~Selene's POV~
The room has settled into the particular quiet that follows something enormous.
Not silence — Lior has made clear, in the forty minutes since his arrival, that silence is not a register he intends to inhabit for long. But the specific quality of noise has changed from the functional sounds of Dr. Amara working and Miriam moving and the long hours of labour resolving themselves into outcome, into something softer. Lior's sounds now are the sounds of someone who has registered that the world contains warmth and is cautiously revising his initial assessment of it.
Asha makes almost no sound at all.
She is in Selene's left arm. Lior is in her right. She has been holding them this way for twenty minutes, adjusting the weight of each with the careful attention of someone learn
