THALRIC
I was in the northern terrace this evening. I had made the tea before she arrived because two cups were what the terrace required in the evening, and had been what the terrace required in the evening for long enough that making one would have felt like a mistake, and the not making a mistake had become its own kind of habit, and habits were the most honest available evidence of what a person had decided without deciding.
She took the second cup. We stood at the railing and looked at the tree line the way we had been looking at the tree line for four months, and the evening settled around us with the ordinary quality of evenings that had been populated by this specific arrangement long enough to expect it.
‘’Eight days,’’ she replied.
‘’Eight days?’’ I asked.
‘’Are you afraid,’
