“We eat before you say it.”
His gaze shifts from the crack to me. I hate that I gave him the satisfaction.
“I was not going to say it yet,” he says.
“Liar.”
“Yes.”
Something almost lightens between us. Almost. Then my stomach tightens around the word “eat,” and all the light goes suspicious again. I look toward the crack.
“If that is epis, why is it glowing now?”
“The rhythm may have woken it,” he says.
“Or whatever made the rhythm woke it up.”
“Yes.”
“Or it’s dying.”
Kavor’s stillness sharpens. I dislike that answer most because he does not reject it immediately.
“Epis can dim when it is weakened,” he says.
“Can it answer?”
“To certain stimuli.”
“What things?”
“Heat. Blood. Zemlja leavings. Pressure. Sometimes song, if old stories can be trusted.”
“Song?”
“Yes.”
I laugh once, dry and humorless. “Of course. Why wouldn’t the miracle worm-poop plant also have musical preferences?”
His head tilts.
“Ignore me. Hunger makes me charming.” I wave a hand.
“Hunger makes you sharp.”
“I’m always sharp.”
“Yes.”
Again, that serious agreement. Again, my chest doing something very stupid with it.
The shelter feels smaller than before. The blue glow changed it. Before, this was a trapped pocket under fused stone. Now it’s a threshold. A secret with a pulse. A thing we cannot reach yet, sitting behind my spine like a door I don’t have permission to open.
Kavor reaches for his pack, and I brace for the dried meat argument.
Instead, he pulls out the pale strip of ration I avoided earlier, along with a small wrapped lump of seed mash. Then he selects a flat shard of dark stone from the shelter floor and sets it near the threshold, where the heat glare almost touches.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
