"You are very reasonable about it."
She chuckled. "Some of it is pretense. A friend told me that pretending is easy and believing is hard, and she was right. I am pretending until I figure out how and what to believe."
Yaaf felt something move in his chest at her words, a kernel of hope, but he did not have time to examine it too closely.
Number Three nodded. "That's a smart approach." He glanced in the direction of the bathroom. "Did you tell her about me?"
"Your mother?" Sullha asked.
He nodded again and then winced. "I'm not sure. I think I recognized her voice, but I didn't get a close look at her."
Sullha looked confused and turned to Number One. "Did you just get here?"
"We were standing here for a few minutes."
"So, you must have seen her."
"I wasn't looking at her," Number Three admitted. "I retreated from the collective because Number One was about to thrall her to go to the bathroom, and a son shouldn't enter his mother's mind."
Sullha frowned. "What does it mean to retreat from the collective?"
"I made myself less present. It's like closing your eyes so you don't have to see something."
"I see."
Sullha glanced over her shoulder at the bathroom, then back at them. "That's your mother. Her name is Rohilah, and I spent about half an hour talking with her before you got here. I found her yesterday and invited her and her little girl to meet Tomek and me here. The little girl in the yellow dress over there in the sandbox is Bianca."
Number Three's eyes went to the sandbox, and the wave of emotion he infused into the collective was even stronger than before.
It was love, Number One realized. Or maybe just tenderness, because how could he love Bianca if he'd never met her?
Number Three was looking at his little sister, and his heart was filling with tender feelings for her that might be love, and from there it continued to the collective, filling the spaces between all eight of them.
Yaaf raised a hand to his chest.
"What is it?" Sullha asked.
He looked at her. "I can feel the love. It is sudden and enormous. I do not understand how he can love her so much when he has just seen her for the first time."
Sullha smiled. "That is the power of babies."
"She's not a baby. She's two years old."
"Two is close enough. Babies and little children are like factories of feel-good vibes. I don't know why everyone doesn't fall in love with them."
Yaaf looked at Number Three, who was still watching his sister with adoration in his eyes, then at Sullha, and then back at Number Three.
"It's a different kind of love," he said. "His love for her is not like the love I feel for you."
The words spilled out of his mouth without him intending to release them, loud and clear and terrifying.
The emotions had been growing within him for weeks, but the realization that he loved Sullha hadn't coalesced until now.
He loved Sullha, but hadn't intended to say it aloud, not yet, not when the disclosure about the collective was still so recent, and her response to it was still so cautious.
The collective registered his speech with the sharp attentiveness it gave to all his slips, and the others held the moment like it was a live grenade, not knowing what to do with it.
Sullha's eyes widened.
