~Selene’s POV~
Petra arrives at seven in the evening with a paper bag that turns out to contain rice crackers, two kinds of hummus, a container of grapes she has sorted by size, and a single candle she lights on the kitchen table without asking permission, which is entirely consistent with everything Selene has come to understand about her.
The apartment is small and well-ordered and smells like the chamomile tea Miriam has been making in this kitchen since the second week and the faint cedar of the closet and the specific neutral cleanness of a space that has been lived in carefully. Petra takes it in the way she takes everything in — directly, without the performance of being impressed or not impressed, simply cataloguing it as information about the person who inhabits it.
"This is ve
