The stone basin is inaudible outside this room, but inside it’s a perfect laughing gurgle: cool and sweet, endless, out the tap and down the drain forever. She blocked it up once to flood the room, but it just sank through the floorboards. Even in the room that should have been directly beneath it, there was no sign of a leak.

She chose it as the center of the map she’s drawing, quill ink onto sheets of soft vellum torn from the empty books. The basin wall is north. The room’s a square, labelled “Water Here.”

She never gets thirsty anymore.