An Afternoon of Painting and Confessions

The Sunroom was built for afternoons like this. It never felt like an inside space, not really; three glass walls and a ceiling flooded the air with so much sun that every color inside read as a little more itself. By the time Emi called everyone to gather, the circle of easels made a loose ring around the room, an orbit of white canvas and folding chairs, brushes preloaded on shallow ceramic palettes. Most of the women had staked out a seat already. Liesa, running a little late, watched the last few stragglers slip in through the sun-lit doors.

She caught sight of Oudemia at once. The other woman, short and small and with brunette hair so long that it brushed the floor, paused just inside the threshold, shoulders canted toward the wall as if bracing for weather. Oudemia lingered there a little too long, staring at the rows of empty chairs and the slow eddy of guests settling into place. Her hand hovered, not quite touching the plaster beside her, before she finally chose a chair hard against the longest glass wall and sat, careful, back flat, profile to the room.

Liesa angled for the seat directly behind her in the rotation. She’d never spoken to the girl, but Arabella had given her short briefings about each guest, and she liked watching people who watched rooms. As she passed, she saw Oudemia’s fingers splay briefly against the wall behind the chair before she drew them back to her lap, clean and bare. The gesture made something tight in Liesa’s chest unspool a little, like the recognition of a private ritual.

Emi ran the activity like she did everything else: with the beaming, absentminded cheer of a substitute teacher determined to make the assignment fun. She set up a whiteboard at the front and drew a lopsided circle, which she labeled THE CIRCLE OF ART, then scrawled RULES in big, blue letters underneath:

• Paint what you want. Stop at the bell.
• Move one seat left. Add only to what is there.
• NO TALKING until the last bell. Not even you, Skye :)

A few snickers, some mock groans, and a gentle shushing from Emi. She handed out towels, her upper hands unrolling them in a neat fan as her lower arms ferried the paint and brushes down the line. Every single gesture was so smooth it felt like Emi had trained for this in another life.

Liesa set her canvas in the clips and looked at the array of color, letting herself drift for a minute on the memory of her first day of art school: the hot, rubbery smell of gesso, the shock of a new sheet, the instant inadequacy when the real work began. She scanned the ring for familiar faces—Chloe’s hair catching gold in the corner, Marissa already laying down a grid with the focus of a woman grading herself, Claire’s hands folded in her lap as if holding the brush was a privilege she had to earn, Riley staring at the canvas as if it had personally offended her, Norah muttering under her breath something that rhymed with “Marcie.” But Liesa’s eyes drifted, again and again, to Oudemia. The other woman sat perfectly upright, unmoving, staring at the blank canvas as if it might vanish if she blinked.

When Emi rang the bell, Liesa went straight for the water: the sea she’d grown up beside, always the color of old steel and never as blue as you’d imagine. She blocked it in flat and fast, letting the brush drag the color as it would. She laid a stone quay across the lower third, then stippled a handful of pale ripples where a stone might have hit. She caught herself thinking, always the water, always the thing she had to leave before it left her, and almost laughed. She put more ripples in than were strictly realistic, so many that the reflection of sky was all but gone.

After ten minutes the bell rang again, and everyone shifted left in a soft, shuffling spiral. Liesa arrived at a canvas filled with tight, whorled strokes, all in shades of umber. At first she thought it was a tree, or maybe hair, but as she looked closer she saw the lines resolved into the trace of a hand—no, not just the trace, but a full, wet palm print pressed directly onto the canvas, then outlined and mirrored, over and over, like someone searching for proof of their own body. There were no brushstrokes, just the marks, always placed exactly where the color was thin, always where there was space for one more.

The next rotation was the same. Liesa found herself in front of an empty stage, the barest suggestions of seats at the bottom of the canvas. And right across stage, where the paint hadn’t dried, was a single, deep blue palm print. The print landed over the hints of wood and fabric and seemed to both mute and complete it at once. No attempt to blend or erase, just a statement: I am here, and so are you.

By the time the canvases rotated back around, the sun had shifted so far that the glass ceiling threw bands of gold over every surface. Liesa returned to her own water and saw, dead center in the sky she’d left blank, one last palm print: deep, deliberate, the hand set flat right over her tightest cluster of ripples. She saw, under the overlapping marks, that the print had caught the light where the wet paint dragged, leaving a little aurora of colors she hadn’t even chosen. It was still shiny, still raw. She wondered if Oudemia’s skin tingled with the chemicals. She wondered if she’d put it there for a reason.

When the last bell rang, Emi clapped once and the ban on talking dissolved at once. The room filled with low conversation and the scatter of chairs moving. Liesa walked over to her canvas, studied the mark, and then turned to find Oudemia already cleaning her hands with a rag. Liesa found herself relieved; she hadn’t realized she was holding her breath.

“Nice touch,” Liesa said, keeping her tone breezy. “The handprint. Did you always paint with your hands, or is that just your move?”

Oudemia looked up, her face utterly flat, voice neutral as stone. “It is faster,” she said. “I do not need the brush.”

“I like it,” Liesa replied, not letting the silence spook her. “It’s… direct.” She gestured to her own painting. “You gave my water a sun. Or a visitor.”

Oudemia’s eyes moved to the painting, then back to Liesa’s face. “I put it where nothing else was,” she said, unblinking. “It does not need to mean anything.”

Liesa laughed, softer than she’d intended. She’d spent her whole life using the smallest gestures—an extra line, a smudge in the margin—to say what she couldn’t out loud. She’d never met someone who could erase meaning so efficiently. She almost admired it.

She gathered up her paint and walked with Oudemia toward the door, falling into step beside her. As they passed the last easel, a canvas someone else had left behind, Liesa pointed at it: a bouquet of orange and yellow flowers, shockingly cheerful, now interrupted by a single black palm print dead center. “Now that,” she said, “is art with an opinion.”

Oudemia didn’t crack so much as a smile. She only shrugged, then ran her rag over her palms in a slow, exact circle, wiping the color away.

Liesa went back for her own painting, freeing it from the clips rather than stacking it with the others in the “done” pile. She looked at the handprint one last time, then tucked the canvas against the wall and walked out into the bright and empty air.

---

The garden terrace above the lagoon was already half-shadowed when the party spilled out from the house. Mildred had set up a single, sinuous table snaking through the green, white linen and glassware catching the gold of a lowering sun. Laura was here already, twice over, her two bodies perfectly matched and at rest for once, standing together at the table’s head.

Mildred had stacked the seating close, letting the company bleed together—no tiny knots of friends, no assigned sides, just a blur of color and motion. The air hummed with the slow rise of appetite and the undertow of gossip that followed every event.

Erin was the first to drop in at Laura’s side. She moved like she had nothing to prove, and maybe she didn’t; the mint-green of her skin was almost blinding in the sunlight, the curve of her breasts both monumental and so normal to her that she seemed almost immune to being noticed. She glanced at the empty chair to her left, decided it was too far from the sunlight for comfort, and dragged it two feet closer to Laura’s left body instead, ignoring the way it nudged both their elbows together. If the others thought it looked like they were trying to fence the table off from the world, nobody said anything.

The rest of the table filled in like a trickle-down seating chart: Claire, then Norah, then Myra—her tails fluffed out in a circle around her, as if she could create her own boundary by sheer surface area alone. Marie, who looked more like Myra’s older sister than her mother, settled in beside Myra, folding her napkin with a kind of deliberate precision that made it clear she’d chosen this spot for a reason.

Dawn arrived next, her energy so open it seemed to run a couple seconds ahead of her, like a field effect. She hugged everyone within reach, including the Mildred setting down wine glasses, and took a seat midway down the table where she could keep an eye on as much as possible. Emi and Liesa arrived together, pausing a few feet back to watch the room before they committed. Chloe and Riley, neither in the mood for grand entrances, slipped in last, their chairs side by side, like they’d been paired at every table their whole lives and it would be a crime to split them now.

It was less a dinner party and more a kind of slow-motion collision, every conversation rippling out in unpredictable directions before it was snatched back by a shout, a laugh, or the quiet authority of the food. Most of the early talk was about the painting event: by the time it reached the far end of the table, it had grown a dozen extra details—one story insisted the drow had painted with her tongue, another that Marissa had managed to perfectly recreate her own breasts in a single brushstroke, another that the paints were slightly hallucinogenic and explained why three separate canvases had been signed “Andy’s Real Wife” in black marker.

Chloe let the stories wash over her, even joined in now and then, her face red but her eyes shining, but mostly she just let herself be pushed along by the current. Next to her, Emily was not even pretending to wear her hair down for modesty; she’d tied it back in a loose knot, and if it exposed her completely, so be it. She glanced at Chloe’s glass, topped off her own, then wordlessly pushed the bottle closer to Chloe, her thigh brushing against Chloe’s with the faintest possible pressure.

Further up, Riley was conducting a not-so-secret trade of bread rolls for gossip, her voice pitched low but perfectly audible to anyone within three chairs. “You want the good stuff,” she said to Claire, “you have to cough up the real scoop. I know Andy isn’t here to defend himself, but I want the bachelor party report. Mildred said you have sources.”

Claire, who could not write fast enough to win in a crosstalk situation, simply glared and made a slashing motion across her own throat, then snapped her notebook shut and handed Riley a blank page. Riley cackled, tore it up, and raised her glass. “I’ll get it out of her by the end of the night,” she promised.

Sumiku sat quietly near the far end, opposite Marie and Dinah, both of whom were deeply invested in whatever conversation Sarah Hawkins was having with Allie, Isabella, and Cammy. The new guests seemed perfectly at ease, even as Cammy quietly devoured more than her fair share of the bread basket. Summer and Autumn Weaver, at the very end, kept up a running commentary on the food in voices so matched it was like watching someone talk to herself in a mirror. Oudemia and Poppy had found themselves facing each other and were simply staring at each other.

At intervals, a Mildred would glide through the crowd, swapping empty glasses for full ones, never interrupting but always managing to arrive just as someone needed her. It was the kind of service you only got if that's spent at least a thousand years learning to see what wasn’t yet happening and make it happen anyway.

It was an hour before the food showed up, but when it did, it was so perfectly timed that nobody even noticed the wait. The platters came in from the far doors—trays of sliced meats, baked fish in salt, roasted vegetables cut so thin they looked like paper, tiny perfect cakes in the colors of the island’s flowers. Someone had ordered a round of drinks, and it was clear by the giggle radius that the nonalcoholic options were at best optional.

The bread story, now fully grown and self-aware, made the rounds again. By the time it reached Chloe and Emily, the rumor had shifted: Chloe herself had thrown the bread roll at the painting, leaving the perfect dent, and that was the origin of the palm prints Emi loved so much. Chloe sputtered, “I did not!” but she was laughing so hard she nearly fell off her chair. Emily just shrugged, took the blame with a wink, and in the same movement, pinched a piece of bread and flicked it expertly toward the next table, where it hit Summer square on the nose.

Erin watched the whole thing unfold with a bemused, almost parental fondness, her eyes roaming over the table as if to inventory everyone’s mood. She’d kept herself low-key the whole meal, not talking much, but the longer she went without a crisis to manage, the more she seemed to relax. It was only when the main course arrived, and the laughter went up a notch, that she leaned in close to Laura, close enough to let her voice drop out of the general airspace and into the private current between them.

“You sure you’re okay?” she asked, very quietly, her mouth barely moving. “You don’t have to do the speech if you don’t want to. Marissa can take over.”

Laura didn’t look up, didn’t look away from the shallow pool of water in her glasses. Her voices were even, but her left hands gripped the stems so tight it looked like she might snap them. “No,” she said. “I have to do it.”

Erin waited a second, then said, “You don’t have to do anything for anyone here. Not for us, not for him. You know that, right?”

That made Laura smile, just for a flash. “I know. But it doesn’t matter. I’d rather it be me.”

Erin squeezed her hand once, then let go. “All right. But if you want to bail, just say the word. I’ll take the hit.” She said it like a joke, but Laura recognized the offer for what it was—a safety line, tied off somewhere behind her, just in case she needed to grab it.

As the plates cleared and the first true sunset shadows crept up the terrace, the conversation slowed to a kind of background hum, the group as a whole sensing the pivot point in the evening. Laura waited for the lull—she was good at waiting—and when it landed, she let the silence breathe for a second before raising her voice enough to carry.

“I want to thank everyone for coming,” she said, both bodies speaking in sync, the effect slightly uncanny if you didn’t already know to expect it. “It means a lot to have everyone here, tonight.” She looked up and down the table, met every pair of eyes that would meet hers, and paused just long enough that even the Mildreds in the wings seemed to hush.

“After dinner, we’re going back to the Hotel for the next part. Before that, though, we have organized an activity. Most of you already know how it works, but for the new faces: there’s a tree at the edge of the path, and every woman here wrote three ribbons—one for a wish for the family, one for a promise they want to keep, and one for a piece of advice to the brides or the groom. Some of you signed them, some didn’t. After this, I’ll pull some off at random and read them out loud. If you want to claim yours, you can, but you don’t have to. That’s the whole point.” She let the words settle, the silence charged but not heavy. “It’s just between us. Like everything else.”

There was a ripple of reaction—some nervous laughter, some eye contact, a few people looking down at their hands, like maybe they’d written something bolder than they meant to. But nobody challenged it. Even Marissa just nodded, her therapist’s smile fixed but honest.

Laura let both of herself lean back at once. “Eat up. You’ll need the calories for the walk.”

That drew a genuine laugh, and the whole table seemed to loosen at once, as if someone had untied a knot at its center.

As the last course drifted in—an impossible array of desserts, tarts and custards and chocolate so glossy it looked like patent leather—Emily passed Claire the notebook one last time. Claire read whatever Emily had written, and her mouth made a shape that wasn’t quite a smile but wasn’t not one, either. She wrote back, then shut the notebook and slid it under the edge of the table, as if it had never existed at all.

Further down, Dinah had swapped plates with Eden, who seemed genuinely delighted by the rediscovery of chocolate that wasn’t served in liquid form. Sumiku, for her part, accepted a single petit four and ate it with the same gravity she’d brought to every other task that day.

Finally, as the sky deepened to the color of old denim, the table began to empty. Women gathered in small knots, finding shoes or shawls, some linking arms as if they’d been friends for a lifetime. Laura stood, both bodies rising at the same time, and without a word, Erin stood up too, her hand finding Laura’s elbow and steering her gently toward the edge of the grass.

They moved as one, and the whole group followed. Behind them, the Mildreds cleared the last plates with the silent precision of birds vanishing at dusk.

The procession down the garden path was quiet, everyone suddenly aware of their own steps, the press of other bodies moving through gold and green and shadow. At the edge of the lagoon, the tree was waiting: just old enough to have a proper trunk, its lowest branches hung with pale, knotted ribbons that caught the last sun and fluttered in the salt wind. Someone had lit a string of lanterns around its base, and the glass globes threw little moons onto the grass, onto the path, onto the faces of the women as they circled up around it.

At the center, Laura stopped. Erin stopped too, then let her hand drop away.

Laura looked up at the tree, then at the women gathered in a wide ring around her. For a second, she didn’t say anything. She just breathed, both bodies at once, and let the dusk wrap around her like an old friend.

---

The tree wasn’t big, not yet—it would need a decade or three to cast any real shadow—but for now its branches were thick enough to hold what the night required. The women gathered in a loose crescent, three and four deep in places, the crowd so wide that it spilled onto the grass beyond the reach of the lanterns. Above them, the sky drained out the last golds and went faintly green at the horizon, the lagoon flat as glass except where the breeze shivered it.

Liesa was the first to step up. She climbed onto the flattest of the stones at the tree’s base, raised one hand for quiet, and the whole group settled as if under a blanket. Her hair, usually kept perfect, had escaped in a half-frizzed cloud, and she wore a bright yellow shift that made her easy to track even from the back of the crowd.

When she spoke, the accent was softer than usual, her words so even that they felt like a melody. “Ladies,” she said, “before we start, I want to thank you all for being here. For Andy, for our seven lucky ladies, for each other. Tonight is not just a party. Tonight, it is a beginning.”

She waited, the silence filling up with nothing but the faint click of glasses and the scratch of leaves overhead.

“Earlier today, I went to every one of you. I asked you to write three things: a wish for the new family, advice for the brides and groom, and a promise you would keep. Some of you signed your names, some left them blank. It doesn’t matter which. None of it is required. The only rule—” and here Liesa let her hands sweep out, catching as many faces as she could “—is that if you hear your own ribbon, and you want to step forward, you can. If not, the ribbon will say it for you.”

The only sound was the sea, off somewhere behind the line of palms.

“I’ll let Laura take it from here,” she said, and hopped off the stone, landing light as a cat.

Laura stepped up, both bodies climbing the stone in tandem, her two faces turned outward as if reading the crowd for weather. Erin’s mint-green hand found the small of her back and stayed there, silent support. From the back, it looked like she was steadying Laura for a landing.

Laura didn’t speak at first. She reached up, fingers careful, and worked the first ribbon loose from its branch. She unrolled it, scanning the writing, and then read in a voice that was somehow both amplified and private:

“‘I wish that you, and all the sisters who find you, will always know how to find the beautiful in your lives, even when everything else says it’s gone. I wish you the color of a good morning, the taste of laughter, and the feeling of belonging on the day you need it most.’”

There was a little hush. Candy, in the front, murmured, “I’d wish that for myself,” and it rippled through the crowd, a soft echo of agreement. Laura looped the ribbon once around the trunk, tied it, and let it dangle down.

The second ribbon came off with a little more resistance, the knot tighter. Laura took a moment, then read:

“‘I promise I will be as good as he believes I am.’”

Nobody claimed it, but the air around the tree got heavier, as if everyone had remembered something too important to say. Laura didn’t fill the pause, just tied the ribbon in place and reached for the next.

The third and fourth ribbons came off in one motion, their handwriting the same, the knots side by side.

Laura read, “’I wish you all the wisdom to know the difference between what is your fault, and what is the fault of fortune...’”

Nobody moved, but the crowd seemed to contract slightly, as if everyone had taken a small, private step inward. At the edge of the lantern light, one of the Mildreds paused mid-step, a glass held at its side, and waited. The slime girl gave a slight nod.

Laura read the second one. “Ah, this is for a specific family member. ‘Riley, anger is both a necessary emotion but also one that can lead you astray. I hope you can always know the difference from here on out.’”

There was a pulse in the crowd, heads turning toward Riley, who stood with her arms crossed and her face unreadable. But Chloe reached over, and—without a word—closed a hand over Riley’s wrist, the gesture so smooth and practiced it was clear this had been done a thousand times before.

Laura tied both ribbons in, letting them hang together, and her hands lingered just a second on the branch, fingers trembling. She didn’t reach for the next right away.

Instead, she looked at the women, at the sea of faces and hair and skin and color, and let her voice out softer than before.

Laura worked the next ribbon loose and unrolled it, both faces scanning ahead of her voice. Whatever she read, it landed first as a blink, then as a slow, involuntary smile she didn’t quite suppress.

She read: “’Andy and Laura: enjoy the gift that is having more than one body, and not just for sex.’”

The crowd’s reaction was not immediate—there was a beat of collective processing—and then it arrived in layers: a bark of laughter from somewhere near Chloe, a ripple of delighted noise spreading outward, someone near the back saying something that couldn’t be heard but clearly didn’t need to be. Laura’s two faces arranged themselves into an expression of great, practiced dignity, which was undermined slightly by Erin’s shoulders shaking beside her.

Then, from the edge of the lantern light, three figures stepped forward together. Sassafras moved as a single thought distributed across three bodies, each one folding into a long, unhurried bow—fluid and synchronized, heads dipping in one smooth arc, hands at their sides. They held it just long enough to be unmistakable. Then they rose, all three at once, and returned to their place in the circle without a word.

The crowd’s laughter crested and broke. Laura looked at them for a moment, then down at the ribbon in her hands. She tied it off—not her neatest knot—and reached for the next.

The next one was short, and the handwriting sprawled—big loose letters that had run out of ribbon before they ran out of enthusiasm. Laura read it exactly as written, which turned out to be the only way it could be read. “‘Never eat vegetables! They’re poison!’”

Three voices went up from the same stretch of the crowd, close enough together to sound rehearsed. “Daphne,” said Skye, with the patience of a woman who has made this identification before and expects to make it again.

“Daph,” Scarlet agreed, not looking up from her glass.

“Dudette. That is one hundred percent Daphne,” said Alex, pointing with her whole arm, wings half-open for emphasis.

Daphne denied none of it. “They are poison,” she said, from somewhere out past the lantern light. “I have tasted one. I did it for research.”

“I’d have signed that,” said both of Laura’s mouths, perfectly level, “when I was thirteen.” It got the easy kind of laugh, and Laura let it have its moment and didn’t explain it. She tied Daphne’s ribbon on low, where the branch was thickest.

A beat passed. Then Laura reached for the next ribbon, a short one, its knot loose and easy.

“’Treat each other well,’” she read. “’And be proud of each other.’”

She didn’t read it again. She didn’t need to. The crowd held its breath for a moment, and then let it out all at once, not as laughter but as something quieter and less rehearsed. Erin found Laura’s eyes across the circle and held them, and something passed between the two of them that didn’t require the crowd to understand it. Claire, standing near the middle, turned her face slightly away from the tree, jaw working once, and then she reached sideways and took Myra’s hand without looking at her. Myra looked down at their joined hands, then up, and didn’t pull away. Around them, the crowd moved in small ways—a shoulder touched, a name said softly, a glass lowered.

Laura tied the ribbon off, and her fingers lingered on it a moment before she let go.

The next came free easily. A round, careful hand, every letter finished. “‘I promise to be a good wife and mother,’” Laura read. “‘My family is always there for me; I promise to be there for them too.’”

Nobody stepped forward for it. Laura looked at it a second longer than she had looked at the others. “That’s the whole job,” said both of Laura’s mouths. “Whoever wrote that already knows it.”

Further along the ring, Marie’s hand found Myra’s wrist and stayed there, and Myra’s blind gaze tipped toward the tree.

Laura tied it off and took down the next, a bright one, finished in a bow so elaborate it had to be undone in stages. “‘I hope your husbando makes you feel like a proper waifu.’”

Both her faces went very still—the stillness of a woman waiting to find out whether a sentence has finished happening to her. “I don’t know what that means,” said both of Laura’s mouths, “and I’m taking it as a blessing anyway.”

“It is one, Auntie!” came a voice from the middle of the crowd, delighted, untroubled about being identified. Laughter went with it. Two people over, a small drow woman put her face in her hands, while a young drow man stood grinning and unrepentant, which answered a question nobody had asked out loud.

Laura tied that one on beside the last, with a great deal of care, and let the bow stay ridiculous. She pulled free the next one.

“‘For Erin and Laura: Sometimes, the so-called master needs to be controlled and protected from himself.’”

The air was perfectly still. Erin gave a tiny snort, one that Laura heard even with a hundred people between them.

“I mean,” Erin said, to no one in particular.

“Yes,” said both of Laura’s mouths, at the same time, in the same dry tone.

Laura’s fingers held the ribbon a long time before she tied it off, the knot gentler than any before. She looked up, both faces reflecting the lantern light, and for a moment nobody moved.

That broke the spell. The crowd loosened, people shifting, some crying, some not, everyone suddenly very alive and very loud again. The circle around the tree became a knot of small groups, everyone hugging or laughing or pretending not to care as much as they did.

At the trunk, Laura finished tying the ribbon. She let her hands drop to her sides, then stepped down off the stone, landing with the certainty of someone who’d just returned to the world after a very long journey.

---

The break between readings lasted just long enough for the Mildreds to move through the crowd, lighting lanterns along the lowest branches and refilling whatever glasses looked the least full. The gold-pink dusk was gone, replaced by a blue that left the faces around the tree half-lit and shadowed, everyone’s features distilled to highlight and darkness.

Marie stood close beside Myra, both of them silent but watchful, their tails—one real, two metaphorical—twined together for comfort. Eden and Dinah drifted a little apart from the main mass, both of them oddly at ease. Dinah looked like she was about to say something every thirty seconds, but never did; Eden just gazed up at the ribbons and swayed, as if she was listening for wind that only she could hear.

Laura reached for the next ribbon without looking, her fingers finding the knot by feel. She unrolled it, and her mouth had already started to twitch before she’d finished reading.

“‘I promise to never feel like my life is crazier than anyone else’s,’” she read, “‘because yours is nuts!’”

The laugh went up fast, spreading three and four chairs deep before anyone had decided whether to be polite about it. Near the edge of the crowd, a young woman with vivid red hair threw both hands in the air. “Guilty,” she called out, grinning, not remotely sorry. “Claire Mercer. I said what I said.” A ripple of applause followed her back down into her seat, and she gave a small, theatrical bow before she sat, chin up, clearly delighted with the reception.

“Duly noted,” said both of Laura’s mouths, at the same time, in the same dry tone. She tied the ribbon off in a neat, quick bow before reaching for the next.

This one had been folded twice and knotted hard, as though the writer had wanted a moment to reconsider and had refused herself one. “‘Never go to bed angry,’” Laura read. “‘Or, if you do, make sure you have plenty of fire extinguishers handy.’” She checked the ribbon again, and read the rest of it. “‘That… was an embarrassing night.’”

The laugh started small and then found its legs. Out in the crowd, a woman with dark red skin and stone at her wrists briefly shut her eyes. “Mine,” Scarlet said, in the flat voice of someone conceding a point rather than claiming a prize. “I should have stopped at the first clause.”

“Nobody was going to guess it was you,” said both of Laura’s mouths. “We were all thinking Riley.”

“Wrong element,” Riley said, without turning around.

“The extinguishers were the tell,” Scarlet agreed.

“Yes.” Laura was still smiling when she worked the next one loose, and had already started reading before she registered that the hand had changed—rounder, faster, leaning hard to the right.

“‘You can go to bed angry, so long as you have good make-up sex before actually going to sleep.’” Laura’s eyebrows went up, and so, fractionally, did her voice. “‘Sometimes the best sex happens while your wife accidentally catches the whole bedroom on fire…’”

The crowd came apart. Alex took the credit with both hands up and her wings spread, entirely shameless, then reached over and patted Scarlet’s shoulder with the particular tenderness of a woman who has told this story before and intends to keep telling it. “It was a good night,” Alex said.

“It was an expensive night,” said Scarlet.

“Two ribbons, one marriage,” both of Laura’s voices observed. “That’s the most practical advice anyone’s given us all evening.” She tied them on together, one knot, the way they had clearly been meant to hang.

The next two came off together, tangled at the same knot—the same square, unhurried hand on both. Laura worked them free and read one after the other.

“‘My advice is to never take your time together for granted,’” she read, and then, without pausing: “‘I promise to never forget any of this. It has been most educational on a universal scale.’”

A ripple of laughter started and then caught itself halfway, unsure whether the second line had been a joke. Nobody stepped forward. But Claire Mercer, still glowing from her own moment, went very still and turned, scanning the ring until she found a tall woman standing a little apart from the others, platinum hair pinned back, hands folded one over the other in front of her like the posture would hold no matter what happened around it. For just a second, the corner of the woman’s mouth moved—there and gone before anyone could be sure they’d seen it. Claire’s whole face lit up like she’d been handed something rare. She didn’t say a word.

Laura, catching the exchange without fully following it, let it go and tied both ribbons in place, side by side.

The next ribbon was small, and had been written slowly. Some of the letters had been gone over twice, as if the writer had wanted to be sure they would hold. “‘I promise to try to get better,’” Laura read. “‘Even when it’s hard.’”

It asked for nothing. That was what made the circle go quiet around it—no wish, no advice, nobody named, just a woman promising herself something in front of a hundred strangers and trusting them with it. Nobody stepped forward. But out at the edge of the lantern light, where the grass went dark, a dryad with soil still under her fingernails went very still and did not look up. She didn’t have to.

Katherine reached her first, crossing the grass without any visible decision to do it, and folded both arms around her from behind. A moment later Sumiku was there too—four arms and a great deal of wing, careful the way she was careful with everything—and the dryad made a small wet sound and let herself be held. Nobody said anything. One of them couldn’t have.

It lasted as long as it needed to. Then Katherine pressed her forehead briefly into the dryad’s hair and went back to her place in the ring, and Sumiku withdrew to the edge of the crowd, and Jenny wiped her face with the back of her wrist and slipped away up the lawn, to recompose herself.

“Okay,” said both of Laura’s mouths, quietly, to nobody in particular. “Okay.” She tied the ribbon on at eye level, where she could find it again.

The next ribbon fought her—a hard double knot that took some working loose. When it finally gave, she read it, and her eyebrows went up before her voice caught up to them.

“‘If you ever feel unsafe and you can reach me,’” Laura read, “‘I promise to keep you safe.’”

For a second nobody spoke. It didn’t land as a joke; it landed as something plain and offered, and the crowd went quiet around the edges of it, unsure what to do with sincerity that direct.

Then a woman shouldered forward, red hair catching the lantern light like it meant to. “That’d be me. Fiona Kavanagh.” She said it flatly, daring anyone to make it cute. “And before anybody says a word about your Mildreds, or your Host, or whatever’s supposedly keeping watch around here—I don’t count any of that. I’ve been places that looked just as taken care of. Offer’s for when all of that isn’t enough. It usually isn’t.”

Nobody laughed this time.

It was Laura who broke the pause, and her voice, when it came, was gentle rather than defensive. “I appreciate it. I mean that.” Both faces held Fiona’s eyes. “But it isn’t the Hotel keeping any of us safe. It’s each other. And it’s him.” She didn’t need to say who.

Erin picked it up before the quiet could set too hard. “I told her the same thing myself, earlier tonight—that I’d take the hit for her if she needed it.” A small, easy shrug, mint-green shoulders catching the lantern light. “That’s not a Hotel thing. That’s just us.”

“I’m Andy’s Consort,” Laura added, plain as a fact rather than a boast. “That’s not just a title—I’ve got a piece of his strength in me now. The Gifts he was given, I have those, too. I could probably outlast half this crowd in an arm-wrestling contest and not break a sweat doing it. And that’s the least of it.” Her expression softened, the wry pull at her mouth giving way to something more somber. “Not trusting him is what cost me everything. Trusting him has only ever given me back what I lost.”

Near the front, Chloe spoke up before she seemed to fully decide to. “I used to sleep with a light on,” she said, small, almost embarrassed by how simple it sounded. “I don’t anymore.” She didn’t explain further, and nobody asked her to.

“And nobody made her,” Riley said, arms crossed, her voice carrying the particular flatness that made people believe her whether they meant to or not. “That’s the whole point. Nobody here’s performing safe for an audience. We just are.”

Fiona’s jaw worked. For just a second something crossed her face that had nothing to do with the party at all—there and gone, too fast to name, older than tonight by a long way. She dragged a hand back through her hair, harder than the gesture needed to be.

“Good for you,” she said, and it came out rougher than she’d probably meant it to. She recovered fast—chin back up, arms folding tight over her chest. “Offer still stands regardless. I don’t hand it out for free, and I’m not taking it back.”

Laura didn’t push it further. “Noted,” she said, both bodies at once, quiet enough that it didn’t feel like a victory. “Thank you, Fiona.” She tied the ribbon in a firm, no-nonsense knot, tight against the bark, the kind that wasn’t going anywhere.

It took the circle a moment to come back from that. Laura gave it one, tidying the ribbons already on the branch with a kind of busywork tenderness, then reached up and took down something that had been fastened on with three separate bows.

She read it. Stopped. Read it again. “‘Hashtag get Mona preggers,’” she said, and then, because the ribbon insisted: “‘Dot dot dot eventually. Dot dot dot when she’s ready. Dot dot dot.’”

The shriek came from the far side of the tree, unmistakable and instantly muffled. “Mine,” said Winter, stepping into the light with both hands raised, entirely unrepentant. “The ellipses are load-bearing.”

“That isn’t a wish for our family,” both of Laura’s mouths pointed out.

“No,” Winter agreed. “It is not.”

“Do you want it back?”

“Absolutely not. Tie it high, Auntie.” Laura did, both bodies stretching for the branch at once, and the whole circle got to watch a hashtag go into a tree with considerable ceremony.

Somewhere behind her, Mona said something into her own hands that nobody could make out and nobody needed to.

As Laura reached up for the next ribbon, the circle leaned in. This one was thicker than the rest, and its ends had been torn, not cut.

She unrolled it and read, her voice ringing clear through the night:

“‘I wish that, just once, the dessert table would never run out of lemon tart, not even once, not even for a second, for as long as the Hotel stands. This is absolutely not a joke. I am very serious. Don’t judge me.’”

The crowd burst into real, rolling laughter. Several hands pointed at Chloe, who immediately shook her head and put her face in her hands, blushing furiously. Emily hugged her, and Chloe managed to say, “It wasn’t me!” which made the laughter go up another notch.

Laura let the noise settle before calling out, “You know, whoever wrote that, the kitchen is staffed for exactly this purpose. It will be done.” And she tied the ribbon in a big, floppy bow, letting it hang loose and proud.

The next had been written in a hurry, in a pen that had run dry halfway and been shaken back to life. “‘I hope you have lots of love, laughs, and orgies.’”

The crowd took that one on the chin. Somebody whooped. Near the back, Mona let out a breath she had visibly been holding since the ceremony started, sagged about four inches, and informed her own shoes, “Oh thank gawd. That was the safe one.”

Laura came down with the next ribbon before anyone had finished laughing. Same pen. Same hurry. Same hand. She read it straight through, because there was no other way to do it. “‘Ahhhhhh… do more sexy stuff? Is that advice or me being perverted? That’s probably me being perverted. Man, advice giving is hard!’”

Mona made a sound like a kettle.

“It is,” both of Laura’s mouths agreed, with enormous sympathy, once the noise had gone up and come most of the way down. “It really is.” Both her faces were doing something complicated in the lantern light. “And for what it’s worth—that’s honest advice.”

“That one wasn’t supposed to come off the tree,” Mona whimpered, from inside her hands.

“I know,” said both of Laura’s voices, kindly. “It’s fine. It’s going up anyway.” And it did, right beside the other one, where anybody could read it.

The next ribbon was written in a single, even line of black ink, every letter perfect and identical:

“’I wish for everyone else’s happiness. And if that’s not enough, then I wish for it even more.’”

Before Laura could tie it off, Katherine stepped away from the crowd. She made a gesture—palm flat to her chest, then open to the sky—and held Laura’s gaze. Laura nodded back, a silent thank you, and in response, several women near Katherine—Emily, Marissa, and Dawn among them—reached to touch her shoulder, her arm, the smooth curve of her back.

It was Erin who stopped.

She’d been watching Katherine’s face, and now she was watching the sky, and now she was looking at Katherine again with an expression that started as a frown and arrived somewhere else entirely. She turned to Mildred and asked a quick question, which Mildred answered immediately. Erin’s eyes brimmed.

“It’s past seven,” Erin said. Not loudly. Just to the air in front of her.

Katherine turned. Her brow drew together. She looked at Erin, then at the sky, then back at Erin, and the question on her face was so unguarded it was almost painful to watch.

Every evening, for as long as this new mercy had lasted, there had been a pull behind her ribs when the twelve hours were ending—faint at first, then absolute, patient as a tide, drawing her back toward the frame whether she willed it or not. She reached for it now, the way a tongue searches out a missing tooth. It wasn't there.

Erin looked up at her. “You’re still here.”

The crowd had gone quiet without deciding to. Someone near the back said something that no one heard, and it didn’t matter. Katherine stood very still in the lantern light, and the stillness lasted long enough that the women nearest her began to understand what they were witnessing—and then, all at once, they moved.

It wasn’t organized. Emily got there first, and then Marissa, and then it stopped being possible to track who was holding whom. The circle around the tree became a knot around Katherine, arms finding her from every direction, someone’s forehead pressed to her shoulder, someone else’s hand in her hair. She stood in the center of it and let it happen, her hands rising slowly to return what she could reach.

Her face broke.

Not all at once—first her mouth, then her eyes, and then the rest of her, her shoulders shaking with something that had no sound at first and then did, quiet and helpless and entirely unashamed. Dawn was crying too, and trying not to show it, which wasn’t working. Chloe had both arms around Katherine’s waist and her face buried somewhere near her collarbone, and Riley had a hand on Chloe’s back, and the whole mass of them swayed slightly, the way a tree does when the wind is gentle and everywhere at once.

Laura watched from the stone, both faces still, the ribbon loose in her hands.

After a while, when the knot of women had loosened enough to see Katherine’s face clearly—blotched, luminous, still shaking slightly at the corners—Laura stepped down. She crossed to her without a word, and when she reached her, she simply took both of Katherine’s hands in hers and held them, and looked at her for a long moment the way you look at something you thought you’d lost.

Katherine laughed—a real one, wet and sudden—and nodded.

The crowd loosened slowly, no one quite willing to be the first to fully let go. When Katherine finally turned back toward the tree, her face was blotched and bright and entirely unguarded, and she walked with the particular dignity of someone who has just been seen all the way through and survived it.

Laura tied the ribbon a little higher than the rest, right where the next branch split off from the trunk.

The next one came away with a strange reluctance, the knot so tight it took both bodies working at it to set it free. When Laura read it, her voice was steadier than her hands:

“‘I promise to fight for my new sisters with everything I have, the way I wish I’d fought for the ones I left behind. I hope, wherever he is, he knows I made it count for something.’”

No one spoke, but a few heads bowed, and from the edge of the crowd, Sumiku’s outline trembled slightly—just the wings, not the hands. Claire, next to her, let her tail curl gently around Sumiku’s ankle, and left it at that.

Laura looped the ribbon into place, then stopped. Her hands hovered over the trunk, fingertips trembling. Finally, she reached down to the lowest branch, nearly at eye level, and worked free a ribbon so tightly knotted it had torn its own paper.

Laura worked her hands slowly, smoothing the torn ends of the final ribbon. For a moment, it seemed like she might not read it at all. But she did, voice so even that only the closest could hear the catch in it:

“‘I promise to keep choosing this. All of us, and that means you too. Even when the answer is written for me. Even on the days I am not sure it's a choice at all. I will choose it again every day, for as long as the world lets me, and if it doesn't, I'll choose you anyway. Gotcha.’”

The word at the end was printed huge and blue, lopsided, impossible to miss: a single word with the weight of a secret language between two people, handed back to her now in public. Laura's breath caught. Her left hand tightened around the ribbon, hard enough to leave crescent moons in her palm, her eyes going bright before she could stop them. For one impossible moment, her faces flashed a double-wide smile—quick, helpless, then gone—and both her voices were silent.

The circle around the tree held its breath. Most of the crowd didn’t know what the word meant, or if it meant anything at all. But every woman who’d ever found herself wanted in a way she couldn’t name, every one of them who’d left a mark somewhere for a person who’d understand it—something in the air recognized it.

The sound that followed wasn’t laughter or applause. It was a hush that pulled everyone closer to the tree, every face lit gold and shadow by the lanterns the Mildreds had set at the branches. Near the edge, Myra’s tails fluffed twice and then went perfectly still, her blind gaze tipped up, fixed on the tree. Beside her, Marie’s hand found her daughter’s wrist and rested there, light as a second shadow. Eden, not far away, tilted her chin skyward, and Dinah—arms crossed, still in her clinical calm—looked away, blinking a little too quickly for her own liking.

Nobody claimed the ribbon. Laura didn’t need to say whose it was; she just tied it, high on the trunk, close to Katherine’s. Her fingers lingered on it a moment, and then she stepped down from the stone, both bodies moving together, steady as always.

The party shifted, restless. The knots of women around the tree started to dissolve and resettle. The real celebration started then—not the formal part, but the drifting and gathering and breaking apart again, clusters of four or six or two, some circling back to the main house, some pulling away toward the darker corners of the garden. The tree was left for a few minutes in silence, its low branches trembling with the weight of new color, and the last of the dusk cooling in a thick blue around its roots.

A Mildred drifted past with an empty tray, unhurried, and Laura caught her sleeve before she could pass all the way by. “That last ribbon,” Laura said, quiet enough that it wouldn't carry. “The torn one. I watched everyone write theirs this morning, and I don't remember anyone writing that.”

Mildred considered this with the same unbothered patience she brought to everything. “There was a flesh-being near the tree this afternoon, while the rest of you were occupied in the Sunroom,” she said.

“Do you know who?”

“I know a great many things,” Mildred said. “I am not able to tell you all of them. But I did not need to ask her name.”

“Her,” Laura repeated, very softly, and something in her chest loosened that she hadn't realized was tight. An image of Andi, sneaking to the tree to tie the ribbon where Laura would find it, came to her mind unbidden, and made her smile, despite everything.

“That is the word I would use,” the Mildred said, and drifted on with her tray, already looking for the next empty glass.

Laura lingered at the base for a minute, neither joining the others nor moving away. Erin came up behind her, not touching this time, just standing close enough to share the space. For a while, neither said a word.

“You’re allowed to go after him, you know,” Erin said, voice pitched low and private.

Laura shook her head, her lips pressed tight. “Not tonight,” she said, two voices just a shade out of sync. “Tonight he doesn’t have to be the answer to everything.”

Erin nodded, and for the first time since the party started, she looked tired. Not weary or defeated, but simply spent: the particular kind of tired that only comes from making it through a day you’d been sure would undo you.

They stood in silence while the lanterns finished brightening, the tree taking on a new dimension as the colored ribbons cast their own, ghostly tints on the white trunk. Then, at last, Laura lifted her eyes to the circle, the gold-blue light catching in her hair, and called out one final time.

“I want to make this official,” she said, both bodies turned to face the crowd. “From tonight forward, nothing gets moved, pruned, or planted within ten feet of this tree. It is now a protected species. Anyone who wants to add a ribbon can. And if you ever need to say something and you don’t want to say it to a person, you can just tie it here and let the wind figure it out.”

The applause was gentle, at first—only a few claps, a low ripple of voices—but then someone started up a proper cheer, and the knot of women at the front followed suit, and suddenly it was loud, so loud it carried all the way up to the terrace where the lights of the main house still burned.

Laura stepped back. Her hands hovered at her sides, empty now, nothing left to hold except the last of the day’s warmth.

The crowd thinned, as crowds do. Emily was the first to move, peeling off with Chloe and Claire toward the shadowy walkways at the edge of the garden. Liesa joined them, her arm looped easy through Claire’s, her other hand gesturing with her usual energy as she told some story already lost to the wind. Myra and Marie waited for the path to clear, then made their way slowly up toward the house, Myra’s tails brushing the low grass as they went. Eden and Dinah stayed by the tree a little longer, then left together, arms not quite linked but always in step. Dawn and Marissa set off in the opposite direction, their conversation picking up where it had paused an hour ago, faces both bright with something lighter than memory.

Near the trunk, Katherine stood. She hadn’t moved at all, but now she reached up—slow, deliberate—and laid one flat palm against the tree. Her face was unreadable, but the gesture was plain: the mark of a person who’d decided to remember this, whatever happened tomorrow.

For a long time after, the tree stood alone, its trunk hung with wishes and promises and tiny pieces of advice. The ribbons kept moving in the breeze, even when the people who’d left them were gone.

---

Somehow, Jenny got paired up with a mute woman for the sapling planting activity. Given how the activity was to have the partner talk to you about the plant, this seemed suboptimal. Then again, maybe not, given that the partner was encouraged to lie.

Jenny did not want to hurt the baby trees. It felt wrong for her new nature; she’d need to help Erin repot the saplings that were done poorly. For the one in her immediate charge, she did something to get more direct feedback: she listened to the plant. Plants didn’t usually have much to say, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t help her help it.

“Alright, little guy, this deep enough for you?”

Rustle, rustle.

Satisfied, she started to carefully use Mold Earth to help the root bulb get settled in the pot, then filled in the gaps with more soil; from what her dryad instincts were telling her, the soil was pretty tasty, with good mineral composition. She patted the soil down just right, then took off the blindfold. The former coffee table grabbed another handful of potting soil and swallowed it.

Katherine's whole face changed when she spotted Jenny — delight, quick and unguarded, still a little too big for her face, like she hadn't figured out yet how much room to give it. She crossed the grass in three unhurried strides, dropped into a crouch beside the pot, and peered at the sapling with theatrical seriousness before flashing Jenny a thumbs-up.

Chloe trailed a step behind, carrying two glasses of something pink, and hadn't let more than an arm's length open up between herself and Katherine since the tree — not a rule anyone stated, just something that had been true for the last twenty minutes. Chloe folded down on the grass. “Fair warning: she's a lot right now.”

“Oh — hey.” Jenny sat back on her heels, blindfold still pushed up into her hair, soil under her fingernails. Something in Katherine's face stopped her mid-greeting. “Wait. Are you okay? You look like you've been —”

Katherine nodded, hard, then shook her head, then nodded again, laughing wetly at her own contradiction. She pressed a fist briefly over her heart, then opened it wide, fingers spread — small, private fireworks.

“The pull,” Chloe said gently, glancing at Katherine first and getting an eager nod before she goes on. “Every day since Andy first won her the twelve hours, it's come, right on schedule, no exceptions. Tonight it didn't.”

Jenny's mouth opened and closed once before anything came out. “Wait—permanently? That's—” She looked at Katherine like she was checking the math herself. “That's not just today's version of free?”

Katherine shook her head, slow and solemn, and tapped the grass under her own bare feet — here, now, staying. Then, because apparently even a miracle didn't get to stay that heavy for long around her, she smirked, jerked a thumb at herself, and mimed settling in for a long, comfortable nap, sitting right where she was, in the open, no painting required.

“She says she's not going anywhere,” Chloe translated, grinning despite herself. “Believe me, we heard about it the whole walk over.”

Talking with Hazel helped, a little. Telling more people will help more? They seem nice. Jenny tried to calm her breathing. Life as a moving sentient tree was strange. “Not used to talking about this, still — even the second time around. I was eliminated from the game, too. I got turned into a coffee table. Tyalangan saved me from my first Master and got her Producer to change me into this after I was voted into Mona’s harem. She’s over there.”

Chloe was suddenly distracted by a shriek that quickly turned into a giggle. She turned to see Mona using a hot glue gun she somehow managed to find, attaching some of the extra dildoes from today’s earlier explosion (that she must have shoved into her inventory when no one else was looking) onto her sapling pot. The Mistress cackled, “Soon, this tree can be carried around in style! The dildo palanquín is the future of all sapling transport!” Dawn watched, looking both horrified and delighted.

“Uh,” Chloe said, “is she always like that?”

Jenny blinked, then sighed, “Sometimes worse, usually better? She can be a handful,” Jenny overcame her embarrassment to continue, “I don’t know why, but today has been a bad day for me. Too many nightmares about the show last night I guess? Too many new people at once making me dwell on possibilities maybe? I know she wouldn’t do that to me, but I keep thinking about what if this all goes away and I am left as an object again. I’m so scared about that. What do I do?”

Katherine's expression softened at Jenny's admission. She hesitated, then pointed at herself, then Jenny, then made a fluttering gesture that could have meant "free" or "flying." She crossed her arms under her significant breasts and mock-glared, lifting a finger in an injunction gesture towards the door. Then she pointed at herself and Jenny with the index fingers of both hands, and brought both fingers together. The same. She opened her arms in a hug, and tilted her head questioningly, an encouraging smile on her face.

Jenny didn't need Chloe to translate this part.

Jenny hesitated for but a moment, then jumped into the embrace. She sobbed, not sure out of fear or relief or something in between. Katherine’s embrace was so warm. Jenny murmured, “Thank you,” to the woman from a painting. “I needed this. Still don’t know how to get over the fear. I know it’s irrational and that I need to, but how…”

Katherine held Jenny tightly, providing as much comfort as she could. When she pulled back a little, she kissed Jenny's cheek gently, gave her a luminous smile, and took a step back, holding Jenny's hands. She gestured to the festoons, the trees, the beauty all around them, then pointed to Jenny's eyes, and took a deep dramatic breath. She gestured to Mona, and to Tyalangan's wives scattered in groups around them, and made a heart shape with her fingers. She smiled encouragingly at Jenny. She pointed to the dryad, then to herself, then made a phone sign with her hand, followed by a shrug and a gesture mimicking writing.

My charades game is hopefully enough to keep up. “So, see what’s around me, love Mona, and Tyalangan’s wives(?), and we figure out how to talk or whatever long distance?”

Katherine made a so-so gesture, then grinned. Good enough. She took Jenny's hand and smiled encouragingly, nodding. Chloe, finally tearing her eyes away from whatever Mona was doing, smiled and added, “Wherever we end up, I'm sure Tyalangan can figure out a way to get your letters for Katherine, and I can help write her reply, or Andy can.” She took Jenny's other hand and looks looked at the dryad softly. “You and Katherine and Sumiku went through something terrible and made it out on the other side. When you are finished with your season, you could help in the Hollow Garden. There are so many women there who could do with some hope.” Katherine nodded somberly and patted Jenny's hand.

Jenny nodded and didn't trust her voice for a moment, so she looked down the lawn instead. Six pots, at least, done badly. Packed too tight, or set too shallow, one with the root bulb sitting almost on the surface like an egg in a cup.

“I told Erin I'd fix those,” she said. “The blindfold thing was — people meant well.”

Katherine followed her gaze, then brightened and held out both hands, palms up. Give me one.

“It's messy. You'll get soil under your —”

Jenny didn't finish, because Katherine had already reached past her into the open bag, and by the time the sentence ran out she was buried in it to both wrists, working her fingers slowly through the loose dirt and watching them do it. Not for the sapling's sake. Just to feel it happening.

Fourteen years behind glass with nothing to touch. And tonight seven o'clock came and went and did not take her back.

Jenny set the worst of the pots down between them and pushed the bag closer.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. This one's root-bound, so we go slow.”

They went slow. Chloe stayed where she was in the grass with the two pink drinks, not translating anything, not needing to. Somewhere behind them Mona was hot-gluing something to something else and narrating it. The fear hadn't gone anywhere — Jenny could feel it sitting just behind her sternum, patient, the way it always was — but it had to wait its turn now, because there were six pots and not much light left.

Jenny worked her hands into the soil beside Katherine's and listened.

The sapling, small and unremarkable and thoroughly ordinary, told her it was fine.

Rustle, rustle.