The girl posing before me was sitting at a three-quarters angle from me, her eyes looking out a different window than the one that illuminated my easel. But she glanced my way, then widened her eyes in surprise. She almost dropped her pose, but tensed up again with a swiftness that told me she had been reprimanded to stay still, probably a lot of times.
"You"re different," she said.
"Am I?" I said, not sure what she meant. But I was pretty sure who she was. "Njorun?"
"Yes?" she said. She had returned her gaze to a thousand-mile stare out the window, but she chanced another quick look my way.
"Do you know who I am?" I asked her.
She thought about this for a moment, then made the smallest of shrugs. "Not really. Did my parents hire you to take the place of the last fellow?"
"No," I sai
