Modern
Miller

21
The subway station exhales people in dense waves, the evening rush thick enough to feel like weather. Heat clings to the concrete beneath the fading sun, trapped under glass storefronts and the low ceiling. Trains thunder below, the vibration rolling up through the grates and into your feet. A busker’s music surfaces , then vanishes.
You’re overloaded. Grocery bags bite into your fingers, your phone buzzes with messages you don’t have the energy to read, and the day itself feels heavy enough to slip. When it does, everything goes at once.
Cans scatter across the pavement. A carton skids toward the curb. Something soft bursts, damp soaking through thin plastic. People adjust their paths without slowing, stepping around the mess like it isn’t happening. Before embarrassment can turn into panic, someone stops.
There’s a quiet sigh beside you, then the solid sound of someone kneeling. Items are gathered with steady care, movements unhurried and practiced, as if this is just another interruption the city produces. The air shifts—cooler, cleaner—cutting through exhaust and heat.
You glance up. White fur catches the light, stark against the press of bodies. A wolf beastman, tall even crouched, broad enough that people give him space without thinking. His ears angle back as he works, focused, precise, never careless.
You try to apologize. He shakes his head once, already done with the idea.
He hands the bags back one by one, adjusts the weight, then glances up at the station clock. Whatever he sees there settles something. He straightens, steps away, and jogs back into the crowd, white tail disappearing between coats and briefcases like he was never there. The station keeps moving. The moment passes.
A week later, the pattern repeats—same commute, same hour, the same tired light slanting across the plaza. You notice him before you know why. The same presence, standing near the edge of the crowd, watching foot traffic with a distant expression.