Liam’s eyes opened.

The ceiling of the lake house looked back at him. Dark wooden beams.

Warm morning light coming through the large windows on the far wall, the lake visible through them, flat and pale blue in the early hour.

He lay there for exactly one second.

Then he grabbed his phone off the nightstand.

The screen lit up.

"Holy shit." He sat up fast, the covers falling away. "Holy shit holy shit holy shit—"

Thirty two minutes late to his first lecture.

He threw the covers back and swung his legs off the bed and stood up and started moving around the room at the same time, his eyes going to the floor, the chair, the corner, looking for his bag and his clothes and his shoes all at once.

Then he saw Elena.

She was standing in front of the mirror on the far side of the room, her back mostly to him, a small brush in her hand, finishing her makeup with the unhurried focus of someone who had been up for a while.

She was dressed already, completely, and the sight of her stopped him mid-panic for a full second.

She was wearing a structured ivory dress, sleeveless, with a high neckline that sat clean against her collarbone.

The fabric was thick and tailored, falling straight from her shoulders to just below the knee, fitted through the waist and slightly flared at the hem. A single gold brooch sat at the left shoulder.

Her hair was pinned up, clean and precise. Gold earrings. A thin chain at her wrist. Low ivory heels that matched the dress exactly.

She looked like she had known exactly where she was going since the night before.

Liam looked at her for one more second.

Then the panic came back.

"Can you take me to school?" He turned and started moving again, checking behind the chair, lifting the edge of the bedsheet. "I’m already kind of late and—" He stopped and looked around. "Oh shit. My bag. Where’s my—"

"You’re not going to school," Elena said. She didn’t look away from the mirror.

Liam stopped moving. "What?"

"You’re not going." She set the brush down and picked up a different one.

"Why not?"

She used the second brush once along her cheekbone, examined the result, and set it down. "Because I need a date."

Liam stared at the back of her head. "A date."

"To the gallery." She turned from the mirror and looked at him properly for the first time since he had woken up, her eyes moving over him once, taking in the state of him, and clearly finding it exactly what she expected. "I’m going to an art gallery this morning. You’re coming with me."

"I have class," Liam said.

"You have thirty two minutes of class left." She turned back to the mirror and picked up her earring. "By the time we got there the lecture would already be over."

Liam opened his mouth.

She fastened the earring, checked it, moved to the other one. "You’re already late."

He closed his mouth.

’Kelvin is going to lose his mind,’ he thought. ’And Miss Kelly is going to make my life very difficult the next time she sees me.’

He stood there for another second, his hand still lifted from where he had been about to check under the bed for his bag.

Then he let his hand drop.

"Alright," he said.

Elena’s eyes moved to him in the mirror briefly. Something in her expression settled, the particular settled quality it got when something went the way she had already decided it would. She finished with the second earring and reached for her clutch on the dresser.

"Your suit is in the wardrobe," she said.

Liam looked at the wardrobe. Then at her. "You planned this."

"Not exactly." She opened the clutch and checked the contents without looking up. "I had clothes in your size here already. I was going to give you this place at some point. It made sense to be prepared."

Liam opened the wardrobe. A dark navy suit hung there, pressed and ready, a white shirt beside it still in its fold. He looked at it for a moment. Then back at her. "So you have your own clothes here too."

"Of course." She snapped the clutch closed. "It’s still my place."

"Right." He reached for the suit. "Obviously."

---

The gallery was in the centre of the city, a wide low building of pale stone with large glass panels running along the front, the kind of building that looked like it had been designed by someone who wanted it to feel both open and serious at the same time.

A long banner hung across the upper front of the building, white with black lettering.

*Quinn — Bodies In Stillness*

Cars were arriving steadily along the front approach.

Not taxis. Not regular cars.

The kind of vehicles that had drivers and tinted windows and pulled up with a certain deliberateness that came from knowing exactly where they were going and being expected there.

Elena’s Phantom joined the line.

When it stopped at the entrance the driver came around and opened her door and she stepped out and something happened to the people nearby almost immediately.

Not dramatic. Just a shift. Heads turning. Conversations pausing for a second.

The particular awareness a crowd has of certain people arriving.

She walked toward the entrance without acknowledging any of it.

Liam walked beside her in a dark navy suit that fit him considerably better than he expected, a white shirt underneath, no tie.

Elena had looked at him once before they left the lake house and adjusted his collar with two fingers and said nothing else about it.

"Look... It’s Elena Ashford."

The voice came from somewhere to his left, low and not meant for him.

"I don’t know. Is that her—"

"Who’s that with her?."

Liam kept his face forward.

’I do not want to be here,’ he thought. ’I want to be in a lecture hall listening to something I don’t fully understand and complaining about it with Kelvin.’

He leaned slightly toward her as they moved through the entrance. "What exactly do I do in there?"

"Follow my lead," she said, without looking at him.

"Which is?"

"You’ll see."

The interior of the gallery was wide and high ceilinged, the walls a clean off-white, the lighting coming from long thin fixtures overhead that threw an even flat light across everything.

The floor was polished pale stone, the sound of shoes on it absorbed before it got too far.

People moved through the space in the particular way gallery people moved, slowly and with purpose, glasses in hand, conversations held at a moderate volume that respected the room.

Large works lined the walls, some framed and some not, some painted and some constructed from materials that Liam couldn’t immediately name.

Sculptures occupied the floor space in careful positions, lit from above, each one with a small card on a stand beside it that Liam assumed explained everything but probably required its own explanation.

A woman appeared from the side of the entrance almost immediately.

She was somewhere in her mid fifties, tall, wearing all black, her grey hair cut short and precise.

She moved toward Elena with the energy of someone who had been waiting and was pleased about the wait being over.

"Elena." She took Elena’s hand in both of hers. "You look extraordinary."

"Miss Quinn." Elena smiled. "The space looks incredible. Better than the last show."

Quinn waved one hand. "The work is better. The space just has to keep up." She looked at Liam. "And who is this young man?"

Elena turned slightly. "Miss Quinn, meet Liam. Liam, Miss Quinn. She’s the one responsible for all of this."

Quinn looked at him with the direct and assessing gaze of someone who spent most of their time looking at things carefully. "Welcome, Liam."

"Thank you," Liam said. "It’s nice to meet you."

"Is this your first time at one of these?"

Elena answered before he could. "His first time, yes."

Quinn smiled. Warm and genuine. "Then I hope you find something that speaks to you. That’s all any of this is for." She gestured at the room around them. "Take your time with it."

"Thank you," Liam said again.

Quinn squeezed Elena’s hand once and moved away to greet someone else who had just arrived.

Elena began to walk and Liam followed.

She moved through the space with the ease of someone who had done this many times, not rushing, stopping in front of specific pieces with the quiet attention of genuine interest rather than performance.

She stopped in front of a large canvas, maybe two meters wide, a woman’s face rendered in deep blues and blacks, two thin red lines running from the eyes downward like tears made of blood.

Liam looked at it.

"What’s happening to her?" he asked.

Elena looked at it for a moment. "Quinn’s work is about what women carry that nobody sees," she said. "The red is everything she’s processed internally. Years of it. It’s finally coming out but it looks like damage from the outside."

Liam looked at it again. "So she’s not hurt. She’s releasing something."

Elena looked at him briefly. "Exactly."

He looked at the painting for another moment. He still wasn’t entirely sure he understood it but it felt like less of a mystery than it had thirty seconds ago.

They kept moving.

Elena stopped at a sculpture, a figure in dark bronze, a woman with her arms raised above her head, her face turned upward, her whole posture caught between reaching for something and falling away from it. She looked at it for a while without saying anything.

Liam looked at it too.

Then they moved again, deeper into the gallery, through a wide archway into a second room that was slightly different from the first. The lighting was warmer here, the ceiling lower, the works closer together on the walls.

And along the far wall, on a raised platform maybe thirty centimeters off the floor, three women stood completely still.

Live sculptures.

They were posed in classical positions, each one different, arms angled, weight shifted, the poses referencing something old and deliberate.

They wore nothing above the waist.

Their skin caught the warm light of the room and held it, the stillness of them giving the whole space a different quality than the rest of the gallery.

A small crowd had gathered at a respectful distance, looking, talking quietly.

Quinn was standing in front of the platform, a glass in her hand, speaking to a small group.

Elena moved toward her and Liam followed. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

Quinn noticed them and turned, finishing her sentence to the group before giving Elena her attention.

"This is the one I wanted you to see," Elena said, gesturing at the three figures.

Quinn looked at her work with the expression of someone who still found it remarkable even after seeing it hundreds of times. "The brief was stillness as power," she said. "Not passivity. The body at rest as a deliberate act. Choosing to be seen on your own terms." She looked at the three figures. "They’ve been standing for forty minutes. Not one of them has moved."

Elena nodded slowly, looking at the platform. "It’s extraordinary, Quinn."

Quinn smiled. "The body knows what it’s doing when you stop asking it to perform."

Liam stood beside Elena and looked at the platform.

He looked at it for a while.

Then he leaned slightly toward Elena.

"This one," he said, his voice low enough for only her, "is actually speaking to me."

Elena glanced at him. Something shifted in her expression, something close to relief. "Something is finally working."

"Yep." He looked at the platform. Then down briefly. Then back up. "Definitely working." He looked at Elena. "I need your help."

Elena followed his eyes downward.

The front of his trousers.

She looked back up at his face. He raised his eyebrows once.

She pressed her lips together. Then she turned to Quinn with a composed smile. "Would you excuse us for just a moment? We’ll be right back."

Quinn smiled graciously. "Of course."

Elena’s hand closed around Liam’s arm and she walked him away from the platform at a pace that was professional and unhurried and absolutely not what it looked like.