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The thought remains mine. The bond cannot carry sentences. It has never given us speech, memories in full, or access to hidden thought. We exchange emotion unintentionally and brief images through deliberate effort. Even those arrive broken at times.

I abandon language and choose the first image.

Rirzed.

Blue petals with gray-cast stems. Fiona’s fingers crushing a leaf. The clean mineral scent she described while treating my wound.

I press the image toward her.

Her hand pauses above the poisoned jar.

“Rirzed,” she whispers.

The word reaches me through the room, not the bond.

I replace the flower with numiscu. Nearly identical blue petals. A stem too smooth beneath its pale dusting. Oil glistening where a blossom has been cut.

The two images blur together as my control falters.

Fiona closes her eyes. Tentative recognition brushes my mind. It is a question without words, no clearer than a hand feeling along a wall in darkness.

I send the contrast again.

Rirzed. Numiscu.

Gray stem. Oily sap.

Medicine. Paralysis.

The last concept carries too much. It breaks into fear before reaching her.

“I know what poisoned you,” she says. “Show me what slows it.”

I cannot show a complete remedy. I have no precise measure for her roots, no method for mixing an antidote, and no certainty that my limited knowledge is sufficient for poison entering an open wound. Even if I held those instructions, the connection could not carry them.

I choose fylvek.

Long grass with dark green blades. Fibrous roots hanging from Fiona’s hand. The pungent preparation she used when the curse drove me to my knee. I remember its cool pressure against my scar and the gradual easing of pain.

The image reaches her unevenly.

“Fylvek,” she says. “Fresh or dried?”

I have no way to answer.

Her question touches the bond as uncertainty. I attempt to show both forms, then realize the result will confuse rather than guide. I know only that heat must be avoided. Fiona keeps dried fylvek in the solarium and fresh growth beneath the western glass.

I send the root alone.

She studies me. “Concentrated.”

Perhaps.

I cannot confirm it. I push caution toward her, but emotion lacks precision. She may receive warning, hesitation, or simple fear.

“You are not certain,” she says.

I blink once.