* * *
Nora packed a little snow in the sculpture of Catling’s flank. The sculpture was basically done. She was adding a few finishing touches. When she’d woken up that morning, it had been relatively early—midmorning—and no one else in the tweens and rebels enclave had been awake. She’d gotten some food for Catling and herself, then trundled down to check out the sculpture. Now it was somewhere near noon, and she was pretty sure she was finished with it. Next to it, a half-finished sculpture of a middle finger languished in the snow. Apparently, Dirk and his friends hadn’t gotten down to work on their sculpture yet.
“This is adorable!”
Nora looked up to see Theia Spring, the head of the visual art enclave, wading through the snow over to her. Nora looked back at the giant-sized Catling. She was pretty proud of it. “Thanks. It’s my pet.”
“I’ve seen the cat-ducks,” said Theia. “Mack is going to love this.” She winked at Nora. “Don’t tell anyone, but I’m almost certain we’re going to pick this for the fire pit at the end of the week. You’ve really got an eye for things like this. For someone who spent her whole life outside of Helicon, I have to say I’m impressed.”
“Well, I didn’t do it by myself,” said Nora. “Sawyer and Maddie helped.”
Theia nodded. “I’m sure they did. But I’ve seen you in the enclave before. I know talent when I see it.”
Nora couldn’t help but feel good. She’d been hiding her abilities for so long, it was a relief to be able to display them now, and it was gratifying to have them appreciated. No one had appreciated anything she’d created since those kids outside the middle school all those years ago. But she didn’t know what to say, so she only said, “Thanks,” again.
“Looks like one of your helpers is on his way over,” said Theia. She pointed, and, sure enough, Nora could see Sawyer approaching. He was holding two steaming mugs.
Nora waved at him.
“Hey, Nora,” said Sawyer. He closed the distance between them and handed her one of the mugs. “I figured you were down here. Brought you some coffee.”
Nora sipped at the mug. “I completely skipped coffee this morning. Thanks so much.”
Sawyer walked around the Catling sculpture. “No problem. You’ve really got this almost finished, I see. It looks good.”
“It looks amazing,” said Theia. “I was just telling Nora how impressive her work is.”
Sawyer nodded, grinning. “I’d have to agree. You’re going to pick it, aren’t you? For the end of the week?”
Theia only smiled. She waved at the two of them and continued on to look at some of the other sculptures.
“Well, I came down here to help, but it looks like you’ve got everything under control,” said Sawyer.
“No,” said Nora. “There’s still stuff you can do. I mean, we could work on the texture a little more maybe, or—”
“It’s okay. You taking charge is just fine with me.” He settled on a snow bank and sipped from his coffee mug. “You find anything out about Alexander from Owen last night?”
“No. Owen said it was ridiculous to suspect him.”
“It might be,” said Sawyer, “but I think we should keep our eye on him just in case. Maybe since you brought it up to Owen, he’ll be on the lookout as well.”
Alexander seemed like the furthest thing from Owen’s mind last night. He’d kept trying to get the conversation back to the two of them getting it on until Nora had finally gotten sick of it and left. But she didn’t want to talk to Sawyer about that, so she nodded. “Maybe.”
“Maddie would have come too, but she ran into her mother at breakfast, and her mother starting going on about how she never sees Maddie and how much she misses her, so Maddie had to stay there.”
Mother. Nora’s stomach dropped out at the mention of the word. She set her coffee down in the snow and started to smooth some of the snow on Catling’s ear. “Well, it’s nice that her mother cares. Maddie’s lucky.”
“Yeah,” said Sawyer. “I mean, she’s got a mother, right?”
Nora looked up. “Don’t you?”
“Technically, sure,” said Sawyer. “But I don’t remember her at all. I was born in the mundane world to regular human parents. Apparently, I was like two years old the first time I did something really creative. The muse police swooped in and grabbed me right as the Influence struck.”
Nora was horrified. “So, they took you away from your mother?”
Sawyer nodded. “Yep.”
“And she doesn’t know what happened to you?”
“I guess not,” said Sawyer.
Nora picked her coffee back up. “There’s got to be a better way to deal with muse babies than to steal them from their families.”
“Well, you grew up in the mundane world,” said Sawyer. “How hard was it to not be creative?”
Nora chewed on her lip.
“It sucks,” said Sawyer, “but I’d rather be alive than dead, you know? And it’s never really bothered me, not having a family.”
“Really? You don’t feel like something’s missing?”
“Sometimes, I guess,” said Sawyer. “But everyone in Helicon has issues. There’s no real...normal, exactly.”
“Except for not being transgender that is,” said Nora.
“It’s not like that,” Sawyer muttered. “It’s not as simple as that.”
Nora realized she shouldn’t have pushed. She tried to think of something else to say. “Hey, if you didn’t have a family here either, then we must have been in the babies and toddlers enclave together.”
Sawyer nodded. “Right. Yeah, we were. I remember you a little bit. I remember Owen too.”
“Yeah, you did say you remembered him.”
“He’s hard to forget.” And Sawyer was muttering again.
She couldn’t say anything without upsetting him this morning, could she? “Phoebe says he was an odd child.”
“He was mean,” said Sawyer. “To everyone except you. I was only five when the two of you left, so I don’t remember much about it, but I do remember that I was kind of afraid of him.”
Nora didn’t understand. Owen had never been mean to her. But she guessed she had seen him treat people without a lot of respect. She sighed. She didn’t want to think about it.