Vella's fingertip rested against the left horn stump, light as a falling petal, while the child held perfectly still. She counted the seconds in her head, one, two, three, the way she once counted heartbeats on a battlefield.
On three the child flinched away, scrambling to the far corner of her nest of torn sheets, teeth bared.
Vella let her hand drop to her lap, breathing out for the first time in what felt like a year.
"Three seconds," she murmured, "that's two more than yesterday."
"Three's a good number," Hajin said without looking up from his knife, "I'll take it."
Hajin sat inside the doorway with his back against the frame, carving a curtain rod into something with a beak. Pale shavings curled around his knees while he worked, never once glancing at the corner, as though it were empty.
Vella tilted her head at the thing in his hand, "That's not a bird."
"It's a pigeon, the lump is the wing," he said, holding it up to the candle.
"It's a lump with ambitions, kid."
