He turned to the gardener. “Try it. One section first. If yields improve, we’ll adopt it basin-wide.”
She looked between us, surprised. “Just like that?”
He shrugged one broad shoulder. “We are alive because we adapt. If a system fails, we change it. If it works, we keep it.”
His gaze flicked back to me. “Thank you.”
He meant it.
I hadn’t realized I’d been bracing for dismissal until the tension eased out of my shoulders.
“Old convoy habits,” I said. “You learn to see where things will bottleneck before they do.”
“It is a useful skill,” he said.
Useful.
Not dangerous.
Not in the way that mattered most to me.
Later, as the artificial day began to dim, I found myself on one of the upper terraces, leaning against the railing that looked down into the basin.
The sky overhead was only a sliver, a bruised ribbon of cloud and late light framed by stone. From here, the colony looked less like an imposition on the mountain and more like something that had grown out of it—warmed windows, carved walkways, and the faint gleam of metal where vents caught the setting light.
Footsteps approached, steady and familiar. I didn’t turn until he stopped a pace away.
“Gardens survived your suggestions,” Rygnar said. “No reports of famine yet.”
“Give it a season,” I said. “Then you can blame me if everyone’s too well-fed.”
He stood beside me, resting his forearms on the railing. The scales there caught the last of the light, dark bronze and muted green, crosshatched with fine silvery scars. Life written in a language I still didn’t know how to read.
“You were busy today,” he said.
“I wasn’t sure what the protocol was for useless refugees,” I said. “So, I decided not to be one.”
“You are not useless.”
“I’m not staying forever either,” I said, more sharply than I meant to. “Once things settle, once I know the raiders aren’t circling back, I’ll need to return to the enclave. They’ll want a report. On the attack.” I glanced at him. “Not on you. Not on the colony.”
“The colony is not entirely a secret,” Rygnar said. “Certain authorities know we exist. We have an agreement.”
Then he looked at me.
“Do you want to go back?”
The question landed heavier than it should have.
Want.
That was new.
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “Before, it was simple. The enclave was home because there was nowhere else. The convoy gave me work because everyone needed the supplies. I didn’t… have time to want anything else.”
“And now?” he asked.
Now there was the way Mara smiled when the shelves finally made sense. The way the gardener’s shoulders eased when someone took her problem seriously. The way children’s laughter sounded different in stone corridors than in open dust—less scattered, more held, as if the mountain refused to let it blow away.
