The wall is cool beneath the surface. Good. She feels it too. Her shoulders lower by a fraction.
“There’s air,” she says.
“Yes.”
“Back crack. Not deep enough to travel. Maybe enough to keep this place from becoming an oven.”
I look toward the rear seam. Narrow. Dark. Too small for me to enter, but large enough to breathe through.
“How long?” I ask.
She does not pretend to misunderstand.
“Until the second sun clears the lower glass. Maybe longer.”
I study the light outside. “We are trapped.”
“Sheltered,” she says.
“That is a generous word.”
“It’s the word that keeps people from panicking.”
“Are you panicking?”
“No.”
Lie. A small one that is not worth cutting open.
She slides down the wall before I can tell her to sit. The stone takes her weight. One knee bends. One leg stretches in the small space available. Her pack remains against her chest like a shield.
I crouch opposite her. The shelter is too small. My wings fold tight. My tail curls along the wall. My knees nearly touch hers. I shift back, but the stone stops me.
“Too tight?” she asks.
“No.”
Her eyebrows lift in silent offense. I deserve it. The space is not too tight for me.
It is the first place since we left the City where the world has made sense around my body. Walls. Ceiling. Echo. Boundary. But she is inside it with me, close enough that her breath moves the dust between us. Close enough that her scent fills the shelter.
Heat. Salt. Dry cloth. Hunger. Human skin. The faint mineral trace of tunnel dust. Sera. Too tight in a different way.
I turn my head toward the opening. The basin outside shimmers white-red. Heat pours past the overhang, visible in waves. No movement across the surface. Nothing breaching. Below, the ground holds its silence.
Sera pulls the water skin toward her, then pauses and looks at me. A question she does not want to ask. I nod and she drinks. Two mouthfuls, this time. She passes it to me without comment. I drink once, less because my body demands it than because fairness matters to her. Then I secure the cap and set the skin between us on neutral ground. Her mouth twitches at the placement.
“You can say it,” she says.
“What?”
“That I should have eaten more.”
“You should have eaten more.”
Her eyes narrow. “I said you could. I didn’t say you should.”
“Then your permission was poorly shaped.”
