FRAIL.
Lumi shook her head, small and quick, like a frail bird startled off a branch. She sank lower into the water and pulled her knees up, willing herself invisible, and though she tried to keep her thoughts quiet, the flicker of them reached me clearly.
Shame. The particular shame of a child who has heard herself compared, or imagined being compared, and found herself lacking.
"Your voice is beautiful, dumpling. Don't measure it against anyone else's." I leaned forward. "You felt how surprised Dad was when you spoke to him earlier, didn't you? You felt that. I can't fake what goes through this connection."
She didn't blow bubbles. She didn't move at all. I waited, half-amused and half-worried she'd forgotten to breathe, and then poked the sharp divot of her back.
She surfaced with her eyebrows and lips both turned downward in unified protest, before shot me a glare and sank again.
I don't sound like the other girls. It's hoarse and rough and it hurts to speak. I don't want to, Dad.
Each word was a splinter, and there were enough of them. But I let her feel the steadiness in me before I reached into the bath and lifted her onto my lap. Cold water soaked through immediately, then Lumi's warmth followed.
I had just opened my mouth to say something when she shrieked.
"Eeek!"
It came out of nowhere, soft and high and startled, like a kitten's first protest. I went completely still. My arms, which had been moving to hold her, stopped in midair. Then, without fully deciding to, I lifted her up by the waist and held her at arm's length.
In the air between us, her eyes met mine. The bathroom blurred at the edges. Time did something strange.
"Dad," Lumi said, a faint pink rising in her cheeks, her mouth working toward anger. "I'm in the bath."
Her voice was soft, delicate, and different.
"Your voice, dumpling! Listen! Did you hear it? It's beautiful!" I exclaimed.
"Dad," Lumi groaned, closer a whimper. "Please put me down. I'm getting cold."
The pout had evolved into something genuinely beseeching. I couldn't hold out against it. I settled her back on my lap and lowered us both into the bath and pressed my palms together.
"Sorry. Dad got excited." I couldn't stop smiling. "But sing for me, dumpling. I want to hear more."
Lumi came back to herself by degrees. The surprise displaced the shyness for a moment, and she heard what I was so ecstatic about.
"My voice," she said slowly. "It — it is better." A pause. "How?"
"You should thank your little friend Meteor."
II took her hands and let the memory pass through between us: the glowing bear, the jar, the stars inside the pouch. I watched her lips soften and widen.
"Please, dumpling." I said. "Sing for me. Just once. You can feel that I mean it. You know I can't pretend in here."
"I don't know any songs," she said.
She absolutely did.
"Then look through my memories."
She glanced down at the water, then back up at me with an expression that was equal parts reluctance and suppressed curiosity.
"...O-okay."
She closed her eyes. Her mouth opened.
"In our lands, we stand proud~Together under the stars~Our spirits cross the valleys~Our hope graces the forests~And in our lands, we stand free..."
She trailed off and tucked her chin toward her chest.
"T-that's all..."
I laughed. "The national anthem, dumpling? Out of everything?"
T-there were too many songs. I didn't know what to choose.
I rose, patting her shoulders, before placing my hand on the back of her neck and coaxing her head around.
"You were wonderful, dumpling." I placed my hand gently at the back of her neck and turned her face toward mine. "Facing fear is how people grow. I mean that."
"Y-you forced me too," she muttered.
"I encouraged you."
"Forced."
"Well, let's say I guided your impulses. There's actually something not entirely scientific about how people sing better in the bath—"
Something in those last words made her go rigid.
"Go away, Dad! Let me get dressed!"
I retreated, wondering if I'd pushed the teasing one beat too far.
***
She came out in one of my t-shirts. None of her clothes were clean, so we made do, and something about the oversized fabric—the hem nearly at her knees, the collar slipping off one shoulder—managed to be both unbearably cute and quietly devastating. The shirt made her look like a child playing at wearing adult things, which was precisely what she was, and precisely what she should be allowed to be.
I draped a second shirt over her head in place of a towel and lifted her, and we moved to the living room. She sat between my knees on the sofa while I worked at drying her hair, slow and careful.
"Feeling better, dumpling?"
Yes! Much better.
I paused. "You're not using your voice again."
She turned, eyebrows arching.
I want to hear you sing, Dad.
"Me?"
The special honey Meteor gave helped you too.
She was right. I hadn't noticed it happening, but my voice, when I tested it quietly in my head, had shifted. Warmer. Fuller. The rough edges smoothed down.
But this was all within my expectations.
"It's our telepathy working, dumpling," I told her. "It's not only feelings and memories we share. Your improvement is mine, and my improvement is yours... but in different proportions, it seems."
She had always had something beautiful underneath the injury. The hoarseness, the cracks, the way she'd whispered to keep from hurting herself—all of that had been concealing something that now, with the honey and the healing, was beginning to surface. There was a gentleness to it, a natural softness, like the first blossom of spring awaiting to surface under months of ice.
Lumi had no interest in the mechanics of any of this. She brushed past my explanation with the brisk efficiency of someone who already knows what she wants.
I sang, so you have to. Hmph.
I set the makeshift towel aside and smiled and settled her on my lap.
"Anything for you, dumpling. What do you want to hear?"