Run: 2026-07-01-01KWE9QFW1GW3TBM0X9SEEAN9Z

Rain streaked the window of The Raven's Nest, turning the green neon sign outside into a smear of watercolour. Rory wiped down the bar top with the same rag she'd used for the last hour, more out of habit than necessity. Silas was in the back, doing whatever Silas did when he disappeared behind that bookshelf, and the place had settled into the hush that came after the after-work crowd cleared out and before the night crowd arrived. The door opened. Rory didn't look up right away—just registered the bell, the gust of wet air, the shuffle of boots on the mat. "Bloody hell, it is you." She looked up. A woman stood there dripping, dark curls flattened to her forehead, an old denim jacket soaked through at the shoulders. It took Rory a second—the face had thinned out, the eyes had gone tired in a way that hadn't been there before—but then it clicked. "Meg?" "Don't sound so surprised, I know I look like death's cousin." Rory came round the bar, and they hugged, awkward at first, then not. Meg smelled like cigarettes and rain and something chemical underneath, like hospital soap that hadn't quite washed out. "What are you doing in London? Last I heard you were still in Cardiff, doing the—" Rory stopped herself, not sure where the sentence was going. "The teaching thing. Yeah. That didn't last." Meg peeled off her jacket and draped it over a stool, then sat before Rory could offer. Up close, the changes were harder to ignore. She'd always been the loud one, the one who talked with her hands and laughed too hard at her own jokes, cheeks always a little flushed like she'd just run somewhere. Now her hands sat still on the bar top. Her jaw had a tightness to it, like she was holding something behind her teeth. "You look good," Meg said, and there was no bitterness in it, just a flat observation. "London's done you well." "It's done something to me, anyway." Rory reached for a glass. "What'll you have?" "Whatever's cheap." Rory poured a whisky, more than she should have for a first drink, and set it down without being asked. "On the house. Least I can do for six years." "Seven, actually." Meg took a sip, winced. "Since your going-away thing. The one at the Owain Glyndŵr, remember, where Ffion fell off the bar trying to do that toast?" "I remember thinking I'd never laugh that hard again." "Have you?" Rory considered it. "Sometimes. Different kind of laughing, though." Meg turned the glass in slow circles on the wood, watching the amber catch the light from the bulb overhead. "You look like you've got your life sorted. Nice bar, nice city. Still doing the law thing?" "God, no." Rory almost laughed. "I deliver Chinese food part-time. Long story." "That's not what your mam told my mam." "My mam tells your mam a lot of things that aren't strictly accurate." Meg's mouth twitched, something like the old smile trying to surface and not quite managing it. She looked down at her hands instead. "I heard about Evan," she said. "Sorry. I should've called. I always meant to call." Rory's jaw tightened, just slightly, the rag going still in her hand. "It's fine. Long time ago now." "Is it, though? Feels like yesterday to me, most days. Everything from back then does. Like it's stuck." Meg took another drink, longer this time. "Can't work out if that's better or worse than what you've done. Moving on. Making a whole new life." "It wasn't a straight line, Meg. It never is." "No. Suppose not." Meg's eyes drifted to the old maps on the wall, the black-and-white photographs of streets that didn't exist anymore, or existed differently. "You always were the clever one. Quick on your feet. I used to hate that about you, you know. Just a bit." "I didn't know that." "Course you didn't. You were too busy being clever to notice." It came out without malice, more like an old ache being pressed to see if it still hurt. It clearly did. Rory poured herself a small measure, something to do with her hands. "What happened, Meg? After the teaching." Meg's laugh had no humour in it, just breath. "Life happened. Money happened. A bloke happened, and then didn't happen anymore, and by the time I looked up I was thirty-one and living with my sister and picking up work wherever people didn't ask too many questions." She said it fast, like ripping off a plaster. "I'm not looking for pity. Just explaining the maths of how you end up somewhere you didn't plan to be." "I'm not pitying you." "You are a bit. It's in your face." Rory didn't argue. She refilled Meg's glass instead, and this one Meg didn't drink so fast. "Do you ever think about it?" Meg asked. "How we all used to talk about what we'd be. You were going to be some hotshot barrister, terrifying juries. I was going to write novels nobody read but everyone pretended to." She shook her head slowly. "Feels like we were talking about two other people." "Maybe we were," Rory said. "Maybe that's the point. You don't get to stay who you were at twenty-two." "Some people do." "No. They just get better at pretending." Meg looked at her properly then, searching her face for something, and whatever she found made her shoulders drop half an inch, some tension leaving her that Rory hadn't noticed until it was gone. "You've changed too, then. Underneath the good haircut and the London polish." "Everybody's got a Prague," Rory said, before she could stop herself, thinking of Silas, of what he never said out loud but wore in his knee and his eyes. "What?" "Nothing. Old joke. Doesn't translate." The bell over the door rang again, and a group came in shaking umbrellas, loud with the relief of getting out of the rain. Rory glanced toward them, then back to Meg, who was already gathering her damp jacket like she expected to be sent off. "You don't have to go," Rory said. "I know." Meg stood anyway, but slower than before, like she was giving Rory the chance to ask her to stay properly. "Just—habit. Never did learn how to sit still in a place that's warm." "Stay for one more. I'll close up in an hour, we can talk properly. Not this—" Rory gestured vaguely between them. "Not this stepping around everything." Meg looked at the door, then at the stool, then sat back down, slower this time, like she was allowing herself something she'd decided not to want. "One more," she said. "For old times." "For old times," Rory said, and poured.