Elara's POV
It took less than a day.
I did not know how it happened. I had told no one. My mother had told no one. My father, who told no one anything as a constitutional principle of his existence, had told no one. The mansion did not gossip about its own business, or if it did it did not gossip to the lower settlement. There was no visible chain of it, no person I could identify as the point at which the information had entered the neighbourhood's bloodstream.
It was simply there the next morning.
The way weather is simply there. Not arriving. Already arrived. Already settled into the texture of the day before you have opened your eyes properly.
I knew before I went outside.
I knew from the sounds of the lane, which had a quality to them I recognised now, the quality of a neighbour
