The Red Corner
A tiny red corner beneath a bench. No name. No address. Just the feeling that Floki had seen it before.
Floki noticed it before anyone else did.
A tiny red corner, caught beneath the edge of a wooden bench. It might have been nothing more than a scrap of paper, left behind by the wind or forgotten by someone passing through.
Floki stopped anyway.
He lowered his head, sniffed once, then twice. The paper smelled faintly of dust, warm wood and something he could not place. Not food. Not rain. Not anything familiar.
He pulled it free with one careful paw.
There was no picture. No name. No address. Just a few red lines and the beginning of a sentence, cut off before it made sense.
Floki stared at it longer than necessary.
Most things in his world were simple. A path led somewhere. A sound had a source. A smell belonged to something. This did not.
A breeze moved through the trees and lifted the little red corner against his paw. For a moment, Floki had the strange feeling that he had seen it before. But that was impossible. Wasn't it?
He left the scrap where he found it and continued home. Still, that evening, he looked back at the doorway twice.
Much later, when the first real red postcard appeared in Taormina, Floki remembered the corner immediately.
Some mysteries begin before you know they have started.