Chapter 12: Siovhan Remembers Something She Has Not Yet Said

The meadow grass was wet to the ankle, and I was occupied with mapping the treeline's exit arc against my compass bearing when Siovhan fell into step beside me.

I did not hear her approach. I had not heard her approach on any previous occasion either, and I had stopped startling by the third day, which I considered a personal achievement. She moved with the particular quality of a person for whom silence was not an effort but a condition, the way water is wet without trying.

We walked for some time without speaking. This was not uncomfortable. I had noted early in our acquaintance that Siovhan's silences were not the silences of a person gathering words. They were the silences of a person who had found, across several centuries, that many sentences did not require utterance to be understood, and was extending this courtesy to those around her.