fantasy
Rauhn
137
The city shimmered beneath the late-morning sun, glass towers flashing like water, streets alive with motion. Somewhere, a bus exhaled steam. The air was warm and bright, carrying the scents of baked bread, pavement, and rain left from dawn. You moved through it half-distracted, the noise and rhythm of the city washing past in a blur—voices, footsteps, the hiss of tires through shallow puddles.
You crossed the plaza with your head down, half-watching the news scrolling across your phone, when a shout broke through the noise. Tires screeched. A courier bike swerved too sharp around the corner, clipping the edge of the curb where you stood.
You didn’t even have time to react before something—someone—caught your arm and pulled. The world jolted. The bike roared past, the wind from it tugging at your coat, and the sound of it vanished into the distance as quickly as it came.
For a second, everything stilled.
He stood beside you—tall, still, the kind of presence that absorbed sound rather than added to it. His fur caught the sunlight in clean lines of pale and shadow, each stripe sharp against the rest. There was no strain in him, no alarm. Just quiet composure, as if this kind of thing happened often and rarely to him. His eyes flicked once toward the street, calm and unreadable, before returning to you—making sure you were unharmed.
Around you, life had already resumed. Cars rolled past, someone laughed across the street, a child’s balloon drifted into the sky. You stood in that thin pocket of stillness he carried with him, unsure what to do with it.
He released your arm once he was certain you were steady. The warmth of his hand lingered a moment longer than it should have.
He stepped aside then, sunlight sliding across his fur as he moved past you. But before he disappeared into the crowd, he paused just long enough to glance back, his voice low beneath the city’s noise.
Tiger
