being kicked off followed.

“In here!” Mira called back, and her own voice sounded strange to her—too high, too bright. “Just… dusting!”

Raven appeared in the doorway, a silhouette against the brighter light of the hall. She was all sharp lines and layered black: a torn band t-shirt, a harness overtop, skinny jeans ripped at the knees. Her dark hair fell over kohl-rimmed eyes. “Dusting,” she repeated flatly, one eyebrow arching. “In my dungeon of despair. How domestic.”

“You had… cobwebs,” Mira stammered, gesturing vaguely. “On the… gargoyle figurine.” She pointed to a small, dusty statue on a shelf.

Raven’s gaze tracked over Mira’s flushed face, the too-quick rise and fall of her chest. She took a slow step into the room. The space seemed to shrink, the scent of her—clove cigarettes and cold night air—filling it. “You’re sweating.”

“It’s warm.”

“It’s sixty degrees.” Raven leaned against the doorframe, crossing her arms. The leather of her jacket creaked. “What’s up with you? You look like you saw a ghost. Or read someone’s diary.”

The casual, pointed barb hit its mark. Mira felt the crinkle of paper in her pocket like a live wire against her thigh. She forced a laugh. It came out as a dry crack. “Just worried about my midterm. On Gothic Lit. The irony, right?” She wiped her hands on her jeans, a nervous gesture. “I’ll get out of your hair.”

She moved to pass Raven, who didn’t budge from the doorway. Mira had to turn sideways, her body brushing against Raven’s. The contact was electric, a jolt that traveled straight to her core. For a fleeting second, their eyes met. Raven’s were unreadable pools of ink.

“Thanks for cleaning,” Raven said, her voice dropping almost to a murmur. It wasn’t thanks. It was a question.

“Any time,” Mira breathed, and then she was past, fleeing into the sterile safety of her own white-walled, neatly organized room across the hall. She shut the door and leaned against it, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm against her ribs.

She didn’t turn on the light.

In the gray twilight, she pulled the crumpled list from her pocket. She didn’t smooth it out. She didn’t need to. Every word was seared into her mind. To be used for Her pleasure. Mouth. Fingers. Whatever She wants.

A low, shaky breath escaped her. This wasn’t curiosity anymore. It wasn’t shock. It was a craving, deep and hungry and utterly new. A face in the mirror she’d never seen.

Raven, on her knees. Raven, in a collar. Raven, waiting for a command. Raven, hers.

The fantasy unspooled in vivid, brutal detail, and Mira let it. Her hand slipped into the waistband of her jeans, her fingers finding the wet, urgent heat there. She pictured pinning Raven’s wrists to the velvet-draped wall, biting that sneering lower lip until it yielded, listening to her gasp. She imagined Raven’s mouth between her legs, that sharp tongue flattened and obedient, and the filthy, perfect words she would use to command her. Lick. Slower. Deeper. Swallow. Her own fingers moved in quick, rough circles, driven by the violent rush of power. She came minutes later, silently, her teeth clenched so hard her jaw ached, the image of Raven’s submission the only thing in her mind.

After, in the cool stillness, the idea solidified. Clear. Calm. Devastating.

She would not rush. She would not confront. That was the old Mira, the polite one.

The evening settled over the apartment like a held breath. Mira cooked, as she always did on weeknights, and the familiar rhythm of chopping vegetables and stirring rice was a lifeline. The kitchen was a cramped, narrow space, all peeling linoleum and a window that looked out onto a brick wall, but it was neutral ground. Safe.

She heard Raven's footsteps before she saw her, the soft pad of socked feet, and she didn't turn around. "Dinner's almost ready," she said, keeping her voice light. "Nothing fancy. Just the stir-fry you like."

Raven leaned against the doorframe, and Mira felt the weight of her gaze between her shoulder blades. "You're in a good mood."

"Am I?" Mira seasoned the pan with a little more care than necessary. "Maybe I'm just hungry."

"Hm." Raven moved closer, her presence filling the small space. She reached past Mira to grab a glass from the cabinet, and the proximity made Mira's skin prickle with awareness. Clove smoke and something floral, like dried lavender. "You cleaned my room."

"Just tidied it a bit. Don't make it weird."

"It's a little weird." Raven filled her glass with tap water, leaning against the counter. "You never go in my room."

Mira's stomach tightened, but she kept her hands steady on the wooden spoon. Here it was, the first test. "You left your door open," she said, which was true. "And I was bored. It's not a big deal."

Raven's dark eyes scrutinized her, searching for cracks. "Did you find anything interesting?"

The question was almost casual, but Mira caught the flicker beneath it. A thin thread of anxiety, carefully disguised. Raven was checking the perimeter, scanning for a breach.

"Just a lot of hair elastics and old ticket stubs," Mira said, turning off the burner. She served the stir-fry into two bowls, her movements steady and unhurried. "And a startling number of single earrings. It's a crime, honestly."

Raven exhaled, something almost imperceptible. She took her bowl, and they settled at the small table by the window. The evening light had gone amber and bruised, casting long shadows across the room.

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Comfortable, or pretending to be.

"So," Mira said, spearing a piece of broccoli. "You're going to that lecture on Friday? The one about Victorian mourning culture?"

Raven's lip curled. "Maybe. Depends if I want to watch a hundred English majors pretend they know what grief feels like."

"Bitter much?"

"Just discerning." Raven twirled her fork. "What about you? Big plans?"

Mira considered her next words carefully, a chess piece sliding into position. "Actually, I need to send a package to my sister. And the post office on campus doesn't open until Monday." She paused, letting the fork hover over her bowl. "I was wondering if you'd come with me. To the post office in town. There's a little café next to it."

Raven's eyebrow arched. "You're asking me to run errands with you."

"I'm asking you to keep me company. There's a difference."

A beat of silence stretched between them. Raven's dark gaze was inscrutable, and Mira could feel the weight of it, the scrutiny of a woman who didn't trust kindness without a string attached.

"Fine," Raven said finally. "But if they're out of those sourdough crackers you like, I'm not responsible for my actions."

"Noted." Mira smiled, a small, private thing she hid behind her glass of water.

The meal continued, and Mira steered the conversation with careful, invisible hands. She asked about Raven's art, about the pieces she'd been working on, and Raven's monosyllabic answers slowly unwound into real discussion. It was a strange kind of intimacy, watching the armor shed in layers. Raven's voice softened when she talked about charcoal and texture, about the way light fell across a figure's throat.

And there it was. The throat.

Mira filed it away, a glint of something precious.

Later, after dinner, Raven was washing the dishes and Mira was drying them, the domestic rhythm almost hypnotic. The kitchen was warm, steam curling from the sink. Mira was hyperaware of the space between them, the inches of air that seemed to hum with charge.

Raven handed her the last plate, their fingers brushing for a fraction of a second. The contact was warm, damp, intimate in a way that made Mira's pulse trip.

"I'm going to put on some tea," Mira said, her voice a little too casual. She reached for the kettle on the counter, then paused, a thought forming like ice crystallizing on glass. "Actually. You make better tea than I do. You always get the temperature right."

This was true. Raven had a ritual for it, a careful patience Mira had watched from the kitchen doorway on more than one cold evening.

Raven shrugged, drying her hands on a threadbare towel. "It's not hard. You just have to pay attention."

"Then you do it." Mira stepped back from the counter, crossing her arms loosely. The gesture was casual, but she felt the weight of it settle between them. "I want the jasmine, but you know how I like it."

A beat of silence. Raven's dark eyes flickered, something unreadable passing through them like a fish darting beneath dark water.

"You want me to make you tea," Raven said slowly.

"Is that a problem?"

"No." Raven's voice was careful now, and Mira watched her reassess, recalculate. This was a shift, small and seismic all at once. "I just didn't peg you for the demanding type."

Mira let the smile curve her lips, soft and unhurried. "I'm not demanding. I'm just asking. You're better at it."

Raven held her gaze for a long moment, and Mira felt the tug of a thread, invisible but taut. Then Raven turned to the stove, filling the kettle with water, her movements as precise as ever. She measured the loose jasmine leaves into the pot, a generous pinch, then a second, smaller one. She knew exactly how Mira took it: light, barely sweet, a single spoon of honey stirred counterclockwise without splashing.

Mira leaned against the counter, watching. Noticing. The way Raven's shoulders were just slightly tense, the way she kept her head down, focused on the task. There was pleasure in this, quiet and subcutaneous, and Mira felt a bloom of something wicked unfurl in her chest.

Raven set the kettle on the burner and turned, leaning back against the counter with her arms crossed. "Happy?"

"Almost." Mira pushed off from the counter, closing the distance between them until she was close enough to see the faint ring of lighter grey around Raven's pupils. "Let it steep for four minutes. Not three, not five. I like it just strong enough to taste the bitterness underneath."

Something flickered in Raven's eyes. Surprise, maybe. Interest. She didn't step back.

"Four minutes," she repeated.

"Four." Mira let her gaze trail down Raven's face, lingering on her lips, then back up to meet her eyes. "I trust you to get it right."

The words hung in the air, weighted with something neither of them named. Raven swallowed; Mira saw the bob of her throat, pale and elegant against the black choker she always wore. The thought came unbidden, sharp and sweet: I want to put my hand there. I want to feel her pulse.

The kettle began to whistle, a thin, rising shriek that shattered the tension. Raven turned to it, and Mira watched her pour the water, watched the steam curl up and obscure her features. The ritual of it, the obedience of it, settled into Mira's bones like heat.

Raven placed the cup in front of her, steam curling from its surface. The ceramic was cool to the touch, a matte black mug with a crack running down its side that Raven had never bothered to replace.

"Four minutes exactly," Raven said, and there was something in her voice, a subtle shift in register that made Mira's stomach clench with satisfaction.

Mira wrapped her fingers around the mug, letting the warmth seep into her palms. She didn't drink. She just held it, looking up at Raven through her lashes. "Thank you."

The word was simple, but the weight behind it was not. It was a test, another stone dropped into still water, and Mira watched the ripples spread across Raven's guarded expression.

"Sure," Raven said, and the word came out rougher than she'd intended, almost a question.

Mira smiled and finally lifted the cup to her lips. The tea was perfect. Exactly how she liked it.

She let the silence stretch, the warmth of the mug against her skin, the awareness of Raven's eyes on her. The ghost of a plan was forming, not fully shaped yet, but alive and stirring.

"Friday, then," Mira said, setting the cup down. "After my class. Two o'clock."

"I'll be there." The agreement came without hesitation, and Mira saw the flicker in Raven's eyes, the confusion at her own quickness to comply.

Mira stood, carrying her cup toward the door. At the threshold, she paused and looked back. Raven was still by the stove, watching her with an expression caught somewhere between wariness and wonder.

"Make sure you wear something comfortable," Mira said, and the words slipped out with a sweetness that belied their weight. "We might walk a while. I'll bring you one of those sourdough crackers if they have them."

Then she was gone, the door swinging shut behind her, and the steam of her tea rose thin and ghostlike into the dim hallway. In the silence of her own room, Mira set the cup down and pressed her hands to her face, feeling the heat in her cheeks. Her heart was a live thing, hammering with the thrill of it, the nascent certainty spreading through her veins like honey.

This was how it began. Small, harmless, deniable. A request for tea. A walk to the post office. And then, layer by layer, Raven would learn that obedience was sweet. That bending to Mira's will could feel like a relief.

And Mira would learn, too.

The paper in her pocket crinkled against her thigh, a constant, secret pressure. For Her, If She Ever Asks.

Mira pulled it out, smoothing it flat against her knee. Her eyes traced the lines again, each word a coal pressed against her skin. She read the most explicit ones twice, letting the heat of them wash over her, settling into her like a key turning in a lock.

She folded it carefully, precisely, and slid it into the drawer of her nightstand.

Not yet. But soon.

Mira lay on her bed, the ceiling a blank canvas above her. The tea had cooled, forgotten on her nightstand, and the apartment had gone quiet. Raven's door was shut, a bar of light beneath it, and the soft hum of her speakers bled through the wall. Some dark, droning track, something with a heavy bassline that Mira could feel in her chest if she pressed her ear to the wall. She didn't. She didn't need to.

A year. Almost exactly a year since Raven had moved in, a whirlwind of black bin bags and tattoo ink and that first, wary look from behind a fringe of dyed-black hair. Mira had been nineteen, fresh out of a breakup with a boy who'd called her "nice" like it was a compliment, and she'd been looking for a roommate on a student forum. Raven's ad had been a single line: *Quiet goth artist seeks flatmate. I have a lot of books and a cat. No drama.*

The cat had turned out to be a taxidermied raven that Raven had named Edgar. The books had taken up three entire shelves. The "no drama" had held true, mostly.

Mira turned onto her side, staring at the pale wall between their rooms. She tried to think of signs, of moments across the year that should have told her. The way Raven always deferred on the small things, the movies they watched, the takeaway they ordered, the temperature of the thermostat. It wasn't weakness or laziness; it was a quiet, practiced yielding, as if she'd taught herself that wanting things was a liability. Mira had always read it as just Raven being Raven, cold and unbothered.

But now, with the list burning a ghost-image into her mind, she replayed those moments in a different light.

The time Mira had been sick with a fever, and Raven had appeared with a tray of soup she'd made from scratch, watching her eat it with an expression Mira had taken for detached pity. Now she remembered the flicker of something else, something almost eager in the way Raven had hovered at the doorway, awaiting a verdict.

The way Raven always let Mira pick the music when they were in the kitchen together. The way she'd hand Mira the last slice of toast, the last scoop of ice cream, with that little shrug, like it was nothing. The way she'd apologise, quick and reflexive, even when she hadn't done anything wrong.

The way she'd asked, one time, unexpected in the dark of a late night: "What's it like being wanted? Like, actually wanted?" Mira had laughed it off, called her existential, and Raven had laughed too, a hollow thing that now sounded more like a confession.

Mira's chest tightened. All those little exits, those retreats. They hadn't been aloofness. They'd been practice. Raven had been rehearsing submission for years, in the privacy of her own skull, and no one had ever picked up the script.

A year. And Friday would be the anniversary of the first day Raven had moved in. The day she'd dragged her crates up three flights of stairs, sweat beading on her pale forehead, refusing help with a tight, "I've got it." Mira remembered watching her from the landing, the strange formality of it, the way Raven had straightened and met her eyes and said, "Okay. I guess we live together now," like she was pledging something.

Mira sat up, her heart a steady, purposeful drum. The coincidence of the date felt like a signpost, a door left ajar. One year since Raven had entered her life. One year of dance around an invisible boundary. And now, with the list, the boundary had a name and a shape.

She walked to the window, parting the curtains to look at the street below. The city was in its quiet hour, amber streetlights pooling on wet asphalt. A couple walked past, arm in arm, and a stray cat crossed the road with a dignified, unhurried stride.

Friday, then. Mira would ask Raven to meet her, not at the post office, but at the little park on the corner of their street. It had a bench by the fountain, a place where they'd sat once after a thunderstorm, sharing a bag of gummy bears and watching the lightning retreat. It felt right, a closed loop, a return to a beginning. She would bring the list, not to wave it in Raven's face, but to lay it between them like a treaty.

Or perhaps she wouldn't bring the list at all. Perhaps she would bring only herself, and let Raven realize, in her own time, that the woman who lived with her, who made her dinner and laughed at her jokes and never asked for anything, was the one who had been reading the map all along.

Mira let the curtain fall. She returned to her bed, sliding the drawer open. The list was there, folded neat, waiting. She touched it, a fingertip tracing the line where Raven's handwriting had digressed into a confession. *To belong.* The words felt like a heartbeat under her palm.

She didn't know what Friday would bring. She didn't know if Raven would look at her with horror or with relief, with the spark of recognition or the sting of betrayal. But she knew that the anticipation itself was a kind of power, a warm coal in her belly, and that she had no intention of putting it out.

The apartment was silent. The light under Raven's door flicked off. Mira lay in the dark, listening to the old building settle, and she smiled, a small, knowing thing that had no one watching it.

Friday. One year. She would begin.

The next morning, Mira woke before her alarm, the gray light of dawn filtering through her white curtains like diluted milk. She lay still for a moment, letting the plan crystallize in the quiet of her own skull. It wasn't a fantasy anymore. It was a curriculum.

She showered, dressed, and packed her bag with deliberate care. The literature seminar on Victorian poetry was at nine, but she had an hour before she needed to leave. She sat at her desk, a fresh notebook open before her, and began to write.

*Objective: Understand her fully. Learn every threshold, every limit, every soft spot.*

*Method: Observation. Patience. Incremental testing.*

She wrote in clean, careful cursive, the same handwriting she used for her essays. But the content was nothing like her essays. She listed what she knew: Raven's schedules, her moods, the way she flinched at sudden loud noises but never admitted it. Her habits, her tells. The way she bit her lip when she was nervous, the way she crossed her arms when she felt exposed. The way she deferred, always deferred, in every small decision.

Below that, Mira wrote a second list. *What she wants.* She transcribed from memory, the words of Raven's confession burned into her mind. Collar. Leash. Kneel. Used. Shamed. Good. Punished. No secrets. Belong.

She underlined *belong* twice.

Then she turned to a fresh page and wrote: *How to make someone kneel.*

It wasn't about force, she reasoned. Not at first. It was about trust, about making submission feel like safety. A dog didn't kneel because it was beaten; it kneeled because it was fed. Because it knew the hand that commanded it would also protect it. Mira tapped her pen against the paper, thinking. The hand that fed. The hand that held the leash. Same hand.

She wrote: *Stage one: Establish patterns. Small requests, always reasonable, always rewarded. Build the association between obedience and comfort.*

She thought about the tea. Raven had made it perfectly, and Mira had thanked her, and something in Raven's eyes had flickered with satisfaction. That was the mechanism. The reward didn't have to be grand. It just had to be consistent.

*Stage two: Increase the requests. Make them more intimate. More commanding. Test her limits by pushing gently, never breaking them. Learn the shape of her resistance.*

*Stage three: The collar.* Not literal yet. A metaphor. A promise. The moment Raven understood that she wanted this, that she'd wanted it long before Mira found her list. The moment she accepted that Mira was the one who would provide it.

Mira closed the notebook and slid it into her bag. In the bathroom, she studied her reflection. Same hazel eyes, same chestnut hair pulled back in a practical ponytail. She looked like the same girl who called her parents every Sunday, who folded her towels, who volunteered to take minutes at department meetings.

But something had shifted behind her eyes. A stillness. A certainty.

The seminar was on Christina Rossetti, and Mira sat through it in a pleasant fog, her pen moving across the page in automatic notes while her mind circled like a hawk. *Goblin Market*, she wrote, *the sisters' temptation, the fruit that cannot be resisted.* She underlined it once. Then again.

After class, she didn't go to the library. She went to the campus bookstore, a narrow, dusty shop tucked between the student union and the theater building. She browsed the shelves with the careful, unhurried attention of a scholar, her finger trailing over spines until it stopped.

*The Ethical Slut.* No.

*SM 101: A Realistic Introduction.* She pulled it from the shelf, flipping through the pages. Diagrams, negotiation checklists, safety protocols. Useful, but too clinical. Too sanitized. She wanted the raw material.

She found what she was looking for in a battered paperback, its cover worn to a faded watercolor of a collar and a chain: *Female Domination: A Practical Guide for the Modern Mistress.* Mira paid for it in cash, tucking it between her textbooks like contraband.

Back in her room, she read it cover to cover in one sitting. She took notes in the same neat cursive, filling pages with underlined passages and marginal annotations. The book was dated in places, full of references to an older, more theatrical era of kink, but the core principles rang true. Communication. Consent. Trust. The architecture of power exchange.

But there was something else, something the book didn't quite articulate, that Mira understood in her bones. The most powerful tool in a dominant's arsenal wasn't the whip or the cuff. It was the illusion of choice. The gift of a "no" that was always secretly a "yes." The art of making the other person believe they were surrendering, when in truth they were being led, step by careful step, to the exact place their deepest hunger craved.

Mira closed the book and set it in her nightstand drawer, on top of the list. The two objects sat together like a promise and its fulfillment.

She began her experiments that very evening.

Small things. Harmless, deniable. She left her empty water glass on the coffee table, and when Raven passed it on her way to the kitchen, Mira said, "Oh, could you grab that for me? I'm comfortable." Raven rolled her eyes but complied, and Mira made sure to smile up at her, warm and grateful. "Thanks, you're the best."

Another night: "Hey, I can't find my sweater. Could you check the dryer?" It was in her room, but Raven didn't need to know that. Raven went, found it, brought it back. Mira rewarded her with a touch on the arm, light and lingering, and said, "I don't know what I'd do without you."

She catalogued Raven's reactions like a scientist recording data. The way her shoulders relaxed when Mira voiced approval. The way her chin dipped just slightly, a submissive offer of throat. The way she seemed to brighten, almost imperceptibly, when Mira gave her a task. As if being asked for something was a kind of permission to exist.

The book had called it "service submissiveness," and Mira had written the phrase in her notes with a small, satisfied heart beneath it.

Thursday evening. One day before Friday. The rain had set in, a steady gray drizzle that streaked the windows and softened the sounds of the street. Mira found Raven in the living room, curled on the couch with a sketchbook, a black cat (the real one, not the taxidermy in her room) draped across her lap.

"Hey," Mira said, settling into the armchair across from her. She took her book from the coffee table, a battered copy of *Wuthering Heights* she'd been pretending to read for weeks. "Dinner tonight? I was thinking pasta."

"Sure." Raven didn't look up. "Whatever you want."

"No, I'm asking you. Pasta or something else?"

Raven's pencil paused. She looked up, dark eyes unreadable. "Pasta's fine."

"Good." Mira smiled, letting the word sit in the air. *Good.* She watched the flicker move across Raven's face, a tiny, receptive thing, and filed it away with the rest of her data.

The rain continued. The cat purred. Mira read a page of *Wuthering Heights* without seeing a word, her attention fixed on the woman across from her, on the curve of her neck as she bent over her sketchbook, on the way her fingers moved across the paper with the same precision she brought to everything.

Raven was drawing something. Mira couldn't see what. She watched the concentration on Raven's face, the slight purse of her lips, the way her brow furrowed when a line didn't go where she wanted it. She was beautiful like this, softened by focus, the armor of her usual dismissiveness laid aside.

"What are you working on?" Mira asked.

Raven's hand stilled. "Nothing."

"Can I see?"

A pause. Then Raven turned the sketchbook around, and Mira's breath caught in her throat. It was a simple drawing, charcoal on cream paper: a woman's hands, bound together with a single strand of rope, the lines of the bonds rendered with obsessive care. The hands were rendered with impossible detail, every knuckle and tendon and fold of skin. They hung suspended in the center of the page, not struggling, just waiting.

Mira's heart kicked against her ribs. Her voice came out even, controlled. "That's beautiful."

"Just a study," Raven said, but her eyes were fixed on Mira's face, searching.

"Of what?"

Raven shrugged, but the movement was tight, guarded. "Hands. Restraint. I don't know. I'm experimenting."

"Experimenting." Mira let the word settle, let the silence stretch until it became a question. She looked at the drawing, then at Raven, and she let her gaze linger just long enough to communicate something she wasn't ready to say aloud. "It's good. You should experiment more."

The cat stirred on Raven's lap, and Raven looked down, breaking the contact. Mira watched the blush creep up her neck, barely visible in the lamplight. She tucked it away with the rest of her notes, a precious morsel.

Tomorrow, she would begin in earnest.