Mara realized it in a way that annoyed her.
She realized it because he stopped asking her questions.
They met again three weeks after Chicago fell through. No press. No urgency. Just coffee—her suggestion this time, framed as a reset.
Michael arrived early. He always did. But this time he wasn't waiting in the way she recognized.
He was… settled.
Sketchbook closed. Phone face-down. Posture loose, alert. Present without performing presence.
It unsettled her.
"You look better," she said, sitting down.
"Thanks," Michael replied. "I feel clearer."
That was worse.
They talked about small things at first. Music. A show he'd been rewatching. A park he'd started going to at night because the lighting felt honest.
Mara listened, nodding, cataloging.
Something was missing.
Finally, she leaned forward. "So. Where are you at with everything?"
Michael took a moment before answering—not searching for words, just choosing them.
"I'm still drawing," he said. "Still posting. Still not explaining."
"That wasn't the question."
"I know."
She waited.
"I'm not resisting anymore," he continued. "I'm just… not stepping where it feels wrong."
Mara's brow furrowed. "Those are the same thing."
"They aren't," Michael said gently.
Gently.
That was new.
Mara tried a different angle.
"You know the nonprofit retracted the campaign," she said. "They're worried about misalignment."
Michael nodded. "I figured."
"No reaction?"
He shrugged. "That's their choice."
"And if more follow?"
"Then more follow."
She stared at him.
"You're talking like someone who's already accepted loss."
"No," Michael replied. "I'm talking like someone who doesn't feel owned by it."
That landed hard.
Mara leaned back, studying him openly now.
"Something changed," she said.
Michael didn't deny it.
"You used to argue with me," she continued. "Push back. Try to find common ground."
"I still value what you do," he said. "I just don't need it the way I did."
There it was.
Not rejection.
Irrelevance.
Mara felt a flicker of something sharp and unwelcome.
Fear.
She tried to regain footing.
"Michael, you're drifting into abstraction," she warned. "People will project whatever they want onto you."
"I know."
"And you're okay with that?"
"No," he said. "But I'm okay with not correcting them."
"That's irresponsible."
He smiled faintly. "You used to tell me ambiguity was power."
"Yes," she snapped. "When it's directed."
Michael met her gaze calmly. "I don't want to direct people."
"Then what do you want?"
He hesitated.
Not because he didn't know.
But because the answer didn't fit language yet.
"I want to hold space without collapsing it," he said finally.
Mara exhaled sharply. "That's not a strategy."
"No," Michael agreed. "It's a practice."
She stood abruptly, pacing once before turning back to him.
"You're changing," she said. "And not in a way I can manage."
Michael blinked. "Manage?"
She caught herself.
Corrected.
"Guide," she said. "Frame."
"I know."
The air between them felt heavier now—not hostile, but strained.
Mara crossed her arms. "Do you know what happens to people who refuse framing?"
"They get misunderstood."
"They get isolated."
"They get mythologized," she said. "And then they get used."
Michael nodded slowly. "That's already happening."
"And you're just… letting it?"
"I'm watching," he said. "Learning where the pressure comes from."
Mara stared at him.
This wasn't defiance.
It was orientation.
That night, alone in her apartment, Mara replayed the conversation.
Michael hadn't been arrogant.
He hadn't been naïve.
He hadn't even been stubborn.
And that scared her more than anything else.
Because people like her thrived in uncertainty.
People like Michael were learning to stand in it.
She opened her laptop and pulled up his latest post.
A new sketch.
No figures. No symbols she could easily translate.
Just a vast, curved space—like the inside of a bowl—holding countless small marks, each pressing outward, each restrained not by walls, but by the shape of the whole.
Comments flooded beneath it.
People arguing. Reflecting. Projecting.
Mara closed the screen.
For the first time since she'd met him, she wondered—not what she could do with Michael—
—but what he might become without her.
And whether that future had room for her at all.
Somewhere, far beyond her awareness, Varaek felt the adjustment complete.
Michael was no longer seeking guidance.
He was beginning to generate gravity.
And those who had learned to orbit would soon have to choose:
Adapt.
Or fall away