Maren started running hot on a Tuesday and nobody caught it until she set a chair on fire.
Not on purpose.
She sat down at breakfast. She put her hand on the back of the chair. The wood browned under her palm in the shape of four fingers.
She looked at it.
"Huh," Maren said.
"Huh," Dani agreed. She moved her terminal two feet away.
◆◆◆◆
By evening the room was ten degrees warmer than the hallway and Selah had stopped pretending not to notice.
"Your side of the room is a stove."
"I'm regulating."
"You're radiating."
"Same word."
"It is very much not the same word." Selah put frost on the window ledge and it went straight to water. "That."
Maren's tail moved once. "That's the ledge's problem."
Mona came out from under the desk. She walked to Maren's corner. She lay down in the heat and made a sound of complete satisfaction.
"See," Maren said. "Somebody appreciates me."
"She'd appreciate a radiator."
"She'd be right."
◆◆◆◆
