The Language of Hands

I held back.

Some things didn't need words. They didn't need the looking. They just needed the hand, in the dark under the table, warm and certain and not going anywhere.

After dinner, in the corridor, Sylvia stopped me.

She had Freya against her shoulder — Freya in the particular mode she entered in the early evening, the settled, warm mode, the one that meant she was considering sleep. Sylvia he