April arrives with the first real warmth.
Not the warmth that is merely the absence of cold, the warmth that has a quality of its own, the specific positive presence of heat returning to ground that has been hard since November. The compound absorbs it the way it absorbs everything, completely and without ceremony. The courtyard is different in April. The light is longer. The compound's morning has more of it.
Drace moves the training sessions later in April not much, twenty minutes, but enough to take advantage of the morning light, which is a concession I have never seen him make to a season before. He does not announce this change. He simply appears at the training ground at the new time and waits.
Théo is there before him.
Théo has been at the compound for two weeks in April, a sch
