Milliways Bar, November 19

[kitchen_maid]

It's warm and comfortable and cozy over by the fireplace this evening. Bar was kind enough to produce a low cradle for Susan, which Amy is rocking with one foot, murmuring a light, dreamy lullaby while she does.

Susan watches with bright blue eyes that Amy doesn't think are ever going to close, before she blinks . . . and then blinks again . . . and finally drifts off to sleep.

Amy has brought a small stack of invitations and letters and assorted correspondence she's supposed to be answering, and she starts to sort through it, to accept, to decline, to reply, to . . . surely it won't matter if she closes her eyes, just for a moment.

Just for a moment.

Or two.

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[kitchen_maid]

And then there's a cry from baby Susan, and Amy opens her eyes to find that they're alone by the fireplace.

It's the nineteenth of November. A year, in way time is measured here, since last she saw Susan Delgado Allgood.

Amy closes her eyes again for a second, her fingers wrapped around her necklace, and there is joy and hope and love, and she whispers to no one in particular, "Thank you."

And then she gathers her daughter up out of the cradle, and settles her in her lap, and Susan quiets a little, and wraps her own hand around her mother's necklace.

"I am," says Amy softly, "am going to tell you a story. About two girls and a picnic they had, with two squirrels and a crow and the tiniest of elephants, with pizza and grapes, sitting on the floor of room at the end of the universe, because it was too cold and too dark to go outside . . ."