By the end of her speech Hasan found himself with a smile: a small one, little more than a brief twitch at the side of his mouth, but a smile nonetheless. Yet the warmth in Yaga's words only made him ache the more for his past roughness. He would resolve that ache, he told himself. He would turn a new leaf.

"Thank you," he said, dipping his head so that his dark forelock briefly obscured his wide blaze. "I have no plans to leave. I was born here, and I find it quite... peaceful. I just hope to never be a burden to yourself or the herd. I may never breach the sea again, but Amberlyn has been showing me how to throw a kick or two with only my ears and nose to guide me. And I'm becoming more confident at finding my way around."

It felt strange to share so much when he was used to sharing so little.

He shifted his weight, twitching an ear at the first tremulous warbles of the dawn chorus. He had almost forgotten how late it was — or, depending on how one looked at it, how early. He shuffled self-consciously in place and remembered that he had stumbled across Yaga alone in a clearing. He wished fervently then that he could have seen her beneath the starlight and known what, if anything, he was interrupting.

Hasan could not have known, of course, that she had been crying.

"It's improved a little," he found himself saying, his voice dropping low as though speaking the words too loudly would jinx his luck. "Where I once saw black, now I see shades of grey. I can almost make out figures." He thought back to the day he had been spooked by the shadow of a branch, and wondered if there were similar experiences in his future, or if this was destined to be his new normal.