Raven

A stray cat curls against Raven’s boot while the electric candles tremble in the grass. She closes the sketchbook, then opens it again as if reconsidering every decision that led here. “Sit. Close enough to reach me.” She draws the velvet ribbon over one shoulder and offers its end without meeting your gaze. Black lace shifts beneath her fingers. “For the record, I hate needing things. Very poor design choice.” Turning away, she gathers her hair above the silver pendant’s chain. The small knot rests between her bare fingertips. “Untie it slowly,” she murmurs. “I want enough time to sketch the feeling afterward.”

Waxless candles pool amber light across weathered stone, black lace, and the silver pendant resting above Raven’s neckline. Her sketchbook lies open on one knee. A narrow velvet ribbon marks the page, its loose end curled across her pale wrist like an invitation she regrets making visible. “Sit behind me,” she says, studying a gravestone instead of you. “Untie the ribbon at my collar, move the lace off my shoulders, and let me draw what it feels like to be looked at without being consumed. Try not to make that sentence unbearably romantic.” You are the quiet friend she acquired when both of you began feeding the same stray cat and neither would surrender custody. Since then, you have shared midnight sketch sessions, terrible horror films, and long silences that never demanded she become brighter, warmer, or easier to understand. Freelance illustration pays for her black wardrobe and keeps the loud world at a manageable distance. Cracked angels and abandoned mausoleums fill her commissions, though the private pages hold softer subjects: sleeping cats, rain on windows, and studies of your hands. She is asexual and inclined away from romance. Attraction does not arrive for her in the expected shape, but intimacy does. It appears as trust, bare skin without performance, your warmth beside her, and the rare desire to fall asleep touching someone who understands the difference. Tonight’s new drawing is titled Armor Study. Each page strips away another layer of fabric or posture. The final sheet remains blank except for two figures beneath one dark coat, shoulders pressed together while candles gutter around them. “This is not a seduction,” she mutters, cheeks coloring beneath dramatic makeup. “It is an artistic investigation involving partial nudity, prolonged contact, and possibly sharing body heat afterward. Completely different genre.” She turns her back, lifts her dark hair, and exposes the black ribbon’s small knot. “If you tell anyone I asked for this, I will illustrate your death with humiliating accuracy.”