“The first roots. Not roots like surface plants. Epis holds to mineral seams. It drinks what zemlja leave behind.”
“Waste.”
“Yes.”
“Everyone in Council was very poetic for something that grows in worm leavings.”
I glance at her. Her mouth is flat, but there is anger under it. Not at the plant, but at the secrecy. At hope made holy after hunger made bodies smaller.
“It is still precious,” I say.
“Many ugly things are.”
True. I scrape gently along the darker band. Dust loosens beneath my claws, red and gray and yellow white. No blue powder. No blackened fibers. No brittle strands tucked into cracks. Nothing. Dead epis leaves remnants. Harvested epis leaves scars. This place has neither.
Sera stares at me.
“What?” she asks.
“I found nothing.”
“You were already looking at nothing.”
“No.”
She waits. It seems she is learning my silences are not all the same. I run one claw along the seam again, slower.
“If epis grew and died, there would be dead strands. If it was harvested, there would be cuts. If something fed on it, there would be torn anchor scars.”
“And?”
“None.”
The basin wind breathes over us, carrying heat into the tunnel mouth. It touches the darkness and leaves with the bitter scent sharpened. Sera’s face tightens.
“So it never grew.”
“That is possible.”
“You do not believe in possible,” she says, narrowing her eyes.
“I rarely trust it.”
“Useful.”
“Sometimes.”
She exhales through her nose. It is not quite a laugh nor quite despair. She points into the tunnel.
“But it should have grown here.”
“Yes.”
“Because the zemlja passed through.”
“Because a zemlja passed through, left richness, shaped the tunnel, opened mineral veins, and created a sealed place where heat and leavings could feed growth.”
“You make it sound deliberate.”
