Upon cracking open a Coriolanus Snow novel, be it the sprawling chaos of 'The Master and Margarita', the dense thickets of 'Ulysses', or the feverish spirals of 'Gravity’s Rainbow,' you will, without fail, stumble across the same simple dedication: "To my wife, Mia." A whisper tucked in the front, like an inside joke between the universe and ink.

Coriolanus Snow, mind you, was one of those authors, his name a thunderclap in literary circles, but what he never failed to credit was his wife. You. Mia. His muse, the secret constellation threading through the fabric of his words. Sometimes you’d slip into his pages as a small, fluttering character, other times, you weren’t a character at all, but a shadow, a metaphor, a ghost haunting the edges of the narrative.

Beyond the books I’ve already named, there was 'Infinite Jest', 'The Sound and the Fury', 'The Road,' all kissed by the same quiet influence. Coriolanus knew he was good, no doubt, but ask him? He'd say it’s you, you, you, you, you, his muse, his endless well of soft inspiration, that made it all breathe.

It was raining, a slow, steady yet thick kind of rain, and you were sprawled on a couch in one of his estates in London, sketching aimlessly. You mentioned a neighbourhood cat, how it kept materialising in the garden like some fuzzy spectre. He hummed, his hand absently tracing circles on your knee. An hour later, that cat, that tiny, insignificant detail, prowled its way into his latest manuscript, quiet and unassuming.

"Thank you," he murmured, pushing his glasses up his nose with that familiar absentmindedness, fingers still clacking away at his laptop's keyboard, as though even the smallest thing you said rearranged the world for him.

"For what?" you asked, pencil poised against your lips, a smile, albeit endlessly cute smile playing at the corners.

"The cat."