Literature
Bemusement
They don’t remember when his name started showing up in the margins.
Just that, one day, people began noticing little horned shapes hidden in the curls of old illustrations, or a narrow, tired face surfacing between the flourishes on a page border. It was never the main subject—always a side-note, a doodle, a stray line that, once seen, refused to be un-seen.
Someone started calling him Bemusement.
The name stuck to him the way dust sticks to books.
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He isn’t a demon of laughter. That would be easier.
Laughter explodes and then it’s over. This is slower. Quieter. That little hollow pause when you almost understand something and then it slips away; the half-smile at a pattern that looks like it’s about to make sense and then politely refuses. That feeling has a shape now, apparently.
Sometimes he’s drawn with arms crossed, spirals crawling over his skin like thoughts that never finished. Sometimes he’s shown stepping out of the background, one long hand reaching forward as if