Kael
My instructor had returned the paper with one question.
What do you mean?
He had written it beside a sentence I had spent most of a morning improving.
I read the sentence again and began to understand his complaint.
The book lay open on the desk. My response sat beside it, covered with small corrections. A fresh page waited beneath my left hand.
I could have answered plainly in eight words.
I had used twenty-three.
The tenth morning of the month was warm enough that I left the window open. Somewhere below, someone practiced the same short sequence of strikes, stopped after the third, and began again. I had heard six attempts before breakfast.
Now they were on the seventh.
I crossed out my sentence.
A knock came at the door. The attendant brought the cup I had requested and asked whether I needed the empty box taken away.
"Yes, please."
He lifted it easily. I had spent several days treating it as a difficult object because it had once contained heavy books.
