Ffaio

Some said it was a spell. Others, the last word of a forgotten language. A programmer swore it was an error code from a server that never existed.

Ffaio. If you can clarify what you intended, I’ll gladly write a more accurate piece for you. Some said it was a spell

But when I said it aloud — fuh-FAY-oh — the streetlight outside flickered. The cat turned its head too fast. And for one second, the rain fell upward. The cat turned its head too fast

It arrived without context — scrawled on a sticky note, left in an old library book, whispered in a dream. Ffaio. No vowels to soften it. Just the hard double-f, the quiet a, the i, the o. into the right dark

Maybe some things don’t need meaning. They just need to be spoken once, into the right dark, at the right wrong time.