“I’m not touching it.”
“You are near it.”
“I’m looking.”
“That is a human habit with poor survival value.”
“That is rich coming from the male who listens to floors.”
“I listen from a distance.”
“You were just claw-deep in the dust.”
“Claw-deep is not body-deep.”
She gives me a look over her shoulder. It is entirely possible I enjoy arguing with her. This is a bad sign.
She leans closer to the hollow. I let her, barely.
Her eyes move across the edges, the red dust, the way the surface skin has pulled inward instead of cracking outward.
“It didn’t break like a sink pocket,” she says.
I still. She hears the change in my silence and looks back.
“What?”
“You know sink pockets.”
“I know where people die.” The words are flat. Not dramatic. That makes them worse. She points toward the hollow. “When crust breaks over a dry void, the edges spider out. This folded down.”
“Yes.”
“Like something underneath breathed in.”
My wings tighten. The open sky presses harder.
“Yes.”
She stands slowly. This time I do not tell her to step back. This time she does it herself.
“What does that mean?” she asks.
I look east. Past the ruin ribs. Past the old cistern basin. Toward the sinkline we cannot yet see. The ground is quiet again. Too quiet.
“It means the trail is not sleeping.”
Her face tightens. “Trails do not sleep.”
“No.”
“Another not-answer.”
“Yes.”
The wind moves between us, dragging thin lines of dust over the place where her boot nearly broke through the world. Sera follows the dust with her eyes.
“Then answer what you know.”
