New

“You asked for new, not original,” Matt said. He had wrapped the same old prose around something fresh. Something different.

Finder was always looking for something new. Pressing against the edge of the old, the familiar, the past.

“This isn’t what I meant?” Finder couldn’t conceal the intrigue. Finder smiled.

“Are you sure?” Matt raised an eyebrow.

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Matt sighed, “but you’ve gotta admit. It’s not everyday that some stranger on the internet writes something for you, with you.”

Finder paused. Matt couldn’t tell what Finder was thinking. Whether any of the words he had said or written had landed.

Maybe this wasn’t new. Perhaps this wasn’t for Finder. He had certainly intended it to be.

Yet, as Matt tapped out each half-extinguished word onto his phone, the new quickly slipped away from him. Rusting, rotting, dying.

What was left was, well, nothing, except Finder. And Matt. And that little spark of connection across oceans, across people, across worlds.