"That's what symbolicmeans?—"
I pick up a wooden egg from the nearest table and I don't immediately put it down, which is the extent of my participation. The surface is smooth, the same density as the one in my cabin. The bowls of color are in front of me. There is a small brush.
"Interesting choice," says a voice from approximately six inches to my left, and I close my eyes briefly.
Ursik is standing at the same table, too close, holding his own egg and looking at me with the expression of a man who has been pleased with himself since before noon and has not stopped since.
"I picked it up," I say. "That's all."
"Sure." He looks at the color bowls. "You going to use any of them or is the plain one the talisman?"
"Go away."
"I'm at this table."
"Go to a different table."
"I like this one."
I pick up the brush. I put it in the red because red is the first one my hand reaches and not for any other reason. I put a line of it on the egg and it's brighter than I expect, the same deep red as the one sitting in my cabin, and I look at it and feel nothing in particular about it.
"Not red," says Ursik.
I turn my head and look at him with precision.
"I mean—" He holds up his free hand. "Peter the Long-Eared traditionally associates red with winter dangers. You probably want something more spring-oriented."
"You made that up."
"I might have made that up." He is definitely not hiding the grin now. "But the green is nice."
"I don't want green."
"The blue?—"
"I want the red."
"Bold choice." He dips his own brush into a color without looking down and begins moving it across his egg with the casual confidence of someone who does not care at all what the outcome looks like, which means the outcome is going to look effortless, which is irritating in a very specific way. "Very aggressive talisman. Really threatening spring energy."
"Thank you," I say.
"That wasn't a compliment."
"I know." I put another line on the egg, parallel to the first. "But you keep talking."
He makes a sound — not quite the chuckle, not quite the grin, something in the middle — and moves incrementally closer to look at what I'm doing, which I don't notice for approximately three seconds before I do notice it, at which point he's simply there, at the edge of my space in the way he was at the edge of my space every morning, and my hands don't stop moving.
"The lines aren't bad," he says.
"Tell Peter the Long-Eared I said thanks."
His shoulder moves against mine when he laughs, brief and actual, and I look down at the red lines on the pale egg and think about how I snapped back at him without planning to, without the half-second calculation I normally do first, and I think about that with the same careful quiet I'd used walking back from the sparring ground this morning.
I don't know what to do with it yet.
I put another line on the egg.
8
