aimedforthemoon

from here:

Esfir's room looks more like a home, now. The bookcases have been stacked and arranged against a wall, and while they aren't yet full, there are more than enough books to indicate how much she loves them. Her pin-up board of photographs is still up on the wall, and there are still models on the table (new ones - the orignals got blow up alongside the Liberty), and it is still neat, but...

There is more of a sense of someone living here now, instead of just staying for a while.

Of course, the first indication of this is her, "Boots off," once they walk through the doorway. Her own shoes are slipped off and put neatly by the doorway.

Esfir was born and raised a city-girl. The city in question might have been a bombed out ruin for most of the time she was there, and there might be too many nomads in her background for her to ever shun the wide open steppes and forests, but when all is said and done, she's a city-girl.

Of course, her grandfather was a stubborn man who thought cities were the height of foolishness and, yes, it was all very well for Shostak to do well, but look what leaving the farm did for him? Crashing his plane into those fucking Germans above Moscow, that's what, and leaving you an orphan, Fira, being raised in a city. Not that the old man ever said as much all in one go. Unless he was telling stories, he barely said a word. She'd always wondered what he was saving them for. But she'd spent enough summers on the farm to know her way around animals and Vovka the mixed-breed, stubborn horse who had somehow managed to survive Nazi-occupation.

Probably the same way her grandfather had - by being too stubborn to die.

And it's partly homesickness for that collective farm and grumpy old man and stubborn horse that has the tiny pilot perched on paddock fence, watching the Milliways horses.