"I am," I said. "Ordinary morning."
"How many of those have you had now."
I thought about it. "Enough that I'm starting to trust them."
Something moved in her face — old and warm at once.
"That's the mark of a territory doing what it's supposed to do," she said. "When the ordinary stops being a surprise and starts being the baseline." She looked at Ashveil. "It took the third one years to trust it. You've done it faster."
"Better circumstances," I said. Her own words, given back to her.
"Yes," she said. "Considerably."
---
We were still on the bench when Ziko crossed the yard toward us, Ren on his hip in the carry configuration that had become second nature to him, narrating something to her that I couldn't hear from this distance but could guess the shape of from his gestures.
He
