The nechist family sat round the kitchen table next morning. A bright storm-born dawn painted frosting on the snow outside the large bay window.
Iosif gazed into his bowl of salted kasha, stirring it with a furred hand. He looked into the cereal as if divining portents from entrails. Witches used organs to tell the future, domovois used cereal. Beside him Dmitri read a newspaper, chuckling occasionally. Elizaveta rocked Anya, singing a song about drowned kisses and sailors lost in Siberian fjords.
“Do not coddle her, Liza,” Morozko said. “She was the devil last night, keeping me up with her wailing. I had to change her not once but twice." ...