Tonight I put on one of Shveta’s henna-painting Spacetime recordings, where she does her little niece’s hands. It’s had nearly a hundred thousand more hits since I last watched, and I can see that she has recorded several dozen new environments.

I prop up lots of pillows. I turn on the Spacetime recording and hope it will work. Shveta feels right here with me. She looks into my eyes and smiles slowly.

‘We are all artists,’ she says in her beautifully modulated low voice, with her accent that is so much nicer than any English accent from actual England. ‘We are all works of art, too.’

If anyone else said it, this would sound pretentious. Shveta is so genuine that I believe her. All of us works of art.

‘For me, art is a part of daily life,’ she says, delicately drawing ink on her niece’s wrists. ‘Does that tickle, Meeta?’

They both giggle a little. So cute. She says, ‘Sometimes it’s nice to just lose yourself in what your hands are doing. It’s like breathing. You don’t have to think about it. You don’t have to think about anything. You don’t have to try. Sometimes we are all trying so hard we forget how to just be. There. Still tickling?’

I breathe deeply. Just the sound of her voice goes into my skin like smoke or mist. The top of my head begins to tingle as if it’s covered in tiny electric sparks. I could listen to Shveta recite stock exchange numbers and get tingles. Her voice sounds like warm, rumbling darkness full of stars. My eyelids droop.

I should take my earring out now. I don’t want to fall asleep. Sleep isn’t safe. I want to stay here, with Shveta and Meeta and the tendrils of henna spreading across Meeta’s skin. But it’s like watching a sunset: even when the colours seem optimal, the most beautiful combination of light and darkness imaginable, you can’t freeze-frame it. Slowly, imperceptibly, the sky changes to darkness. And slowly, imperceptibly, I’m sinking into sleep.

Creeper

Creeper

I don’t remember dreaming anything at all. Next thing that happens, I startle awake in my bed. Many hours must have passed, because I’m still propped on pillows and the room is dark except for an orange line of street light that shows the gap between the edge of the curtain and the wall. There’s a tiny notification in one corner of my vision letting me know the ASMR playlist has ended, but that’s not what woke me up.