A week.
Seven days of being broken down and rebuilt in increments so small they were only visible in retrospect, when Nathan stood still long enough to measure the distance between where he'd started and where he was now. The forest felt different beneath his feet. Not the forest itself — the trees were the same, the light carved the same angles through the same canopy, the undergrowth was exactly as it had always been. But he moved through it differently. Occupied it differently. Like a man who had spent his whole life shouting in a library and had finally learned what his indoor voice was.
He stood between two pines, completely still, and waited.
Somewhere out there Genzo had dissolved into the trees three minutes ago without a sound. Nathan had watched him go — or rather, hadn't watched him go, because that was the point. One moment Genzo was there and the next the forest had simply reabsorbed him, closed over the space he'd occupied like water closing over a stone.
