On a morning in March, Mira came to the Bond Welfare office not for a case consultation or a paper revision or any of the various professional purposes that had characterized her visits over the months.
She came because she was about to turn twenty years old and she had something she wanted to say and she had decided that the right person to say it to was Elowen.
She sat in the soft chair with the directness she had developed over the year and a half of their acquaintance, the quality of someone who had observed direct communication practiced consistently enough that it had become her own register.
"I want to tell you what has changed," she said.
Elowen set down what she was doing.
Mira thought for a moment, organizing not her performance of the thought but the thought itself. "When I
