The third chair breathed.
Not marble. Not wood showing through white paint where many hands had gripped. It breathed, inhale and exhale, faint, like tank hum, like sleeping child, like snow falling up. White, older than second, older than first, and in it, small, bare feet not touching floor, sat Elara at four.
Green bicycle t-shirt whole, not torn, though Elara held half and the woman in second chair held half, though the t-shirt on floor where Lyra had sat third chair had been torn and now lay with four handprints. White feather that smoked in small hand, six fingers on right, five on left, black hair, grey eyes, crescent scars on both wrists, both, left and right, same as Elara now had after severed hand stitched with light.
She smiled with missing front tooth, the one Elara lost at
