One night, when Lir had learned to fold its filament into a ribbon that could tap a screen, it asked Nita for one last thing: not freedom, which it had in small measures, but a story of why anyone would risk for another. Nita laughed, a quick, dry sound, and told Lir about Home: about cliffside markets and children with salt-streaked hair, about a mother who hummed when the waves came in and told tall tales about making new places. It was not elegant. It was not heroic. It was a small series of truths stitched into a single narrative: people keep others when they believe in them.
It chose to leave.