Walter. His full name was Walter, but at home and with friends he was always Walt — a small, private nickname that fit the way he moved through the world: quick, soft, and a little out of step.
That morning, the house smelled of toast and laundry. The sun slipped through a thin curtain and painted a pale line across Walt's desk where his creature sketches lay scattered. He picked up a pencil out of habit, then set it down again. There was a small pebble on the window ledge he hadn't noticed before — smooth, dark, with a faint shimmer like it had caught a secret light. He touched it for half a second and felt a little jolt, like static through his fingers. It wasn't unpleasant. It was…wrong.
He told himself it was just nerves. Everyone felt strange sometimes. The world could tilt on tiny moments and then right itself. He shrugged, tucked the pebble into his pocket without thinking, and went downstairs.
Aarav was already at the table, pouring juice and talking a mile a minute about some cartoon match. Their mother hummed while she buttered bread. Walt watched them with a small smile and then, because he always did, he put his sketchbook in his bag as if carrying it would keep the drawings real.
School was the same as always in the big, sun-warmed classroom: chalk dust, the slow tick of the clock, the rustle of paper. But today the air felt different — heavier, as if the classroom itself was listening. When Miss Rao asked them to draw a tree, half the class doodled, half complained. Walt made a tree that looked less like a plant and more like a doorway. He shaded the knot of the trunk until it looked like it could be opened. Aarav glanced over and laughed. "You and your doors, Walt."
"Maybe it's a secret door," Walt said, and his voice sounded quieter than he meant. No one looked up. The bell rang, and they shuffled out into the bright, ordinary world.
On the walk home, the street seemed smaller; neighbors moved slower, as if they too felt the edges of something about to change. Walt noticed a pigeon limping near the drain and, without thinking, reached out. The pigeon looked at him with tilted, unafraid eyes, then hopped closer as if recognizing him. When he let it go, it fluttered away, leaving a single feather that glowed faintly for a second before going dull. Walt picked it up and pressed it to his palm. The skin there tingled; he wiped it on his jeans as if embarrassed.
He tried to explain none of this. He didn't want people to say he was making things up. He didn't want grown-ups to look concerned and ask questions he didn't have answers for. So he kept his pockets full of odd things and his mouth small.
At home that afternoon, he sat by the window again and watched the sky. Clouds moved past like slow boats; the air held the last warmth of an autumn sun. People laughed in the lane below. Later, when he helped his mother hang laundry, the line snapped like a violin string. For a second the sound cut through him in a way that had nothing to do with noise — more like an alarm bell in a dream. He paused, hands wet and soap-scented, and felt his breath catch.
When evening came, Aarav dragged him out to kick a battered ball. They played until the light thinned and colors turned to the dull, soft shades of twilight. Walt's movements were lighter than usual; his body seemed to remember patterns he hadn't practiced. He chased the ball, tumbled, laughed. He felt like someone else and also like himself — both comfortable and spaced out at once. A neighbor's dog barked at the end of the lane, and a streetlight flickered once, twice, then steadied.
Back in his room, Walt arranged his drawings into neat piles. The small dragon with the round eyes — the one he always sketched — sat at the top, like a bookmark. He traced its wing with his finger and felt the same tiny vibration he'd felt earlier from the pebble. It was almost like a whisper saying, not yet.
Outside, fireworks began from a nearby celebration; muffled pops and distant laughter knitted the world into a usual night. Walt lay under his blanket and listened, not sleepy but full of an odd, humming expectation. He thought of the pebble, of the feather, of the way the pigeon had trusted him. He thought of the door-tree he'd drawn at school. These small, strange things pressed against each other in his chest until they made a quiet shape: something was moving toward him, and it was not in any hurry to announce itself.
He didn't know what it was. He only knew how the day felt — wrong in the nicest possible way, like a puzzle that refused to sit still until he put the missing piece in. He pulled his knees up and whispered to the dark, "Okay. I'll wait."
Outside, in the wide evening, the world breathed on. The small town settled into the kind of silence that made even the smallest noises stand out. Walt's heartbeat slowed, and the feeling in his bones — that gentle, impossible pulse — thudded on, patient and certain. Tomorrow was his birthday, though the celebrations were days away. For now, the day clenched and loosened, and Walt lay awake, listening to the steady but strange music of a world deciding, perhaps, to change.