“You’re bleeding again,” she says.
I glance down. A narrow line has wormed through the seal and is walking toward my elbow.
I press it until the polymer holds.
When I look up, she is already unwinding her own scarf.
She leans forward and—without taking my arm, without presuming—loops it quickly around my bicep above the injury.
Her hands are gentle.
Heat moves under my skin where her knuckles brush.
“Better,” she says softly.
She sits back, clear eyes on mine. “I don’t know what happens next.”
“Next,” I say, “we sleep. Then we move before first light.”
“To where?”
I hold her gaze. It is a risk to say it.
I say it anyway.
“A place where men like those cannot find you. If you wish it.”
“Is it… yours?”
“Yes.” A beat. “Ours.”
The word lands heavier than I intend. I lift a hand, a small apology. “My people’s. Not mine alone.”
She turns the word over in her head. The corner of her mouth bends.
“Okay,” she says. “For tonight, that’s enough.”
We bed down on opposite sides of the canister.
The small room smells like stone dust and rain and the sharp, clean bite of the med gel.
I listen to her breathing lengthen and slow.
I watch the seam’s thin breath stir the stray hairs at her temple.
The ache in my shoulder settles into something manageable.
My eyes do not close for a long time.
I keep watch the way I have since I deserted: body still, mind cutting quiet circles, counting sounds that do not belong.
Men breathe like this. Weather like that. Cats, birds, the small hungry things—it is all a choir you can learn if you want to live long.
Hours later, the storm moves on across the shoulders of the range.
The mountain shifts again, sifting its old weight.
The human turns in her sleep and, without waking, pulls the scarf tighter around my arm—like she is afraid the wound will wander without permission.
