Written by Something has been watching you.
Not with menace, with interest. You have felt it in the way a particular animal keeps appearing at the edges of your life, in the dream that recurs without resolution, in the presence you sense at the corner of a room you have just walked into. You have dismissed it, probably. Told yourself it was coincidence, pattern recognition, the human brain doing what it does – finding meaning in the noise.
But the feeling persists.
In the magical tradition, there is a name for what you are sensing. A familiar is not a pet with a witch. It is not a demonic servant from a medieval woodcut. It is not a totem animal you read about in a book and decided suited your personality. A familiar is a relationship. A sustained, specific, reciprocal connection between a practitioner and a spirit that has chosen to work alongside them.
You do not fully choose your familiar. This is the first thing to understand.
The familiar chooses too.