The Bond Welfare office had developed its own character over the months.
Elowen had not planned this deliberately. It had happened in the way of spaces that are genuinely used rather than performed in, the accumulated evidence of real work settling into the room's atmosphere until it became a place with a specific quality that was not institutional and not formal but simply present.
There were plants on the window ledge. Not medicinal. Just plants, the kind that grew because they wanted to and did not require much and rewarded minimal attention with reliable green presence. There were books on the working shelf, some clinical and some not, the not-clinical ones being there because she read in the office when the administrative work was done and she had stopped apologizing for the reading
