Steph added more bubbles. She was not, as a policy, in the business of denying her daughter claims of specialness. The world would do enough of that later.

Pyjamas. Milk. The winding-down.

Eira's room was small and bright — yellow walls, a bookshelf overflowing with picture books and the odd chapter book she wasn't quite ready for but kept because she liked the covers, a lamp shaped like a mushroom that cast warm shadows across the ceiling. The travel cot was set up in the corner, Tima's sleeping bag already laid out inside it, the pillow arranged just so. Eira's bed was across the room, the duvet decorated with stars.

Tima sat on Steph's lap in the rocking chair, drinking her milk from the cup with the handles — the slow, rhythmic suck-and-pause of a child winding down. Her eyes were open but unfocused, that glazed, half-here look that meant sleep was arriving whether she wanted it to or not. Hoppy was recovered from the bathroom floor, dried, and reinstated to his position under her arm. His eye-patch was still crooked but nobody mentioned it.

Eira was in bed, propped on one elbow, watching.

"Is she asleep?"

"Nearly," Steph whispered.

"Her eyes are still open."

"That's how she does it. She goes to sleep with her eyes open and then they close at the end."

"That's weird."

"That's Tima."

Eira considered this, then lay down, pulling the duvet to her chin. "Will she be scared in the cot?"

"She won't be scared. She'll have Hoppy. And you'll be right there."

"I'll protect her," Eira said, matter-of-fact. "If she cries, I'll sing to her."

"What will you sing?"

"The whale song. The one from school."

"Perfect."

Steph lowered Tima into the cot — slowly, the careful negotiation of transferring a nearly-asleep child without triggering the motion sensor that all toddlers seemed to have wired directly to their consciousness. Tima's body stiffened for a moment as it left the warmth of Steph's lap — that micro-waking, the brief flash of eyes, the fingers tightening on Hoppy — and then she sank. Into the sleeping bag. Into the cot. Into whatever children go to when the day lets go of them.

Steph stood there. She looked at Tima — the dark curls against the white sheet, the steady rise and fall of breath, the way her mouth was slightly open, the way her hand was curled around Hoppy's ear. She looked at Eira — already halfway to sleep herself, one arm hanging off the bed, her hair fanned across the pillow.

Two children in one room. The orange glow of the street light through the curtains. The faint hum of the fridge downstairs. The distant sound of the river, or what might have been the river, or might have been the road, or might have been nothing at all — just the sound that Ty Sign made at night, the low, constant breath of a place being itself.