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"Sandralynn," Gilear calls from the living room. "I don't wish to disturb you but you're not going to believe this otherwise."
Sandralynn finishes the part of Baxter's saddle she'd been been cleaning out on the porch, the leather soft and worn beneath her hands, and heads toward his voice. When she reaches the living room, she can help the automatic breath she sucks in. Fig is asleep at the low coffee table, papers with half-scrawled doodles pressed under her cheek and a mess of glitter-glue stuck in her hair.
"She's rather late to start trancing, should we be worried?" Gilear only sounds concerned for his daughter but Sandralynn can't help going on the defensive.
"She's fine, Gil." Sandralynn scoops her daughter up, only feeling the recent tension in her shoulders loosen when Fig blinks awake enough to realize who's carrying her and dooze back off against Sandralynn's shoulder. Fig probably should be trancing by now, but she's still young. There's still time for her to catch up to those milestones and if she doesn't, Sandralynn will cross that bridge when she gets to it.
"Well, she's fine if we don't think about her hair." Sandralynn perls the stiff, glue-ladened hair off Fig's cheek to examine it. She kisses her daughter's forehead and sighs. "Hope you're okay with bangs, kid."
"I didn't mean anything by it, dear," Gilear murmurs, collecting the papers from the coffee table. Most get shuffled into a rough stack to be stored for a day or so before getting trashed, unless Fig asks for some to finish coloring. One, though, he separates out to be added to the collection on the fridge.
Three nearly identical stick figures, happy and smiling in front of a pastel-colored house, stare up at Sandralynn like they can see right through her.