Day nine.
He woke up and knew.
Not dramatically.
Not with the specific urgency that people described in the registry pamphlets — the ones written by people who had clearly never experienced a heat cycle and were working from clinical notes that were themselves written by people who had never experienced one.
Just the quiet certainty of a body telling you what time it is.
The way your body told you it was morning before you opened your eyes.
The way your body told you a storm was coming from the quality of the light.
Just: knowing.
He lay still for a moment.
He did a check — the kind that had become habitual over years of managing the cycles with suppressants. The specific internal inventory of where the body was and how much time was left.
A few hours.
Maybe more.
Still manageable.
He got up.
He showered.
He stood under the water for longer than necessary and felt the warmth of it and thought: this is the last ordinary morning for a few days.
Not with dread.
