Learning-To-Be-Thirsty
Pim stayed in Quietford three days, and in three days not one person let him open the umbrella over them.
It was not that they were unkind. They brought him tea. They admired his brass rivets. They simply could not be made to want. He would say, *stand here a moment*, and hold the grey umbrella above them, and ask them gently what they needed — and every single one would smile that closed smile and say *nothing, thank you, I'm quite all right*, and the canopy would stay dry as a bone, because the umbrella, honest old thing, would not pour itself out on a lie.
He began to understand the town's secret on the second evening, watching Mayor Ottilie lock the square's notice-board even though it held nothing but a notice forbidding notices. Quietford had not always been quiet. There were faded marks on the buildings where signs had hung — *Help Wanted*, *Lost Cat*, *Will Trade*. Somewhere along the years the town had decided that to want a thing out loud was to admit a lack, and a lack was a kind of failure, and so one by one they had stopped asking — for help, for company, for anything — until asking itself felt indecent, and they mistook the silence for being satisfied. They were not satisfied. They were parched. They had simply forgotten the feeling had a name.
On the third morning he found Ottilie alone in the square before anyone was up, standing very straight by the dry