It happened in the kitchen.
Not my kitchen — the main one, the compound's communal kitchen where large meals were organized and pack events were fed and which I had adopted as a secondary workspace on the mornings when the east kitchen felt too small for what I was making. I was doing something complicated with peppers. A sauce that had started as comfort food and evolved into something with opinions, which was how most of the best things I made happened.
The compound morning was at its regular register. Pack bond warm. River audible through the kitchen's north window. The small warmth below my ribs — which had been my constant companion now through enough weeks that I had stopped startling at its presence and had started simply noting it, the way you note a heartbeat, the way you note b
