**
"Then the opinions come to the post in daylight." I sat on the chest. "We don't invent a fight so we can feel ready for one."
"I'm not inventing anything. At least not yet." She looked at me across the short space of our room—shelf, lamp, boots left and right, the ordinary mess of two people who had stopped living out of a corner of the hall.
"I'm simply counting. Just the same as Marta and the same as Einar. You're the one who still thinks an honest dig is the end of the story." She added flatly.
"It's the start of the only story I want." I answered.
Tuva's face did something complicated, then settled. She came over, put her forehead against mine, and stayed there until the hall's noise on the other side of the boards became only weather.
"Start, then," she said. "Just don't look surprised when the line gets longer than the daylight."
Outside, the race gate was shut and the notched post stood in the dark.
