This is a short story set immediately after the wonderful novel The Magpie Lord, and while it's enjoyable enough to read it's also very slight. There's really not even a passing resemblance to plot, and plot was one of the novel's greatest strengths so that was a bit of a disappointment. More than anything, it's essentially a series of short conversations that recap past events, and allow the characters a little emotional space to begin to process what's just happened to them. And that's a valuable and interesting thing to read, it really is... but without a sustained plot arc, it doesn't really feel to me like a fully rounded short story, I think.