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So no, it wasn’t a lie It went deeper than that

Sheat the counter by herself as she ate She’d half expected that, as upset as she was, she wouldn’t be able to keep the food down Instead, eating seemed to steady her The quiet of the house was alar, probably That hat her father would have said Mo a layer of oil or wax It could stay there on the counter She thought about taking it back in case the babies would understand that they shouldn’t wait That they were on their own She hoped they could get back up to the nest There were things that would eat baby sunbirds if they couldn’t get someplace safe

“Fuck,” Cara said to the e Her mother didn’t allow profanity, not even her father’s, but they weren’t here right now So like she was running a test to see if the rules were still the rules, she said it again “Fuck”

Nothing happened, because of course no one atching her And since no one atching…

The sa drone was in a cera to rust at the edges, but they still worked Just a little scraping feeling when she pulled them open The drone itself was a complex of vortex thrusters as wide as her thumb connected by a flexible network of articulated sticks able to reconfigure itself into dozens of different shapes Two dozen attachable sa stone to drawing blood stood in ranks in the case like soldiers, but Cara only cared about the three grasping ones And of therips She put the waldoes in her pocket, hefted the drone on her hip as if she was carrying a baby, and shoved the case closed again before she headed out to the shed

Momma bird and the drone fit into her father’s cart with plenty of roorabbed a little hand spade too She’d use the drone to put the babies safe in their nest, and then give Moh, but she could do it, so she would

The sun was starting its long slide down into night The low ht as ainst the reddening light The cart had one wheel that stuck so behind her like a stutter until it broke loose again Cara put her head down, her htness between her shoulder blades felt like resolve

The forest was mostly hers Xan played there some, but he liked the other kids more than she did, so he spent more time in town Heron the coreen—to keep the food supplies co She knehat the sounds of the forest were, even if she couldn’t always figure out what ht one, the call of a red clicker fros that lived there didn’t have names Laconia was a whole world, and huave na she saw every day for the whole rest of her life, most of the species there would stay nameless It didn’t bother her They just hat they were Coot narown-ups could talk about therunchers Other things, no one talked about, so they didn’t need naet

That

wasn’t strange, though All names were like that A shorthand so people could talk about things Laconia was only Laconia because they called it that Before they’d cos that had named it were all dead now, so it didn’t matter

She reached the pond, a few bright-gold streaks in the sky where the last of the sun still lit the high clouds The baby sunbirds were still in the water, peeping in distress at her arrival The water was dark already, like it had pulled the shadows under the trees into it The night-feeding anilass snakes She slaved the drone to her handheld The control panel was more complicated than she was used to, with half a dozen control modes listed down the side that she didn’t understand She was pretty certain she could do everything she needed with only the basic setup She just needed to get the babies up out of the water and safe into their nest And s Mos would be…not right But the least wrong she could make them She took the waldoes out of her pocket and coloom to see which of them looked like they’d be able to hold on to the little bodies but not hurt them

“I’m sorry,” she said to the pale, round-mouthed birds as she fit the smallest waldo onto the drone “I’m new at this”

One of the babies caught sight of Momma bird’s body in the cart and tried to haul itself out of the water to waddle toward her It was as good a place to start as any Cara sat cross-legged on the clover and started the drone It whirred as it rose in the air

The first baby shrieked, hissed, and ran Cara smiled and shook her head “It’s okay, little one It’s only ht”

Only it wasn’t