The fog rises thick, on the morning when the girl who was once the Nurse’s sister sits perched on the spire of St. Fiacres, running nervous fingers over the lightning pattern on her scarf and looking down into an ocean of silver-white like a pale mirror to the zee her sister now sails; sunrise means nothing at all down here in the dark, but morning is still the time when things begin, and she can feel the breath caught in her lungs, waiting, like she is, to become something new.

It’s music, Slivvy had told her in his stuttering voice, what calls the thunder down, but Slivvy isn’t here to start the chant, or finish it if she falters, or remind her again that she has to be careful with songs and storms and offerings; this is a thing she has to do alone. So she stands, balanced at the spire’s edge with nothing to catch her fall, and she sings a song with no words – or none she’s learned yet, no language but the howl of the lonely wind she used to hear through her window at night in that charity school, whispering of home and exile; she offers up her voice to that wind, her past and whatever was held in her empty hands, and in return: the crack of lightning and the thunder’s answer, the gathering clouds, the promise of rain on her upturned face.

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Ha, literally just managed to finish this right after the other one got posted.