Petra stays on the low wall for two hours.
Drace stays with her for the first hour. Then he goes, not because the sitting is done but because he has understood, in the specific way Drace understands things that do not require words, that the second hour is one she needs alone. He leaves without ceremony. He comes back to the operations room and he says to me, "She is all right," and I say "I know," and he goes to whatever he does when he is not at the training ground, which nobody has ever established.
At the two hour mark, Théo finds her.
He has been in the north wing room with his green notebook all morning remote school on Tuesdays, which he manages with the focused efficiency of someone who has decided that the compound's schedule takes precedence and school will accommodate itself
