Chapter 63: Mira's POVShe eats dinner, This is the first thing I notice that she sits down and actually eats, not the moving-food-around performance of the last two weeks, but genuine eating, fork to mouth, present enough in her body to be hungry. It is a small thing and I do not comment on it because commenting will make her self-conscious and she will stop. But I notice it and I noted it alongside everything else I have been filing for twenty-one days.Landon carries the dinner conversation the way he always does when the adults are quiet narrating something about a structural modification he has been considering for the fort's secondary drainage system, which apparently involves redirecting rainwater away from the rope bridge anchor points. He has sketched it in the margin of his homework. He shows me the sketch. I tell him it is thoughtful engineering. He nods, satisfied, and continues eating.Elara watches him, with the soft look she always had for him, the one she does when she
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