I lower myself slowly, keeping my wings tight, my tail balanced behind me. The open sky presses at my back. Too wide. Too empty. No stone overhead to catch sound and give it shape. No close walls to return the breath of what waits nearby.
Only horizon. Only wind. Only the vast red mouth of Tajss opening in every direction. I do not look up. The ground is the danger. The ground is also the only honest thing here.
I press two claws into the dust beside Sera’s boot. The surface skin is wrong. Too dry above, too loose beneath. Sand laid over stone, stone laid over space, space cut by old passage. Not a fresh zemlja breach. Not a full tunnel. Something thinner. A listening place. A place that can collapse if the wrong rhythm teaches it to open.
A soft tremor passes beneath my claws. Once. Pause. Again. Then nothing.
I grit my teeth. Zemlja do not pause like that. Not when hunting. Not when passing. Not when circling heat. Not when circling pressure. Their movement is vast and instinctive. Brutal, but alive.
This feels measured. No. Do not name what cannot yet be proven.
Sera’s eyes stay on me. She feels my silence and dislikes it. I let her continue with the dislike. Let her remain angry enough to be still.
“What do you feel?” she asks.
“A hollow.”
Her face loses a little color. Not much, but she has little to spend.
“Old tunnel?”
“Perhaps.”
“Perhaps is not useful.”
“It is true.”
“That’s also not useful.”
“It is more useful than comfort.”
Her mouth tightens. She wants to strike with words. I see it gather. Then she swallows it, and the small act of restraint costs her more than it should.
“What do I do?” she asks.
There. Trust, not given freely. Lent. Thin as a blade. I will not waste it.
“Shift nothing,” I say. “Breathe shallow. When I tell you, move your weight to your back heel.”
“My back heel is on the bad sand.”
“Your front foot is on worse.”
Her gaze drops.
“No,” I say. Her eyes lift immediately. Good. “Do not look down. Your body will follow your fear.”
“My body is extremely interested in fear at the moment.”
“Tell it to be interested in me.”
The words leave my mouth before I consider them. Sera stills, and it is different. Dangerous. It is not fear but awareness.
Her pulse changes under my fingers. I feel it through her wrist. One sharp beat. Then another. I should release her. I do not. I cannot. Not yet. Because of the ground. Only because of the ground.
Liar.
Her gaze fixes on my face as if I have become another problem she means to solve by refusing to blink.
