Sen reached the outpost on the sixty-ninth with mud on her boots and six pages of things Kel ought to change.
He read the first page, grunted and told her she had misspelled a fitting.
She pointed out that she had copied his spelling from the old drawing.
He took the page back.
Three days later, she was still smiling about it.
The five hundred and seventy-second morning began with the clinic’s wash water warming through the branch Iven and Annet had helped restore. Olin checked its return temperature while Sen fitted her revised handling grip to the cooled practice collar. The wider slot admitted it without catching. Kel tried it twice before agreeing to alter the working housing.
No one needed to ask Iven from Caldrin.
That had become one of the nicest things about the visit.
