He blinked to hide his 'Trickster's Eye'. That's what Amaris Dahia called it whenever her father blinked a certain way. It is what he did whenever he was trying to remind her... not to take even that which is serious too seriously.
Kalil stared out the window of the wagon into the darkness and said, "Isn't it curious how the clouds appear to cloak the moon, while all the while she dances through the night sky, thousands of miles above them?"
Amaris Dahia laughed and said, "hu,"
"hu," said her father.
She understood well the meaning of her father's familiar parable. Life wasn't what it seemed, because it never was and never would be. She also knew why the Wild World had rescued them from the Marquis de Garra. But she could not say. Not now.
Silently, she lay down beside her father's bed and curled up like a cat.