“Wider beyond the lip.”
“Yes.”
“Big enough for you?”
I study the angle. The first section is too narrow, but the stone broke unevenly. The lower half opens toward darkness. If I turn one shoulder sideways. Fold my wings tightly. And crawl. Maybe. Better than sending her alone.
“Perhaps.”
“That is not a yes.”
“It is better than no,” I say.
She gives me a flat look. “Your standards for optimism are tragic.”
“Your standards for danger are poor.”
“Efficient,” she says.
“No.”
Then she smiles. Only a flash. A bad idea made flesh. The expression should frighten me, and it does. But fear is not always a warning to retreat. Sometimes it is the body understanding life has become larger than survival.
Another shard falls from the crack. The passage breathes again, and this time the scent of epis reaches us. Faint.
Blue-purple light has a scent when alive. Not flower. Not water. Not anything surface-born. It is mineral sweetness, old heat, and the sharp, living note of something that grows by turning death into endurance.
Sera closes her eyes. Only one breath. When she opens them, her face is practical again. Too late. I saw.
“We wait until the heat drops,” she says.
“The passage may not remain open.”
Her eyes cut to me. “Convenient how your objections collapse once the crack gets big enough for you.”
“Yes.”
She stops, then laughs once under her breath.
“At least you know,” she says.
“I know many things.”
“Do not get proud. Most of them are rocks.”
“Rocks have kept me alive.”
“Food has kept me alive, and yet you keep arguing with mine.”
“You make food difficult.”
“I make everything difficult. Try to keep up,” she says.
The shelter trembles. This time, the movement comes from below and behind, through the newly opened passage. Not the wrong rhythm. Not once-pause-again. A long, low breath of pressure moves through the old tunnel.
Zemlja.
Sera hears enough of it to go still. I drop one hand to the floor. Deep. Distant. Not coming toward us yet. A body moves through tunnels far beneath the basin, large enough for the stone to remember.
