"I thought it might be something like that," Morgana said. "It turns to look at me a moment before you do." She moved lightly to one side and watched the bird readjust. "Born with?"

Cara shook her head. "I got sick when I was a little girl," she explained. "The same fever killed my mother and stepfather. I don't think...if I'd been born this way, I don't think I would ever have missed it enough to make myself see. I wouldn't have known what to do with sight. As it is, I sometimes find it to be more frustrating than anything else."

"It sounds like tertian fever," Morgana said gravely. "Or what they were calling fiabhras dearg. There was a bad run of fiabhras dearg on Roisin a few years back, from the Mainland. No one knew what to do with it. We had a few halflings who came out of it blind; most of them died."

Cara shrugged. "I think they called it scarlet fever in Cecilia," she answered. "I was just the right age, though, where I remember my parents but don't really miss them, so there's...well, for me there's no real harm done," she assured the woman. "But humans don't know what to do with it, either, other than quarantine and burn."

"Quarantine?" she asked. "Closed off? But aye, that's what had to be done there, too, to keep it from getting to Ushante." She nodded. "You were very lucky, but I expect you don't need me to tell you that."

"No, I don't," Cara replied. "I know I was lucky. And lucky, too, that I had an aunt who was willing to take me in after all of that, and willing to support my eccentricities enough to let me become an academic. It's an unheard-of profession for women, where I'm from."

"You've done very well at it," Morgana said, most sincerely, "and it is nice to know there's one other person in the world who's interested in dead animals. Outside of cooking them, of course. I have very few points of reference on that sort of thing. Do you teach building, then?"

"A little bit," Cara replied. "I teach physics, which is...for us, it's the science of how the physical world works. So, building a building or building a tool or a ship or a wagon requires an understanding of physics, but also understanding how wind works, or what lightning is. How come an image looks different when you see it through water than when you see it through air. Why mirrors work. Why rainbows happen."

Morgana hesitated, not wishing to sound naive or silly. "You don't believe that there are some things we're not meant to know?"

"Meant to?" Cara asked, quizzical. "Who would get to decide that?"