“Don’t make it sound like there’s something wrong with the way you are.”

She wanted to laugh again. Where could she even begin with how much was wrong with her?

“You don’t have to be like everyone else to be normal.” He said it with more force than she’d ever heard him say anything.

“Isn’t that the definition of normal? Being like the norm? That’s what you spend your life searching for, right? The things that are different from other things. The things that make one thing, one being, one form of life itself?”

His mouth dropped open, only the slightest bit. She’d surprised him. Again.

“I’ve never thought about what I do that way.” Of all the things he could have said, all the denials he could have made to make her feel better, this punched her in the chest. It made her want to stay, to verbalize the apology.

“I’m sorry. Sometimes I don’t know what I am.”

Silence settled on him again, but he was still standing close and his body absorbed her words instead of searching for ways to deny them.

“I think I do. I know who you are.” The words were a whisper. It struck her that he might be the only person on earth who might figure it out.

Was that why she was with him? Here, outside the protection of her room and her family, trusting him to show her what she was?

“I can’t articulate it, though. What I can articulate is that I don’t know who I am when I’m with you. No, that’s not true. I know I’m a version of myself that I had never considered before, and it’s not only when you’re near me. It’s all the time now. You’ve made me new, Esha. I don’t know what to do with that.”

He’d made her new too. It was absurd how much. The urge to laugh gripped her again. He seemed to find the laughter in her eyes, study it with his usual care.

“I haven’t seen him since I met you . . .” She took a breath. “Garuda.” It was the first time since the accident that she was saying Garuda’s name out loud to another human being.

A wave of something seemed to go through the air and resettle the atmosphere. Her gaze traveled to the sky again. His did too. The sky brightened and they both blinked together.

The sound of wings whispered in her ear. A soft kiss and then it was gone.

He watched her, and waited silently for her to go on.

“My aie was a storyteller,” she said. Again, she was mentioning her mother for the first time in what seemed to be decades. The words pierced her tongue as they left her and sliced down the middle. My aie.