"My people do not like bones that rise," she said. The words were flat, carried like a helmet she'd worn for years. "We hate it, most days."
He waited.
"There was one Elder," she said after a beat, voice blade-thin but steady. "She raised them too. She was a contradiction. And the kindest woman I ever met."
"That tracks," he said softly. "Every kind thing contradicts something ugly." Three jokes queued in his throat and stayed there. Don't make light. Hold it with her. He nodded once. It was not enough, but it was honest.
They marched onto a ribbed bridge that crossed a fall of sap.
The spray was as fine as breath. It lacquered stone to satin. The fall's mouth exhaled in pulses that wanted knees to lie and feet to take wrong steps. Mist pearled on Thalatha's braid and made gold a little brighter. It beaded on Mikhailis's lenses and he wiped them with the back of a glove, smearing lines into a rainbow.
Rodion tapped cadence directly into their ears.
