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Alex glanced at me. "You can grow me another one."

I made the mistake of looking at him.

That started me laughing again.

By the time I stopped, Alex was grinning in a way that made me suspicious the entire last half hour had been deliberate.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"You're doing a face."

"I don't have a face."

I opened my mouth to argue, then noticed the light behind him.

The gold that had filled the forest earlier had thinned, leaving the spaces between the trees darker and cooler. The first faint blue glow had started along a fallen trunk a few feet away, the organisms in the bark answering the fading daylight.

Alex followed my gaze. "Getting late."

"It isn't dark yet."

"No, but Halver will start food soon."

I looked at him. "He cooks?"

Alex's expression turned almost reverent. "Halver cooks."

"That sounded unnecessarily dramatic."

"You haven't eaten his food yet."

"He made sandwiches."

"No. Sandwiches are survival. Halver actually cooks." Alex pushed himself upright and brushed leaves from his pants. "If we get back before he starts, we might even be able to influence what he makes."

"You mean annoy him until he makes what you want."

"That's an ugly way to describe it."

"It sounds accurate."

"It usually works."

He held out a hand to help me up, then seemed to remember what happened the last time he touched me without warning and pulled it back before I could respond.

The movement came fast enough that I could have pretended not to notice it.

I noticed it.

I stood on my own and brushed bark off the back of my pants. Ashter had already wandered off again, his dark body harder to see as the forest dimmed around him.

"Ashter."

His head lifted somewhere between the trees.

"We're going."