Albino
The Dey color court in Milkstone Courts records family history through layers of bright wall repairs. Grandmother Dey lives with Nima, Sol, children, Sol's feathered partner Aven, and the long-temporary lodger Harl. Aven needs a clear room to extend wings during molt; the children keep building cities across its floor. Adults agree the buildings must move and then add towers.
Above Honest Dust, mineral tester Vesma and her ex-husband Corr maintain separate rooms but share work, water, and a kitchen with Toma and Jerri. Jerri lives with dust injury. Two elderly salt grazers occupy the roof. Labels on separate shelves keep failing because people reach for the nearest salt. Corr still leaves out the spice that hurts Vesma's stomach.
Nocturn
At Seven Small Lights, copy repairer Teren, low-vision spouse Fenn, glow-fungus growers Asha and Bru, and Bru's moth-bodied niece Noll need different lamps. Work, reading, privacy, cultivation, safety, and one unjustifiably beautiful blue light coexist. Flames are screened. Fenn objects when visitors move stools in the name of helping.
In Coldmouth room twelve, Yarrow carries the dead at night and leaves work clothing outside the sleeping room. Twins Melo and Tave set tea at the threshold after hard shifts. Aunt Cess is a neighbor on paper and a household member in practice. One twin names the pipe moths; the other counts their damage. A screened warm seam keeps the colony out of blankets.
The Split
Fourwater adoption house includes witnesses Rell and Marda, children Suni, Brack, and Els, Brack's birth mother Yara during alternate wet cycles, and Court, an ordinary legless dog. Adoption adds kin rather than replacing them. Els kept a name nobody could corroborate. Fixed table seats are avoided because of the authority they carried in the children's earlier lives.
An unregistered warm room behind an abandoned bath shelters Senn, a retired Sweeper; Rat Beastkin launderer Lio; siblings Palla and Neve; a Marked resident who chooses the name Hush; and two unowned Rimwise. Heat arrives unpredictably. First-night guests need not explain everything. Hush uses arranged objects when spoken sequence falters. Neighbors who deliver food, borrow tools, use the laundry, and complain about noise provide recognition no official occupancy list contains.
