Hope turned five on a Wednesday with no threats on the horizon and no crises scheduled and only the steady background hum of the imprisoned consciousness to remind her that peace was conditional and maintenance-dependent and never really free of cost.
I had asked what she wanted. She'd sat with the question longer than five-year-olds usually sit with birthday questions, turning it over, testing it for traps the way she tested dimensional readings now—out of habit, because vigilance had become reflex somewhere in the past three years.
"Small," she finally said. "Family. The wolves-socks girl can come if she wants. Maybe three other alliance kids so it doesn't feel like a funeral. Real cake, not the tactical nutrition bar Draven keeps calling cake when he thinks I'm not paying attention. And—" She paused. "Nobody has to be okay. Nobody has to perform anything. We can just be however we actually are."
