Bend Hearts

The mall closed at nine. At nine-oh-three, Mochi discovered that an escalator handrail was a slide with excellent manners: it brought you back for another turn. Miso inspected the arrangement, found no obvious paperwork, and joined her. Below them, a spinning toy made a perfectly ordinary checkerboard look as though it had somewhere urgent to be.

Bend Hearts grew out of that small disagreement between what things are and how they appear. Hot-pink glass, black stripes, chrome studs and a rather dramatic star gathered around the bottle. The little heart on its cord turned once and appeared to turn forever. Miso called this an optical effect. Mochi called it hers. Both statements survived inspection.

There is a comforting amount of universe in a mall after closing. The ceiling lights are distant stars, the empty fountain is a moon crater, and two cats can cross an entire galaxy without leaving the escalators. Somewhere between the last song and the ride home, even a bent heart finds another angle. The charm is called Heartskip. It has since left the bottle to investigate a reflection that seemed to be keeping something.