This morning Daniel and I were standing in his kitchen, enjoying an early coffee, which we’ve done at least four times a week  for the last two years. At least. And this morning we got a bit of a shock.

Let me explain: Our apartment building is a comfy collection of people who like each other – we’ve engineered it that way, much to the delight of our landlord. There’s a common space in the basement where folks who live here and the people we love tend to hang out a lot – there’s a fairly regular Friday night poker game/board game* marathon that happens, I have a Monday night writing group there, Skipper’s down there all the time to hang out and use the wi-fi, Daniel has Thursday night after-club martinis with the Ladies there, Lynnie brings her laundry and her paints, and we all have projects that get done on the big table. In addition to the basement being common space, when we’re home and awake, none of us really closes the inner door to our apartments unless it’s super cold out. Which is to say, there’s a fair amount of wandering between apartments that happens.

Which is to say, we all know each other’s apartments pretty well. Daniel knows all the names of my plants and cats, I know every addition to his depression glass collection at a glance. We know where every piece of plumbing starts and ends** in all the apartments, and just how to track between units, the path of a squirrel that has managed its way into the walls.

So when we looked up this morning and noticed a giant hole in the ceiling of his entryway, we were both stupified. It’s a hole, about a foot and a half wide, and about ten inches long. In the ceiling. That we’ve never seen before. How could we have just not noticed it for, I dunno, years?? I wish I could tell you if it looks new or not, but really, I’m not well versed in aging holes in the ceiling.

I’m inclined to believe, with all the activity among the Tuatha around here, that our wee folk may be engaged something architectural. It really doesn’t look like a squirrel hole*** – it’s far too regular, and there don’t appear to be bite marks or squirrel poops around.  Daniel, of course, does not think it’s faeries, but is of the theory that a stealthy raccoon with a handsaw made the hole. I will ask Will to look at it later, and he will surely have a theory involving the space-time continuum, and how we just noticed because one of us will eventually go back in time to fix a pipe or something.

But the most important thing you need to know about the Mystery Hole is this: there were a few shreds of purple thread among the splinters.

***

*Risk seems to be the current flavor of the day.
**Some things suffer wear and tear over time. This building is over a hundred years old, you know.
***For the record, we only had one squirrel-in-the-walls incident. And a bat in the attic. Ok, two bats. In three years. It’s been quite a while since we’ve had wildlife in the walls.