I take the container carefully. Warm meat. Flatbread. Roasted root cut into thick pieces. The smell hits me before I am ready for it. My stomach tightens at once. I hate that he saw the effect.
The food is better than anything I have had in years. Seasoned. Real. Hot. I try not to devour it too quickly, but hunger and nerves have hollowed me out again despite the meals from earlier.
When I look up after the first few bites, Kaiven is watching me. Not in the ugly way men watched women eat in the lower districts sometimes, as though hunger itself were shameful. His face gives me nothing. But his eyes are fixed on the container, on my hands, on how quickly the food is disappearing.
Heat creeps up my neck.
“I’m not starving,” I say, and hear how weak it sounds the second it leaves my mouth.
His gaze lifts to my face.
“You were.”
Were. Not are. Something in my chest gives a small painful pull at that. I look back down at the food.
“Yes.”
He says nothing after that, and somehow the silence feels gentler than if he had tried to soften it.
When I finish, he reaches across for the empty container before I have fully decided where to set it. Our fingers almostbrush. Almost. I feel that almost all the way to my spine. Kaiven passes the empty container forward without looking away from me.
Outside, the sun starts leaning lower. The light shifts from bright gold into something warmer and deeper. The grasslands catch it and start to glow from within. Shadows lengthen. The air through the filtered vents cools by slow degrees.
I don’t realize I have started leaning slightly toward the window until the transport takes a sharper turn and the light hits my face full on. Kaiven reaches up again and adjusts one of the overhead panels. A shade slides partway down, cutting the glare.
I blink.
“Thank you.”
He gives one nod, as if the adjustment needs no thanks, as if of course he would fix something uncomfortable if he could. That does something strange to my nerves. Not enough to make me relax. But enough that fear is no longer the only thing sitting inside me.
I keep watching the landscape until my eyes start aching from trying to hold too much of it at once. Every time I think I have started understanding the scale, something bigger appears. A line of dark trees twice the height of anything in the Mars domes. A flock of winged creatures bursting out of the grass in black and silver. A body of water broad enough to reflect half the sky.
Then, far off near a ridge of red stone, I see movement big enough to make me go still. At first I think it is a rock. Then it lifts its head. The creature stands on four legs, but its shoulder is higher than the transport roof. Its body is massive and dark, thick ridges running along its spine, head too heavy to belong to anything gentle. I cannot make out all the details from this distance. Only the size. The sheer size.
My hand closes around the restraint without thought.
“What is that?”
Kaiven looks where I am looking and answers immediately.
“Do not worry. It is too far.”
That is not an answer. I tear my eyes from the beast long enough to look at him.
“What is it?”
“A Morakar.”
The name means nothing. The size means plenty.
“Does it hunt people?”
“Yes.”
The word drops like a stone. I turn back to the window fast enough that I almost strain against the restraint. The beast is only a dark shape against the land, but now everything has changed. The beauty. The openness. The light. It all shifts under the knowledge that something large enough to tear open this transport walks this world naturally.
Kaiven’s voice reaches me a second later, low and steady.
