“I clean, I help with the cooking, I set the fires. Everything I do gets eaten or dirtied or burned—at the end of a day there’s no proof I’ve been here at all.” She paused, kneeled down beside me and stroked the embroidery on the edge of my skirt. It hid the repair she’d made when I tore it on brambles. “Me needlework will always be here,” she said. “I see this and I feel…well, I don’t know the word. Like I’ll always be here.” “Permanent,” I said. “And the rest of the time?” “I feel like a dandelion just before the wind blows.”
