Karik Fleming loitered with a pleasant, round woman in the bustling center of the hospital waiting room. She was one of many pleasant people he had met since moving house. His new house was small and shiny, but acceptable - even exciting. When he looked out the windows he could see they were millions of feet off the ground. He screamed the first time he saw it, and a round woman had come running out to check on him, his uncle right behind her. It was still fun to peek out the curtains, sometimes.

The cycle of round women who came and went cleaned the house, and made him all sorts of exciting food. The food was his favorite part of the new house, he had never envisioned so many flavors beyond crackers and fizzy water.

Karik could only take so much excitement, though. Before falling asleep he occasionally wished he was back in the tall red wood rooms of his own home. Karik hadn’t seen his father in a long time and was beginning to worry, like he worried about the little pet pig they’d had for all of a week. It seemed so long ago, he worried too that he would forget them if they didn’t come back soon. Even having Kuro and Kris around would have been fine, even if all they did was yell and run away from him. Things were so quiet without them.

Sometimes tears came, but he tended to fall asleep before wishing too hard. Bedtime at the new house was much later than it had been before. Sometimes he got to see the moon, staring through the curtains like a giant eyeball. It didn’t stop him from sleeping, it just gave him unusual dreams. He’d been having a lot of those, and waking up to a strange room made his head hurt.

But the hospital was familiar turf. Karik made a tour of his favorite lobby landmarks: the newspaper stand, the fire extinguisher, the coffee station, and the big round desk by the front doors where the ladies in high heels sat. Today, there were many other visitors.

“Do I know you, boy?”

By the doors stood a woman in a very straight, very white dress. She had crinkled skin so thin he could see little blue lines, and she had a strange, but familiar, smile.

“It is you. So you’re doing well. Good, good...”

Around her neck, she had a necklace, made of brown ropes and white spikes, like his. Karik remembered.

He pulled the necklace out of his pocket. His favorite bead, the dark sharp one, had cracked after biting it too hard, and he hoped she wouldn’t notice. There was also blood on one of the stick-like pieces, that did not come off no matter how hard he wiped. But otherwise, it was still good enough to return. “This is for you,” he said.

People liked when he said that, and she had been the one to ingrain that particular phrase in his head. But the woman held her hands back and said, “No thank you, dear. I have my own. That one is yours.”

She didn’t take it. Karik was conflicted, and embarrassed. The pleasant round woman he had come in with was watching him with an look that didn’t seem happy, so this must be wrong. “Do you…” he began slowly, “want me to die?”

The wrinkled woman tilted her head.

“You want me to die!” Karik howled, and thought of his mother. “You want me to die! You heard what--”

The round woman hurried to his side, but he couldn’t stop. Then his uncle rushed over, with his face pale. He was always pale. He had hair like snow, and it stayed like that even after the snow had stopped coming from the sky. He also spoke so quietly that Karik had to be quiet to hear him. “Karik. Karik, that’s enough,” his uncle whispered. “So sorry. He has... this habit. We’re still learning.”

“Oh, not to worry. He’s better than some of the children I have to take care of.”

“That… sounds like a handful.” Caelus Umbre looked from one necklace to the other. “Ah, so you two were discussing fashion? I wondered where he got that. He won’t let it go.”

Arilla thumbed the bones of her amulet. “He’s a smart boy. Not the most beautiful adornments, but they’re supposed to bring luck and protection. I’ll admit, it seems a lot like superstition, but what harm can it do to hope?”

“Well said. Sometimes that’s all there is.” Umbre took Karik’s hand. “Let’s go upstairs, your mom is waiting. Say goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” Arilla said as Umbre led Karik to the elevators.

“Goodbye,” Karik echoed, as Arilla turned and pushed out the wide glass doors into the pale humid air and bird calls of spring.