Zephyr
Nothing happened.
I said it to myself at dawn, leaving her wing on silent feet while she slept. I said it in the training yard an hour later, running drills until my knuckles split. I said it at noon, and at dusk, and by then it had stopped being a fact and become a chant, the kind warriors use on long marches, words worn smooth of meaning from carrying.
Nothing happened. I sat in a chair. She slept. At first light I built up her fire so the room would be warm when she woke, and I left. A guard shift. That is all it was. I have kept ten thousand watches.
So explain, I asked myself, on the west wall at sunset, why this one is still in your chest.
I couldn't. That was the day's whole discovery. I could not explain the chair, or the run through a corridor I don't remember, or the
