Somewhere along the promenade, a small ridiculous incident happened.
A ball rolled to a stop against the toe of her boot.
Camilla looked down at it
It was a small brightly coloured sphere of the kind she had, in the past several hours, seen small human children kick around in every public space they had passed. Made of the same soft synthetic material as most modern objects. She had, she realized, no specific opinion about it.
A small human, perhaps five years old, perhaps six, with the earnest determined expression of a child who had chased a ball across a public space and was now committing fully to the recovery mission, arrived at her feet in a small breathless rush.
He stopped.
He looked at the ball.
He looked at her boot.
He looked, slowly, up at her face.
Camilla looked down at him.
There was a small held moment.
