Already there, I told her.
*Good.*
---
The goodbye happened in pieces over the two days, which was how goodbyes in this compound tended to work — not one large event, a series of smaller true ones.
Ziko, predictably, made it into an occasion. He produced food — where he'd gotten it and when he'd made it and how he'd known it was appropriate were mysteries he declined to answer — and set it on the round table the evening before Mara left and said: "This is a goodbye dinner. I'm naming it that because I don't believe in pretending things are just dinner when they're actually a goodbye dinner."
Mara looked at the table.
"You didn't have to—" she started.
"I know," Ziko said. "That's what makes it a choice." He sat down. "Sit. Everyone sit. We're having a goodbye dinner."
They sat.
Ev
