The morning was bright, the kind of summer light that made the air feel like it was buzzing. Samuel decided to take the long way to the grocery store,anything to avoid sitting at his desk staring at another stubborn page.
Halfway down Willow Street, something caught his eye on the sidewalk.
It was small. Bronze colored.
He bent down and picked it up.
It was a .44 caliber bullet casing, weathered, but still warm in his palm.
He turned it over a few times, trying to place the memory. It looked just like the casings he'd described in his last chapter the ones Xirathul left behind in the saloon shootout.
Samuel frowned.
"Hunters use these sometimes," he muttered, as if that explained it. "Probably dropped by one of those guys who go target shooting upstate."
He slipped it into his pocket without thinking.
At the store, he tossed vegetables, eggs, and coffee into his basket, doing his best to forget about it.
But in the checkout line, the cashier a young man with tired eyes looked down at the counter and froze.
"Uh… sir, you dropped this," the cashier said, holding out the bullet casing.
Samuel blinked. He could've sworn it was still in his pocket.
"Oh. Yeah. That's mine," he said, taking it back quickly. "Just… something I found."
The cashier just stared for a second too long before scanning the rest of his groceries.
That night, Samuel sat at his desk, rolling the casing between his fingers.
He didn't even remember writing about it. The scene had just sort of… happened, the way some parts of the story did.
And now it was here, in the real world.
He let out a short, humorless laugh.
"God, if this is your idea of a joke, you're weird," he said aloud.
Outside, the street was quiet. But somewhere in the distance, just barely audible, a single gunshot echoed before fading into the summer night.
Samuel froze, listening.
And then, slowly, picked up his pen.