The plate stayed blank beneath his palm. Beside him, Selenne had already stopped at Elara's station, her attention no longer on his.
He could have reproduced the first trace without difficulty, proof only that he could repeat a mistake. Selenne had told him what he'd done, not how to stop doing it. 'Diagnose the disease, withhold the cure.' He found he didn't mind the problem having teeth.
Elara sat with her spine set at a precise, unhurried angle, breathing slowed into something deliberate enough to count. Selenne studied her trace a moment before speaking.
"You've built a very calm room to observe an ordinary reaction in," she said. "The reaction doesn't live there anymore. Sit as you would if I weren't watching. Stop counting the breath."
Elara's mouth flattened a fraction — the closest she allowed herself to visible irritation — before her shoulders dropped from their careful line.
