Ivory had taken to marching around the apartment with a scowl on their face and their heaviest combat boots on their feet. She made thumping sounds as she paced back and forth around the living room and George wasn't around to complain.

On her way to the grocery store she'd stop by the bulletin board put up in the front lobby. There were some invitations to "community events" in the building (she and George never went to any) and missing pet posters.

Technically you weren't allowed to have animals in the building, but nobody cared, not even the manager. As a bi product of not caring (at all), lots of pets went missing, especially cats, and turned up somewhere in a hallway days later. Which was perfect.

The neighbors were getting both annoyed and worried for her. Every day the mail man would show up with large quantities of cat food and other pet care supplies. She'd sneeze about every few minutes, and trust me when I say her sneezes could shake a building and sounded like the death of an elephant. She'd stalk around the building as if looking for something. And then there was the constant, noisy pacing.

Those days you could see an almost desperate light in her eyes. You couldn't help but wonder what was going on when she'd tear down a missing cat poster and laugh like she got away with murder.

Some days you'd wonder if she did get away with murder.

Ms. Marvin visited Cookie (the old lesbian widow) in her apartment for tea one day. Several of Cookie's cats had gone missing including the beloved Mr. Cuddles. They went missing often, so she wasn't worried, at first. When they didn't show back up at her doorstep crying for food a few days later, she became nothing short of paranoid.

"Do you think that strange Ivory child has anything to do with it?" Ms. Marvin asked.

"Not at all darling," replied Cookie. "She's such a nice girl who would never steal cats."

And Ms. Marvin didn't argue.

And what was Ivory doing? She figured that if she made a big enough mess George would have no choice but to clean it all up. She didn't care about Dominic, she knew that if she let him get any closer to George one day they'd get married and leave her.

That was worse than making her characters straight for some publishing company.

So she walked around the apartment building looking for the missing cats. When she found them she'd take them back to her room and look after them. They all seemed much happier under her care. That explains the cat toys and the sneezing. She was severely allergic to cats, but she got them toys and food anyway. She loved them.

Although she didn't know how this would turn out, but she knew whatever the result was, it'd involve George. Home. Away from Dominic. Away from his trouble.

As for "Dreaming of Shadows", she still hadn't decided what to do about that. While she hadn't written anything close to fiction sense the incident, she wasn't avoiding it in her mind. She was constantly thinking about what the protagonist Mirra would be like if she didn't fall in love with Carolina. She thought about how Connor's past would make less sense if he was cisgender. And while she knew it wasn't bad to be straight, she knew if she changed the characters a lesbian reader would grow up thinking she was broken. A closeted trans boy would grow up unaware that his feelings were normal. These were more than characters to her, they were education.

But George was gone. And he was more real than her characters could be.

George was gone.

He'd stopped answering his texts. He hadn't come home in a week. And she was scared that Dominic did something to him.

She just sat there sometimes, paralyzed in fear. Fear that he was missing, or dead. Fear that he simply chose Dominic over her.

A week and two cats later, she called the police. They said they'd look for him. They said not to her her hopes up.

They said Dominic was probably abusive.

Fear.

She was so afraid.

And she could have done something.

And that's when George texted her.