“The settlements,” she said, changing the subject abruptly. “Tell me about those. How far away is the nearest one?”
“It took me ten days to make my way through the jungle, and then perhaps another two days of riding.”
“Almost two weeks.” She tried to imagine it—ten days of walking through the jungle she’d only ever seen from above, and then a place she’d never even seen. Twelve days of real ground beneath her feet, real air in her lungs, real creatures crossing her path. “What’s it like? The settlement, I mean.”
“Small, perhaps two hundred people. It’s a farming community with a small town at the center. Nothing fancy.”
“Two hundred people.” The number felt impossible. Two hundred individuals, each with their own thoughts and habits and histories. Two hundred conversations she’d never had, three hundred stories she’d never heard. “Do they all know each other? How do they organize their days? Is there a schedule, or do they just... do what they want?”
“A bit of both. There’s work that needs doing—planting, maintenance, harvesting. But outside of that, people manage their own time.”
“Their own time.” She rolled the phrase around in her mouth, tasting its foreignness. “Ari manages my time. It tells me when to wake, when to eat, when to exercise, when to sleep. I’ve never... managed my own.”
A flicker of something dark crossed his features before he smoothed it away.
“That seems like a lot of control,” he said carefully.
“It’s efficient.” She returned her attention to the wound. “Ari calculated my optimal routine when I was young. It’s designed for maximum productivity and minimum wasted time. It’s the most logical approach.”
“Logic isn’t everything.”
“What else is there?”
The question came out before she could think better of it. She looked up, genuinely curious, and found him watching her with an intensity that made her breath catch.
“Choice,” he said. “Spontaneity. The freedom to make mistakes and learn from them. To wake up one morning and decide to do something different, just because you want to.”
“That sounds...” She searched for the right word. “Chaotic.”
“It can be. It can also be wonderful.”
Wonderful. Another word that felt foreign on her tongue, like a flavor she’d never tasted. She tried to imagine waking up without Ari’s gentle prompts, without a schedule laid out for the day ahead. The thought was simultaneously thrilling and terrifying.
“Tell me about the sea,” she said, retreating to safer ground. “Is it really as vast as it looks?”
“Vaster. It goes on for thousands of kilometers in some directions. You can stand at the shore and look out at nothing but water, all the way to the curve of the planet.”
“What color is the water? Up close, I mean. It looks green from up here, but the texts say it changes depending on the depth and the sediment and the angle of light.”
“All of those things.” A faint smile curved his lips. “I’ve seen it turquoise in the shallows, deep green near the reefs, almost black in the open water. At sunset it turns gold and red and purple, like someone spilled fire across the surface.”
“Fire across the surface.” She closed her eyes, trying to picture it. “I’d like to see that. Just once. To stand at the edge of all that water and watch the sun go down.”
“Maybe you will.”
The words were soft, almost gentle. She opened her eyes and found him looking at her with something in his eyes that made her breath catch.
“Ari says the outside is dangerous,” she said. “That my immune system isn’t adapted to the local pathogens, and that there are predators who would see me as easy prey.”
“Pathogens?” His gaze flicked briefly to the open windows before he shrugged. “The jungle isn’t safe for someone without experience. But ‘dangerous’ and ‘impossible’ aren’t the same thing.”
“Aren’t they?”
“No.” He held her gaze steadily. “I survived out there. So could you, with proper preparation.”
Proper preparation. Not the endless delays and complications Ari always cited, but actual, concrete steps towards something different. The idea sparked in her chest like a flame catching kindling.
Pushing down her excitement, she leaned forward to examine the wound more closely. This time she saw the small spike, still embedded deep in the tissue. One of the thorns from the climbing vines must have broken off inside the wound.
