Rowan said it on a Sunday, to nobody in particular, while sitting on the kitchen floor surrounded by the specific debris of a one-year-old's afternoon — a wooden spoon, two pieces of Tupperware, a sock that had been removed and was being regarded with suspicion.
Sera was at the counter. Darius was at the table with paperwork he wasn't really reading. Neither of them was watching with any particular intensity, because the last few weeks had been full of near-words — sounds that almost resolved into something, consonant clusters that hovered on the edge of meaning and then dissolved back into babble.
Rowan picked up the wooden spoon, examined it with the gravity they brought to all objects, and said, clearly, unmistakably:
"Up."
Sera went still.
Darius went still.
Rowan, apparently sat
