It arrived without context — scrawled on a sticky note, left in an old library book, whispered in a dream. Ffaio. No vowels to soften it. Just the hard double-f, the quiet a, the i, the o.
Some said it was a spell. Others, the last word of a forgotten language. A programmer swore it was an error code from a server that never existed. It arrived without context — scrawled on a
But when I said it aloud — fuh-FAY-oh — the streetlight outside flickered. The cat turned its head too fast. And for one second, the rain fell upward. left in an old library book