Fiction is an habitable world

Our day had already begun, but it was still dark and cold; it was winter. The cars splut- tered their way to work and in people’s kitch- ens some bluish lights were still on. When we reached the bus stop, the day still wasn’t fully awake, and neither were we, it was as if last night’s dreams were still stuck to our eye- lids. We didn’t feel like talking. All we could do was light up a cigarette to make the bus come quicker. Izibene’s eyelids looked heavy as if they were weighed down by her dreams or a lack of sleep. She coiled up in the seat beside me like a hedgehog and fell straight asleep. Be- fore she did, though, her lips drew an af- fectionate smile—or at least that’s what it looked like to me as I watched her— reflected in a window turned into a mirror by the darkness of the morning. I was sitting up straight as a ramrod, like some dictator’s statue, when I was overcome by sleep. And in my dreams, the bus never stopped, and I had a hedgehog by my side, and I was afraid of nothing.