Across the room, the nurse finished with the bottle, checked the baby girl, and settled her carefully into the crib, tucking, adjusting, performing the small, precise rituals of someone who had done this ten thousand times and still did each step with attention.
The baby girl was quiet now. Fully, completely quiet.
Her face had smoothed into the particular blankness of deep newborn sleep, no expression, no effort, just the pure animal rest of something that had eaten and was warm and had nothing left to require of the world.
Julian looked at her in the crib.
At the small rise and fall of her. In the way sleep had taken every trace of distress from her face and left only a baby.
Just a small, new, sleeping baby with her whole life ahead of her and no knowledge yet of what that life had already been handed to navigate.
Divina, Seb had said.
