System 427 sat up straighter on the desk, composing himself with a visible effort, ears still slightly damp at the tips, expression shifting into something that was trying very hard to be professional.
He cleared his tiny throat.
"Right," he said. "From where we left off—"
Heena dipped her pen in ink.
For the first time since the night had started pulling itself apart at every seam, something in the room settled. Not fixed — nothing about this world was anywhere close to fixed — but quieter. Just the soft sound of pen on paper and a small lion's voice dictating sentences in the small hours of the morning, both of them doing what they could with what they had.
Which, Heena thought, looking at him out of the corner of her eye, was actually quite a lot.
She didn't say so out loud.
But she thought it.
.
.
.
The next day, the foreign delegations arrived.
