Bartholomew was doing laps on my forearm.
Not metaphorically. The immortal snail had been traversing the same six-inch stretch of healed burn scar for the past four minutes, leaving a trail of slime that caught the lamplight, and I was watching him the way you watch something deeply stupid that is also, somehow, peaceful.
He reached my wrist. Turned around. Started back toward my elbow.
"You've got nowhere to be," I told him. "I respect that."
He did not respond. He was a snail. He had never responded. He was going to outlive every civilization humanity ever built and spend the whole time moving at this exact speed with this exact level of commitment to the journey.
I'd let him out of the terrarium maybe twenty minutes ago, after Satori's Very Normal Evening Briefing, which was what I was calling the lunch conversation where five women had informed me that my room was the venue for a truth-or-dare situation I had no script for.
