The house was on a corner plot, L-shaped, built around the 1940s, on an elevated patch of ground. Like it has its own hill, thought Lila as she stood with Satish at the bottom of the sloping driveway, waiting for Mohan, their real estate agent, to park his car. The driveway led up to wooden steps and a wicket gate.

“Country Hills is a man-made landscape,” Mohan said, joining them. “Some houses are level with the road, some are high like this one, some even higher.” He looked at Lila for the briefest of a second before turning away. 

There, he did it again, avoiding her as if she made him uncomfortable, or something. 

Mohan opened the wicket gate into a fenced-in area with a wooden bench. On their left, there was a raised planter with a row of Japanese laurel bushes that needed a good trim. Beyond the bushes, there was a dried up little pond, edged with rocks.lily pad without water. Someone had thrown a plastic cup in it. There were dried leaves everywhere and a broken rake stood against the laurel bushes. All this created a desolate air, as if the house was asking to be adopted, reminding Lila of the forlorn pets at adoption events in the strip mall near their apartment.

She waited behind Satish for Mohan to open the lockbox and unlock the front door. Irrelevant, that’s how she felt right now. Or was it immaterial? Yes, immaterial was better, especially since she had given up on ever owning a house.

Of course, twenty years ago, when they first came to the US, she understood Satish’s reluctance to take on a mortgage. Back home, mortgage was a bad word. A dangerous word. It meant bankruptcy, seizures, foreclosures, auctions, failure, family break-ups, and other tragic outcomes. If anyone bought a house, they did it with money they already owned. But in America, you have to be an American, no? She could never understand how he could hold on to ways, some ways, that didn’t make sense. The years went by in apartments and now when she didn’t care for a house…

This was the fourth one they were seeing. 

There was nothing forlorn about the living room. It had two large picture windows with magnificent views of the surrounding trees creating a sense of separation from the rest of the street. Lila was impressed by the light in the room. She could see Satish was too.

“Very good quality windows. Newly installed,” Mohan said to Satish.  

They had met Mohan at a mutual friend’s housewarming party. Mohan was surprised that they still lived in an apartment and wasted no time in persuading Satish that a mortgage was better than throwing away money on rent. How was it that when she had explained and explained and explained the very same thing, she could never convince Satish?

Shrugging, Lila moved towards the kitchen.

It disappointed her. It was as dark as the living room was bright. A door next to the refrigerator opened onto stairs to the basement and Lila went down curiously; she was happy to see there was some light from the walk-in basement’s three sets of windows. For a few minutes, she watched several robins energetically scratching the dirt outside and wondered at how determined and absorbed they were in this activity. 

It's a nice house, she thought, except for the kitchen which was so dark, no, she didn’t care for that at all, and then, something else, a smell so faint, she had to really pay close attention. It was an odd smell, musty, rotting, familiar and yet she could not identify it. 

Mohan came into view as he paced up and down the driveway talking on his cell phone. This Mohan, he was quite odd too; Lila felt that he could not see her. There was no actual rudeness, only an extreme neutrality, as if she were not there, or something to be overlooked, to be left unnoticed. Unsettling. He must think her opinion did not matter equally with Satish’s. There was no other explanation for it.

Why should her opinion matter anyway, Lila thought, looking at the robins now without seeing them. Her life had dwindled: she had become a lister of groceries, a consumer of TV serials, her mornings dehydrated into monotony. At what precise moment had this dwindling happened? She rummaged through her life, realizing that such moments happen imprecisely. Her self threatened to drown in dullness. 

She walked away from the window and stopped at something familiar. She went close, disbelieving. Was it really a cot, a jute canvas cot, just like the ones she and her sister used to sleep on when they were children?

The same heavy, roughly hewn, crossed wooden legs, the same nuts holding them in place, the same metal hoops through which passed the rods that held the jute canvas hammock to the frame. She was back in her father’s village, back in the teenage years of her life. On summer visits, her cousins, her sister, and she lay on those cots in the courtyard of their ancestral home, under the indigo black sky with its stories of stars, interrupted by fireflies, in their endless sleep-defying whispers. Then she recalled another summer visit, this time, the wedding of a cousin: six aunts who sat on a cot dissecting the bride, the food, the saris, slowly sliding to the ground, when the cot gave way after it could no longer withstand their voluminous, voluble weight. This mishap became a family tale of merriment recounted at every wedding, ear piercing, puberty celebration, whenever and wherever the family gathered, augmented with details of the first five aunts, and the sixth, the final pounds that broke the poor cot, and with each retelling the cot developed a personality, and became a long-suffering symbol of tolerance.

Back home in the city, the cots were still there, folded every morning and placed in a corner of the single room which was the family’s everything room. And every night after dinner, they were unfolded, carrying the passage of their youth from one restful night to another. 

She could not believe this joyous object was before her. Bizarre. It was an omen, proof of a connection between her and this house. 

When Satish found Lila in the basement, she was still looking at the cot. Mohan was outside on the driveway still talking on his cell phone. 

Lila turned to look at Satish, and from the expression on his face, she knew that he liked the house very much. 

“You should see the bedrooms,” he said. “The view from the master bedroom, especially. It’s like we are in a forest. The layout is very good.” Satish made a questioning gesture with his hands and raised his eyebrows, “So, Lila, what do you think?”

Lila smiled and pointed to the cot. “Do you remember those? We used to sleep on those when we were children.”

Satish nodded, “Yes, yes, but what about the house?”

Lila turned away from him. “There’s something odd here, I am getting a smell,” she said. She lifted her head and sniffed, “It comes and goes, I know this smell, but I just can’t say what it is.” She ran her finger along the side of the cot; dust rose up in the window light. 

 “Your mother is a very peculiar woman,” Satish said, as he spoke to Hyma on the telephone that night, relating their latest house search. 

“That is the conclusion I have reached after many years,” he continued. “When you go to buy something, don’t you look at what you’re buying? Instead she looks at my face. She gets distracted by some unconnected, immaterial matter. Then there is no focus, and we go in all directions without getting to the real point.”

“Did you decide on anything finally?”

“Something. Here is your mother. Talk to her, ask her what she thinks.”

Lila took the receiver. “We’ve seen four houses so far, Hyma. They all have good points and bad points, I suppose. Only when we actually live in one, we’ll know what’s what. Though I think Appa likes this last one. Anyway, what I want to tell you is, do you remember the canvas cot, somewhat like a hammock? You don’t? Of course, you can’t remember, you were too little. There was an actual hammock cot, the very same kind of hammock cot from back home, in the basement of this house and I was happy, it made me so happy to see it.”

“So, what about the house, Amma?

“It’s a big place, Hyma, very nice garden space, front yard, good windows, the living room is beautiful. But the house itself, it’s quite old and the kitchen is so dark. Mainly, I don’t like the smell. It has a smell, you know. I remember that smell now. I used to know it in my grandmother’s house in Madras.”

“It’s almost three thousand square feet. And a corner lot, just a little less than half an acre,” Satish said, leaning into the receiver.

“Bats! That’s what it is. Bats. Now I remember, Hyma. I cannot live with that smell.”

“Are you thinking of Dracula?”

“What! Dracula? No, no, no, Dracula has nothing to do with it.”

Both Hyma and Satish laughed. 

“It’s my grandmother,” Lila continued. “My mother’s mother. She lived in a massive house built by her father. It was too big for her to maintain, so one section of it was closed. And the bats came and occupied that section. You see, they know where to settle. This house we saw, it has the same smell. My grandmother always said it was a bad thing. And then, her cousin died of rabies.”

“Because of the bats?”

“No, because of a dog.”

The three of them were silent for a few minutes. Then Hyma said, “Amma, that’s not fair. How can you connect this with that? According to the Chinese, bats bring prosperity, did you know that? Anyway, it’s only a smell, right? We can do something about that, can’t we?”

“It bothers me. It’s an unwholesome feeling, a smell of bad things.”

“Mohan feels, at five hundred, the property is an extremely good bargain,” Satish said.

“I don’t care what Mohan feels. He said the same thing about that other house we saw, you know, on Penderbrook Drive. The only good thing is the front yard and the cot.” 

“Will you please focus on the house?”

“Then, the other problem, Hyma, think about this, the kitchen is dark. How can I be in such a dark kitchen?”

“That can be solved. We’ll get some wiring and fix some good lights,” Satish answered. 

“Even during the day?”

“For that price, it is good.”

“You see, this is the problem,” said Lila, turning away from her husband. “No one ever listens to anything I say. Even during the day, we would have to have lights. And the smell. That smell won’t go away easily. It’s a hurting smell. Something is not right. No wonder it’s a good bargain. They just want to get rid of that house. And a dark kitchen is very bad for the house. Who builds a kitchen without good natural lighting? My eyes are not as good as they used to be. What if I cook some insects into the rice or the vegetables, like a cockroach wanders into the brinjal fry, and I just don’t catch it, why, because it’s just too dark to see anything. You don’t have to say anything, I know what you both are thinking, free protein, right?”

Satish and Hyma began to laugh, and soon Lila joined them. “I am just saying,” she said as she hung up, and went to the calendar hanging on the wall beside the closet. She flicked the pages.

“Next Saturday is full moon,” she said, almost to herself; on full moon days, she prayed to Lord Vishnu and could express all her thoughts about the bats and her dread and Satish and Mohan. 

When Lila finished her shower the next day it was 9:00 a.m. The water had been lukewarm. She looked at Satish who was still half asleep. “Why is the water so cold?” she said. “We can’t rely on anything in this apartment.”

“Then the sooner we decide on the house, the better,” he said. “We can fix our own hot water, as hot as you like.”

Lila shrugged and brushed her hair. She would have liked to say, yes, let’s just buy the house, but that kitchen bothered her, that smell, that Mohan. It was better not to say anything.

Satish lay for a little while with his hand over his face. Then he said, “What about the house, then? What answer shall I give Mohan?”

Lila burst out, “What has that got to do with me? You decide, Mohan decides. I have already explained my feelings about the kitchen and … and the other thing. And still, if you want to go ahead, I don’t know what to say.”

“Any need to be like this? I don’t know what’s happened to you, Lila. You’ve always been so supportive and I need you to help me in this decision, you know that.”

Yes, why was she like this, she asked herself. It rankled, that’s why. She was digging in, cementing herself into her resentment at Satish—no, resentment was not the right word, rankling was right—rankling for not having bought a house when she asked him to, how many times, for not listening to her, long ago, so long ago, when dear Christy, her neighbor in their first apartment at Cupertino, had calculated the numbers and shown her the wisdom of owning a house. Now, she briefly considered bringing all the past up, no, they would only argue as they had, in apartment after apartment, she was no longer interested enough to pursue it. She would have to find a way to dissipate the rankling, that’s all.

“I’ve already told you,” she said, placatingly. “I don’t mind. Really, I don’t. I live more in my mind than anywhere else. So it does not matter to me. Whether we have a small house or a big house, a bat-smelling house or no house, it doesn’t matter. If you tell me, go live in a tent, I can adjust and live in a tent.” She began to braid her hair deftly and when it was done, dressed, and then sat on the bed. 

“If you don’t like this one, shall I ask Mohan to show us some other properties?” Satish asked.

“Entirely up to you. Actually, I don’t think I should be coming along for these trips. Never once, never once does this Mohan even look at me while talking. Even if I directly ask him a question. See, I asked him about the floors—whether they could be sanded. You know what he does? He looks at the floors, then walks over to you. What’s his problem, he could have just answered me, no?”

“He did carry your question to me; his office would look into it, he said,” and seeing her frown, Satish added, “Probably out of respect for you, that’s why. A little old school in his ways.”

“Old school!” Lila left the room, quite sad that her husband had not sensed even a little of what she had felt.

“Back home, they used to say, after forty, men behave like dogs,” Lila said to Hyma. “There’s even an old Tamil film song that begins with that line,” and she hummed it.

Hyma was lying on her parents’ bed. She was home for a short break from college. Lila folded and put away piles of clothes. 

“Are you talking about Appa? That’s a terrible thing to say,” Hyma laughed.

“Not about Appa, just men in general. Something gets into them, that’s all. Otherwise, what is the necessity for your father to buy that particular house just now? Just because an agent pushes you into buying it?” She shoved the first pile violently into the closet. “I should be like Gandhari, I suppose, but that is a different kind of existence.”

“Gandhari? What’s that?”

“Gandhari, who. Not what. You don’t know who Gandhari is? That is such a shame. All my fault. I’m pretty sure I’ve told you her story, but maybe you forgot. She was the mother of the Kauravas in the Mahabharatha, but more than that, she went about life wearing a blindfold because her husband was blind.”

Hyma found the image so comic that she laughed, and after a minute, Lila joined in laughing and then said, “No, we should not laugh, she was one of the most powerful women because of that. But that is definitely a different kind of existence. We’ll have to find other ways to be powerful.”

Lila sat on the bed. “What are you reading? Gone with the Wind. One of my favorites.” 

“I am writing a paper on Scarlet and the feminine psyche, Amma.”

“The feminine psyche! And what have you got to say about that?”

Hyma straightened up enthusiastically and said, “What I have to say is, women need a lot of excitement. No, listen, Amma. The mind of a woman gets bored so easily. Unless this constant need for excitement is satisfied, a woman can get into all kinds of trouble; that’s the way I am going to write about Scarlet.”

As she listened to her daughter, Lila wondered where she got such ideas. Had she in some way influenced her daughter’s thinking? She had not asked for any unusual excitement in her life, or had she without knowing it? For some time they were silent. Then Lila sorted another pile of clothes. She continued with her folding, but now thinking about Scarlet, she collapsed the clothes impatiently instead of folding them. 

“No, I don’t think so, Hyma. Not excitement, no. Every woman thinks about stability, that is the most important thing. And a house is a necessity for this. See Scarlet, she is all the time worrying about the property, about Tara, the house, that’s where there are children, a family. So much so she misses out on—”

Lila stopped with a sudden realization that her words were describing her own state of mind. 

She was conscious of Hyma looking at her with respect. “No need to look at me like that, Hyma. I’ve read Gone with the Wind many times,” she said, smiling.

She started another train of thought. 

“I’m pretty sure he’s got some chronic problem,” she said. 

“Who?”

“Mohan, the realtor. He wheezes sometimes and speaks in a low, slightly breathless voice. And the bags below his eyes, that’s not good, I tell you.”

“Appa has them too.”

“Yes, that’s true. It’s something I feel, you know. He’s not a healthy man, that’s all. It’s as if he’s suffering some discomfort all the time, maybe some indigestion.”

Maybe everything was happening in her mind. The darkness in the kitchen was her own darkness; the smell was the smell of instability, and Mohan, Mohan could not see her because she was not visible. Lila lay down and soon was snoring rhythmically. Hyma continued to read and make notes on Gone with the Wind. 

When she brought the plates to the table for the evening meal, Lila put them down with such force, the table mats jumped. Satish had told her that he had made an offer on the house, and if it all worked out, they might be on the move before the end of the month. Though she was mentally prepared for this announcement, she still had some reconciling to do.

So, she put the steel dishes away with a clatter. She closed cupboards with a bang. Once she let a cup fall. On the linoleum floor, it did not break. Satish sat at the head of the table, not responding. When she dropped the rice spoon on the floor, its metallic bouncing finally reached him.

“I met Miguel Sanchez today,” he said, looking at Hyma.

She would not look at him. “Who is Miguel Sanchez?” she asked, her eyes on her mother.

“He owns the house we’ve been seeing. He was at the house today. A very interesting gentleman. He greets me with namaste and says ‘how are you’ in Tamil. In Tamil! He was in Madras for two years, in the embassy, you see. That’s where the cot came from. He liked it so much and managed to bring one back with a lot of trouble. Looks like he’s in his seventies.”

So, now, she could add a new episode, her own detail to the family narrative of cots, Lila thought. She listened to Satish say, “That bat smell your mother felt, there is a reason for it. Mr. Sanchez explained why. I think I’ll have some more rice.”

“And you said I was imagining it.”

“I never felt there was a smell. When I told him you were the one who felt it, he was most impressed. What happened is, a severe tornado uprooted a tree right in front of the house. Miraculously, nothing happened to the house. After it was all over, Sanchez found these two bats on his front doorstep. One with a broken wing. They were pretty dazed and shaken. So he took them and looked after them and kept them in the basement. Soon hundreds more bats came. Just before he decided to sell the house, he got some bat people to come and take them away. Now, the most interesting part, they found these bats were a very rare species. He showed me his picture and the write-up in the Washington Post. The Natural History Museum heard about it and wanted to acquire them. He made quite a little fortune out of the whole business. The basement— floors, drywall—everything had to be redone, and he was guaranteed no one would ever know. But your mother is not an ordinary woman. She has a special sense, you know, nothing escapes her.”

“I may be silly in some ways, but my sense of smell is very, very good,” Lila said. “So tell me, did you ask why he is selling the house?”

“Yes, my dear, I did. Mohan told me not to ask such questions, but I know you would want to know that important information. He is going back to California, to live with his sister. That’s where he’s from. San Diego.”

Lila watched her husband organize the food on his plate. Such a good thing, he is not too fussy, she thought. Especially, he was very good about leftovers. No complaining about some of the recipes that turned out oddly. 

Satish continued, “There is a solution to the dark kitchen, Sanchez says. Two walls which can be knocked down. It’s going to be just wonderful, you’ll see. And for the smell, I’ll make sure that before we move in, the house will be fragrant like newly opened Madurai jasmine flowers. What do you say to that?”

“What about the cot? Will it still be there?”

“Yes, he is leaving the cot behind. Now, are you happy?”

Lila felt herself mellowing. Her softness enveloped them.

With a joyful wave of his hand, Satish went on, “You know, long ago, during the summer vacation after our high school exams, I was just eighteen then, my mother called a fortuneteller to the house, one of those women who go in the street with a wooden wand, do you remember them? She very clearly foretold this.”

“That you’d buy a bat-infested house?” Lila said.

“Yes, something along those terms. “You will nest in another world” those were her exact words. Nest, see, nest, wings, bats. You see the connection, it’s inevitable.”

Hyma laughed and began to clear the table. 

“What else did she say, your fortuneteller?” Lila asked.

Instead of answering her, Satish leaned forward and laid his hand against her cheek.

“So soft,” he murmured. “How very soft you are.”

One Monday morning, Satish drove Lila to the new house. The papers were all signed now. Their move-in date depended on Satish’s mother who was consulting her astrologer for a good day. 

As they came closer to the house, they felt the enormity of this object that they now owned. “This is the biggest thing we have ever owned,” Satish said.  

“Yes, to actually own a bit of this earth, that feels like we are so very special. I never imagined I would one day have my own oak tree,” Lila said, as they walked around. 

Satish's face radiated with joy. “We aim to please,” he said, picking up an acorn and studying it. He threw it at her and she caught it deftly. 

They went to the backyard. It looked like Sanchez had tried to do some landscaping but had not completed it. The English roses did not look very healthy. Several Japanese maples provided unkempt foliage; four or five kinds of ornamental grasses threatened to take over. 

“Lots of work to do, we may have to hire a gardener,” Satish said.

"You don't know this,” Lila said, “but one of my great grandfathers comes from the Vellalla community. Do you know what Vellalla means? Farmer, that's what it means."

"So you are a peasant woman after all? See, your people have cheated me. This is very unfair. I am sure when Gopalakrishnan sent your horoscope to my parents, he told us you were a pure bred, upper caste woman, whose ancestors never touched the soil."

"Oh, be serious, Satish. I only said that to .... Who is Gopalakrishnan?"

"He was our marriage broker. You may not have met him. He saw you just once, when he came to meet your father and gave us a glowing report. Hounded my father till he agreed to meet your family. Many, many times, I’ve thanked him for finding you." 

Lila held his hand and moved close to him. “Satish,” she said softly.

The breeze brought a wonderful fragrance. Lila looked around for the source. Satish sniffed the air, “Almost like jasmine but much milder. We have so much to learn about these Virginia plants.”

They moved to the side of the house and surprised at least half a dozen mourning doves which rose to the roof with a musical panic of their wings. 

"That is such a good omen," Lila said, clasping her hands. "I never thought to see these birds here." 

"Thank God," Satish said. "I am so happy to see you like this, Lila. After your initial reaction about the bats and the kitchen, I was secretly questioning whether this house was a good idea." 

But as soon as they entered the house, Lila was conscious of the smell; it was everywhere, inescapable, undeniable. It made her anxious, she worried that it was a warning of some kind, what if the house was telling them something and they were not listening?

So much for Satish’s promise to have the house fragrant like Madurai jasmine. Looking at Satish, she forgot her discomfort. He was staring dreamily, “Did you ever think, ever, that this would all be yours?” he said as if to himself. How could he not feel the smell, Lila wondered.  

The smell came and went, stronger in certain areas, absent in others. She calmed her fears. Maybe, all the house needed was a good airing. Or maybe, it was in her mind, a phantom that needed exorcism.

They walked around, savoring every section of the house, more and more satisfied with the purchase. The kitchen had been remodeled and Lila saw that they had lost some pantry space in exchange for more light. Satish opened the kitchen window and through it they could see the oak tree outside. It was certainly a most beautiful view to do dishes with. 

From there, they went down to the basement. The steps ended in a long space, the floor made of wood. There leaning against the wall, where she had first seen it, was the cot. It had been dusted, some of the varnish still shone even after all this time. Lila felt a sense of completion, an irrational sense of its appropriateness in her life, in this space. 

When Satish went outside, Lila walked to the far end of the space and opened a door that led into a carpeted room with an attached bathroom; it could be used as a guestroom. She stood at the door and imagined her sister or her mother-in-law coming to the house. A whole family could camp down in this room. Here too, there were two windows which brought in the brightness. She opened the closets in the room. They were quite spacious. She closed them with a comfortable sense of pride. If only that smell could somehow be dealt with. She must research odor-removing products.

Lila turned on the light in the bathroom. The bathtub gleamed and she saw that the tiles had been newly laid. Their pale lilac color and delicate floral pattern was very soothing. She turned off the light and left the room. Outside she found another small rectangular space. Lila looked for a light but there was none. 

In the dimness, she saw a narrow door with rusty hinges. This door was certainly very strange and out of place. How could they have overlooked this, when the rest of the house had been redone so well? Yet, it now belonged to her, rust and all. We’ll have to attend to that, she thought and worked the latch loose. It came off readily and the door swung open with a moan. 

As if all the darkness, all the nightmares, all the wilderness in her life had gathered to a final torment, several bats came winging out, wildly disturbed by her intrusion. Lila stood to the side, covering her head. “Shiva, Shiva, Narayana, Narayana, ayyayo, Shiva, Muruga, Palani Andava!” she muttered frantically. If this was certainly the end, at least she had remembered to die with their names on her lips.

After an interminable sound of wings, there was silence and stench. Lila opened her eyes carefully. The floor was densely covered with dark, moist—with a shock, she realized it was feces, little mounds of excrement glistening—another shock—with urine. With shock came immense relief, a relief to know she had located the source of the smell, a greater relief to see it was real, not a phantom of her imagination.

She leaned against the wall, exhausted. It was a good exhaustion, a relaxed exhaustion; her mind was free at last of the fear, the foreboding that something bad would happen. Her heart returned gradually to its normal beat. All of life, even if we say no, and explain why we are saying no, does anyone hear us? Of course not, they just dismiss our reasoning until we doubt ourselves. So, we give in, we adjust, we accept, but always with a background thought, that there is some truth that is not visible, but of which we have a glimpse. So, here is my imagination, is it? I present to you these little piles of excrement as the most undeniable proof. There now, I am truly, finally, and absolutely vindicated. I rest my case. 

She did not even feel disgusted by the excrement. It actually helped by removing any possible trace of a doubt. This reality, she could deal with, it was just a problem to be solved. She took a deep breath in spite of the pungent odor. It didn’t matter now, she was back in control.

She covered her nose and peered into the space. It was a circular hollow area between the house and the back of the garden shed, with a roof that was just a few wooden sticks nailed together through which she could see the intense blue of the sky. It was an incomplete construction, probably the door had been intended to open into the shed, but then whoever had planned it had changed their mind. 

This was going to take some cleaning. And some drywall. And some reconstruction. And pest control. Or would it be animal control? Or they could talk to The Natural History Museum again …

How could Mohan not have seen it? How could the home inspector have missed it? Lila marveled that it had to be she, she who should discover this hidden roost.

There was a naked bulb with a pull chain hanging from one of the broken rafters. Lila pulled it and, in the light, another shock, a smaller one. Right before her, a tiny, pointed little face. 

Lila stood frozen, analyzing this new situation. 

The ears—large … and pink? More beige?—the skin transparent, like a piece of shimmering silk, edged with a line of whitish fur. She saw the fine lacework of blood vessels.

The nose—pinkish and moist, very much like that of a little dog, but the nostrils were flared. 

She looked into its eyes. Defiant. Aggressive. Definitely aggressive. 

Rabid? 

Rabid animals were violent. This one looked ready to attack. 

She must defend herself, except she could not move. 

Then, she noted its shivering. Calm down, relax. Surely not aggressive. 

Just scared. As scared as she was .... Again, her heart slowed down. 

The little creature adjusted its left wing. A dark golden-brown wing with an even finer network of veins, probably cartilage, exquisitely segmented, each segment divided by a dark bony line. It had a cloth-like texture, leathery. It was wrapped around something. The something lifted its tiny furry head and looked directly at Lila. It was not just a fearless look, there was an absence of fear in that look. For a brief second, Lila saw the mother’s teats before the baby turned, adjusted itself, and burrowed its head back into the mother’s chest, suckling energetically. A mother nursing her baby. 

The mother visibly relaxed now and blinked her eyes. Even her blanket wing softened and her head went back.

Lila had the odd sensation of being dismissed, that she was no longer of any consequence to them. 

She came out of her freeze and stood humbled: it was a rare, privileged glimpse into the very heart of existence.