Iven woke to someone eating noisily beside his head.
The older child from Sour Hook sat on the next bench, peeling a soft fruit with enormous concentration. Her blanket was dry. His coat, hung above the warm stove, was almost dry. Rain still struck the shelter roof, but the sound had lost the hard sideways edge of the previous evening.
“You snore,” she told him.
“Only in defense.”
“Of what?”
“People eating beside my head.”
She considered this, then took another bite.
He sat up carefully. Eight hours of sleep, two hot meals before it and water whenever he had woken had done their ordinary work. His graft held more charge than when he left Orret’s boat. His shoulders ached from holding lines and carrying people, but the movement came freely. He could feel the new morning’s strength without inventing a machine that had restored it for him.
