The lamp sat on the floor in the corner of the only room they had.
Her mother had put it there because the table was full and there was no shelf within reach. The light it gave was yellow and low, which left the ceiling in shadow.
Aestrith had been sick for three weeks.
Not the sort of sickness her mother's soup could help. Not fever. Not her stomach. Not the kind that came from bad water or bad food, though her mother had tried every explanation before she stopped trying to explain it.
It felt as if something inside her was pressing outward. When she laid her hand flat on the floor, the floor seemed to push back harder than it should. She had stopped mentioning that part.
Her father had been watching her differently for the past four days.
It was not the attention of a father depressed over his daughter health, no. This was a different kind of attention. It had a stern impression to it, as if he had already moved past the situation and was looking at a decision.
