Over the weeks that followed she became part of the household in the gradual way that things settled into place when nobody was forcing them.
She helped with any work that didn't take her away from Arthur's side because she was the kind of person who could not watch other people work without joining in, and also because, Arthur suspected, staying busy made the missing easier to manage. She was quick and thorough and she learned the farm's rhythms fast. His mother liked her immediately and without reservation. His father treated her with the same practical warmth he treated everyone. Thomas spoke to her in his limited but completely sincere way and she seemed to read him correctly, which was not something everyone managed.
Clara was enthusiastic from the first day — Clara was enthusiastic about most things — and had within a week decided that Saya's tail was the most interesting physical attribute she had personally encountered and had asked twice if she could touch it. Saya allowed this once, with the expression of someone making an exception, and Clara had treated it as a treasured privilege ever since.
Lyra was friendly.
Lyra was unfailingly friendly, warm, and thoughtful, and present in a way she was not usually quite so present, and Arthur noticed this about ten days in.
He was sitting in the garden with Saya going over a piece of spell theory when the gate opened and Lyra came through with Tsuki on her shoulders and a plate of something she had made in the kitchen.
'I thought you might want something to eat,' Lyra said.
Arthur looked at the plate. He looked at Lyra, who was looking at Saya with the specific quality of someone being very welcoming and also paying close attention.
'We ate an hour ago,' he said.
'You've been out here a long time. I thought you might be hungry again.' She sat down on the bench without being invited, which was not unusual behavior for Lyra except for the fact that she had not expressed any interest in spell theory before today and was now apparently very interested in sitting through this particular conversation.
Saya accepted a piece of whatever was on the plate and said thank you with the good manners she had with everyone.
Lyra smiled at her, then looked at Arthur with a quality that was entirely neutral.
He decided to say nothing.
◆ ◆ ◆
It was Clara who said it first, because Clara said most things first.
They were in Lyra's room, which was where the two of them went when they were having the kind of conversation that was meant to stay between them. Lyra was braiding Clara's hair, which was the activity that reliably got Clara to hold still long enough to talk properly.
'She's always with him,' Clara said.
'She's a guest in the house and he's the one who saved her and that she knows best, I guess,' Lyra said, in the tone she used when she was being precise.
'She's not just with him because she knows him best. She looks at him differently than she looks at anyone else. It's almost ike she is in love with him.'
'She's seven and she was alone and he saved her life. It makes sense that she'd feel safe near him.'
'Lyra.'
'What.'
'You brought them food in the garden.'
'I thought they might be hungry.'
'They had just eaten.'
Lyra's hands in her hair went still for a moment. Then continued.
'I was being considerate,' she said.
'You've been very considerate all week. You've joined them for his morning walk twice. You brought tea yesterday when they were at the table. You offered to show her the farm's south border — '
'That was genuinely useful information about where the boundary — '
'Lyra.'
A pause.
'She's very pretty,' Lyra said quietly.
'She is,' Clara agreed, equally quietly. 'And she really likes him.'
'He's seven.'
'So is she.'
'It's not — I'm not — ' Lyra started, stopped. 'I just like being included. That's all it is. They talk about interesting things.'
'You have never once asked Arthur to explain shadow magic theory or how to magically induce boredom to you,' Clara said.
'Maybe I was waiting for the right time.'
'Lyra.'
Lyra put down the braid.
'He's my baby brother. We were raised like twins, I just feel slightly concerned that they are getting too close,' she said, in a tone that would have closed the conversation if Clara were anyone else.
Clara, who was not anyone else, tilted her head and looked at her sister in the mirror above the vanity with an expression that managed to be completely sympathetic and completely accurate at the same time.
'I know,' she said. 'And she's very nice, and she's not going anywhere for months, and he likes her. So.' She paused. 'We should be her friends.'
Lyra was quiet for a moment. Then:
'What do you mean he likes her? That's just Arthur being kind and treating her like a friend nothing more. And I am being her friend.'
'Very enthusiastically.'
'Clara.'
'I think she likes us too. Genuinely. She told me yesterday she had never had sisters before.'
Something shifted slightly in Lyra's expression.
'She said that?'
'Her tail was wagging when she said it. The tail doesn't lie, Lyra. The tail doesn't lie', Clara said with a dopey smile on her face.
Lyra yanked her braid to snap her out of it. She was quiet for a moment.
Clearing her throat after coming to attention, 'The tail really doesn't lie,' she agreed, in a different tone.
◆ ◆ ◆
Arthur was still running the search.
Shadow's network had extended further into the Veiling Forest over the weeks Saya had been at the farm, new copies pushing along the migration routes that Saya had described, looking for the Ao Kitsune's signature. He had found nothing— no old camp markers, no magical residue or signs of a group that had passed through an area and moved on. It seemed Saya had run so far and so fast with her enhancements that she ended up in the outer woods when Arthur found her.
He hadn't found them yet.
He told Saya what he found each time he had something to report, which she seemed to appreciate — the act of being told, of being included in the search rather than simply waited to receive the result. She was not passive about her situation. She asked good questions. She suggested routes he hadn't thought of based on her knowledge of how the tribe chose its migration paths.
One evening, about six weeks in, she asked him something different.
They were sitting on the fence at the east field edge in the late light, watching Haru chase something through the grass with complete dedication and zero chance of catching it.
'When you find them,' she said, 'will you bring me to them?'
'Yes. That's the plan.'
A pause.
'And after that?'
He looked at her. She was watching Haru, not him, which was how she asked things she was being careful about.
'After that you'll be home,' he said.
'Yes.' Another pause. The tail, which had been moving, slowed. 'This feels like home too.'
He didn't say anything to that. He wasn't sure what to say to that. He was seven years old, which meant the part of him that was also thirty-seven had a reasonable understanding of what the sentence meant and the part of him that was seven found it too large and warm to look at directly.
Haru gave up on whatever he had been chasing and came back to sit against the fence post, panting.
'You'll be able to visit,' Arthur said eventually. 'If you want to.'
Saya looked at him then. The amber eyes were steady and direct, the way they were when she meant something completely.
'I'll want to,' she said.
He looked back at the field and thought: the search can run as long as it needs to.
Then he thought: that is not the right reason to run it slowly, and filed the thought away in the category of things he needed to be honest with himself about.
He kept running the search at full effort.
But the evenings on the fence were something he also did not hurry.
◆ ◆ ◆
Lyra joined them on the fence that evening about ten minutes after the conversation ended.
She brought three cups of something warm and distributed them without comment and sat on the fence on Arthur's other side and watched Haru with the serene expression of someone who had decided to be present and was being it very effectively.
Saya accepted the cup. Her tail, which had been still, moved once in the slow sweep that meant comfortable.
'What were you talking about?' Lyra asked, friendly, light.
'The tribe search,' Arthur said.
'Oh, good. How's that going?'
'The forest is too massive and it seem's Saya had run really far when I found her making it hard to find any tracks.'
'Hm, you will find them in no time. You never faill, baby brother.' Lyra sipped her drink and continued watching the field with the specific quality of someone settling in for an extended stay.
Saya looked at her. Then at Arthur. Then back at her cup.
Arthur could feel something that was very close to amusement building in a quiet corner of his processing.
He kept it there.
They sat on the fence in the late light, the three of them, and Haru lay down in the grass and the east field went from gold to grey and the first stars came out over the Veiling Forest, and nobody said anything for a while, and that was all right too.