The morning the twins turned three by Temple time, Caelum woke up before anyone else and went to find Seraphine.
Aelara only knew this because she heard voices in the hall and got up to investigate and found her son sitting cross-legged on the training blanket at an hour when the silver light was still pale and thin, having what appeared to be a serious and entirely bilateral conversation with a five-hundred-year-old woman who was sitting cross-legged across from him matching his posture exactly.
She stood in the doorway and watched.
She had watched a lot of things about her children in the last year of Temple time. She had watched Caelum learn to walk with the deliberate carefulness of someone who had assessed the activity and decided to do it correctly rather than by trial and error, which meant he had taken twice as long as most children to start walking and then walked with the steady gait of a small person who had chosen his pace and intended to keep it.
