Her fingers twist in the thick burgundy fabric that she pulls tighter and she is so, so still; it looks like calm, except that her knuckles are white and the breath she releases comes out slow. Hard to say if what she's feeling is relief or not; done, good, but done, beyond the ready undoing. What’s she going to do, get a second opinion?

From who? Done. She looks down at her hands.

“I can bind them under clothing,” she says, “it doesn't hurt. They hurt at first, but it’s ... lessened.”

(Growing pains.)

She looks at the floorboards where a rainbow had been, a moment ago, too polished to call dull but ordinary, again. “Can you fix my face.”

It is entirely possible that the maintenance of this calm depends heavily upon his answer.