For once, she lets it pass.
She looks past me into the chamber. “Can I fit?”
“Yes.”
“Can you?”
“Yes.”
“Truth?”
“Painfully.”
“That is also not a yes.”
“It is enough.”
She points at my wing. “You scraped yourself.”
“Stone was jealous.”
Her gaze snaps to mine. Then, impossibly, she smiles, and blue light catches it. I am not prepared. The smile is small. Tired. Half-starved. Real.
It strikes somewhere beneath my ribs with more force than a breach. I turn away before my face betrays too much.
“Come slowly,” I say.
“Bossy.”
“Alive.”
“Fine distinction.”
“Important one.”
Her echo of our earlier words should not please me, but it does.
She removes her pack and pushes it through first. I catch it and set it on dry stone inside the chamber. Then she lowers herself through the crack.
Her shoulder brushes mine. Barely.
The passage is narrow. The contact is unavoidable. It still moves through me like warning. She stills. I still. For one breath, we are both held by stone, blue light, and the place where her body touches mine. Then she exhales.
“Committed-fast?” I ask quietly.
Her mouth tightens. “Committed-stuck, if you keep talking.”
I accept it because anger gives her motion.
She slides through the narrowest part. I brace one hand near her hip without touching, ready if the stone catches her. She sees. Says nothing. Uses my arm as a boundary anyway, not leaning on it, but trusting where it is.
Progress can be cruelly small and still be everything. She drops into the chamber beside me and immediately goes still. The first epis growth hangs above us.
Thin strands cling along the curved wall. Blue at the roots, purple near the tips. Some no longer than my claw. Others trailing half the length of Sera’s hand. They pulse faintly, not with the wrong rhythm, but with something slower. Living. Fragile.
Sera steps closer. I catch her sleeve lightly between two claws. She looks down at the contact. I release at once.
“Sorry,” I say.
