"It's Last Night," First Day, as soon as the sun shunts free. Cedric shifts forward on his knees, the creak of ropes beneath mattress somehow familiar. Echoed. They're alone here, but you're never alone in the Hold – nearly a dormitory – "You ask a question, and turn it over, and then we know how the year goes."

Someone grunts, from shadows larger than he's thought to measure. Maybe they drew the bits blind from a bag, like a child in some faraway, stone city. Maybe they slit open a belly and went rooting within.

(Rost scratches at the door with a strange urgency. Storms are hard on animals, even the clever ones.)