A Slanted Ray

I pushed back just one fold of the heavy linen curtain, my joints clicking stiffly while I waited for an alarm that never came. Morning light was cutting right past the fabric into a sharp, diagonal stripe across the painted sill! What if it cut clean through the wood? I panicked, gripping my dark multi-eyed companion against my chest with one glove, but the wood stayed completely solid. Right at the edge of the light sat an ordinary, unsharpened yellow pencil. I froze, calculated the catastrophic tumble if it rolled off, and cautiously nudged it with the toe of my boot. Clatter-roll—and click! It settled perfectly into the groove between two boards, pinning the edge of the light into a neat boundary. Nothing tilted, nothing fell.