The same sounds. Perfectly continuous. The same biological production, the same throat, the same involuntary vocal quality — just the context delivering the correct explanation for what those sounds had always been.
The transition.
His brain handled it in the way brains handle something they have understood structurally before they have understood consciously: first the stomach, then the mind.
The people on the platform were watching.
The same people who had watched him propose with a sandwich. Standing at the same angles. Watching with the same expressions — but the expressions were wrong now, the expressions were too calm, the expressions of people in a dream who exist to witness and not to intervene.
The water bottle.
Still in his hand.
He looked at it.
He looked at her.
At the hand on her belly.
At the specific sound of her throat doing what it had been doing in a hospital room last night in the dark.
He opened his mouth.
His eyes opened.
