Moonbound
Silas bled them by paragraph and called it hygiene.
“‘Summoning is a crime,’” he read. “What is summoning? Does the Charter intend to criminalize breath? Surely an evening of light—music, lamps—cannot be understood as invitation. Surely we are modern enough to distinguish harmony from hunger.”
“The mouth is a pedant,” Evelyn said. “It loves definitions when it can use them to eat politely. Summoning is saying the name in order to make weather. If your lamps make weather, they are summoning. If your music persuades iron to remember blood, it is summoning. We have hinges to tell the difference.”