The clearing was circular, and the light inside it had no visible source.
That was the first thing.
The second thing was that the light moved, not flickered, not wavered, but moved with a slow deliberateness that suggested it was responding to something rather than generating independently.
The third thing was Alaric.
He was sitting on the pale ground in the center of the clearing, cross-legged, with his back to us. Small.
Still recognizably small in the way a child is small, the particular dimensions of a seven-year-old that I'd memorized without meaning to over seven years of proximity.
His shoulders had the slight narrowness of a boy who hadn't yet grown into his frame.
And then the light moved again, and I saw that the edges of him were not entirely there.
Not dramatically —
