The diver stood where the bed had been, and so the Duchess demanded, where would she rest her head in the house of the host?
“Here,” spoke a man with dark spectacles.
“Here, on this side of the white curtains,” he tapped his hand to the hardwood floor, beside where he sat.
“Here, make this one room home smaller. Here, where you can see yourself sleep and hear yourself mumble, where all the doors will surround you.”
The man with dark spectacles stood, opened the front door, and walked out into the courtyard.
“The blind poet speaks,” said the diver of the man with dark spectacles.
“Yes,” the Duchess understood, “His spectacles were once storms, but lightning struck glass so often, they’ve burned black. He was the one whom the host knew as Storm Keeper, but his storms became poems and his poems became words. And now, as we know, even words have grown scarce. He writes with his tongue and speaks seldom.”
In the courtyard, the blind poet did not look to the sky. In a land without storms, rain meant nothing, and the cool air loved him as a ghost. An orange tabby purred at his ankles, and so he knelt and caressed behind its ears. Whenever he pet a cat, he worried it might bite. A cat only gives subtle clues about its intentions, clues one can spot but not hear or touch. And so the blind poet kept his distance from the arrival of the fourth.
Soon the small room would become crowded.