“I like India,” Esha said, examining the surface of his white shirt because it was so close to her face. The material looked thick but relaxed, the white not stark, and yet soft and clean, like moonlight.

He scratched his bearded jaw. She’d confused him. The motion made that woodsy smell stronger.

Then he smiled, and she couldn’t tell what that smile meant. She loved that. Really loved it. The not knowing. “Are you one of Yash’s sisters?”

“Yes. Esha. The oldest,” she said. She hadn’t said her own name in a very long time. Is that why he had smiled? Because he had been waiting for her to tell him what her name was?

“Hi, Esha the Oldest. It’s nice to meet you.” He smiled again, but it was more his eyes than his lips, and she leaned back to get a better look at them.

They were dark. Very dark. And large. Very large. And creases emanated from their edges like cobwebs pressed into skin. His entire face was like that, crisscrossed by lines and planes. His jaw was angled and covered in thick stubble that wasn’t quite a beard. A raised scar split his upper lip and flattened his Cupid’s bow, forming a crevice in his stubble. It was a face from the classics she had read as a child, a face from her mother’s stories, a face weathered by wind and rain.

He cleared his throat.

She blinked, not happy that he had interrupted her study.

“Do you always stand this close to people when you meet them for the first time?”

That made her laugh again, but she covered her mouth because she didn’t want to make a habit of spraying him. Stepping away from him didn’t feel great, but she did it anyway because she couldn’t explain why she needed to stand close to him. What standing so close to him and feeling nothing had given her. She laughed again.

His eyes did that thing again, as though he were gauging her. It was a look she knew well. Her family always wore that look when they interacted with her. They never wore it when they talked to one another, but with her, it was always there, brightening their eyes. A look that wondered when she was going to collapse into a seizure.

His gauging was somehow different. Not rooted in knowledge that she was broken. He was examining her. Trying to figure out what she was.

Maybe he’d figure it out and then she’d know too.

“Why are you up here climbing my balcony?”

“I thought I saw a Brahminy kite sitting on the railing. I had to climb up and see if it really was.”

“You could see him?” He’d seen Garuda? How was that possible?