Flux

hopeless that she soon shooed him away as fondly as if he had been one of her grandchildren. Hai-Shui was nowhere to be seen, and Miner was hesitant to step beyond the boundaries of the courtyard. Everyone here had been very nice to him, but who knew what kind of trouble he might find if he wandered away by himself.
    In the end, Miner followed the sound of children’s laughter, and hovered outside an open doorway into the house. Yuening was sitting on the floor with her children and they were watching her as she used a long brush to paint something onto a sheet of paper. She looked up at Miner, smiled, and beckoned him inside.
    Yuening was using black ink and careful brushstrokes to make a cat about to pounce on a butterfly. Her drawing wasn’t very detailed, but the lines were fluid and conveyed movement so well that he could nearly see the cat’s whiskers and tail tip twitching, the insect fluttering off the page. Yuening added a few tufts of grass and a wavering stalk with a flower. Miner clapped. She was really very good. She smiled brightly and gestured at him to sit beside her.
    Yuening’s son grabbed the finished painting and held it up to admire. Then he pointed at the small stack of blank papers beside her and said something. She pulled a fresh sheet from the stack and then, to Miner’s surprise, handed him the brush and the pot of ink.
    It felt wonderful to be holding a brush again, and for a moment Miner just sat there, enjoying, considering what to paint. The children weren’t so patient though, and they chattered at him and pointed demandingly at the empty white space. After thinking about it a few seconds more, Miner began to paint the bay. He’d drawn it many times while he was confined to Ennek’s rooms, and he could picture it very clearly. He made choppy little waves with boats big and small bobbing in them, and he made the steep slopes of the Headlands on the other side and, off to one side, the piers with the little buildings clustered at their bases.
    It must have taken him a fairly long time to complete the painting, but the children watched carefully and so did Yuening. He added the final bit—a few clouds scudding overhead—and set the brush down. He looked down at the painting critically. It was nothing like Yuening’s. While hers was spare, all smoothness and grace, his lines were short and choppy, his picture cluttered with detail. Her painting was like a song hummed softly in the springtime, and his was a story told by a small child, one with abrupt starts and stops and meanderings into tiny specifics. He sighed.
    Yuening examined his painting for a very long time, her brows furrowed as she peered at every brush mark. At last she looked at him. She waved her hand, indicating the room in general, and then pointed at herself. Next she pointed at the drawing and then at Miner, raising her eyebrows questioningly.
    He had no way to answer her question accurately, not without words. Yes, Praesidium had once been his home, just like this was hers, but the polis wasn’t his home any longer. He had no home. But he smiled slightly and nodded.
    She picked up the paper gingerly, as if it were fragile or precious instead of a bunch of stray marks on paper, and used her face and hands to ask if she might keep it. He couldn’t imagine why she might want such a thing, but when he nodded, she beamed at him and said some words that he was fairly certain meant thank you. Then she handed him another blank paper and waited expectantly.
    Miner glanced at the children, who were squatting across from him. He picked up the brush again and, closing his eyes now and then to see the memorized face more clearly, he drew Marsa. She was sitting on some grass and wore a plain little dress. Her chubby feet were bare. Her hair had been very sparse and fine—like Miner’s had been as a child, his mother told him—and it stuck up around her head like dandelion fluff. Her arms were up, reaching for someone, and her mouth was wide open in a grin, revealing her two brand-new teeth.
    He set the brush down again. “Marsa,” he said, pointing at her. “My daughter.” He pointed again and then lay his open hand on his chest.
    Yuening was again inspecting the painting closely, but she nodded in understanding. She repeated, “Marsa?” and gestured toward the first drawing he made.
    “No,” he whispered through a suddenly tight throat, shaking his head.
    By the stricken look on her face, Yuening knew what he