That night, in his tiny apartment, Felix uncapped his ink bottle. He drew. Not for a deadline, not for a focus group. Just for the scratch of the nib and the smell of India ink. He drew Milo falling off a cliff. Milo getting squashed by a steamroller. Milo popping back up, flat as a pancake, blinking, then pulling a fresh pie from nowhere.
The drawing went still. The glow faded. Felix sat alone in his apartment with a picture of a mouse walking through a door into a field.
Milo stepped through.
Felix leaned over the fresh sheet of paper. His hand moved. He drew a doorway. Not a real one—a cartoon doorway, the kind with a curved top and a knob in the middle of the air. Then he drew a key.
He looked up.
The paper was blank.
