The chicks rolled before Aylin finished untying Jiang.
Wind drove three grey bodies across the huddle's shadow. One caught itself on spread flippers. Another went onto its back and kicked at the sky while Black-Crown charged from the sea lead.
Jiang jammed his good flipper into the ice.
His left side collapsed beneath him.
Aylin caught the sling before his open shoulder struck the ice. "You are finished with that limb."
He shoved against her boot.
"Finished," she repeated. "The word still means something when you dislike it."
White-Nape broke from the huddle with Pale-Cheek pressed against its breast. The parent pushed its chick toward a dense knot of older birds, then turned sideways into the gust.
Black-Crown reached the first rolling chick. It lowered its body, took the impact against one flank, and guided the smaller bird toward White-Nape.
Two adults might handle the nearest chicks.
At the loosening edge, more grey backs appeared and shredded that hope.
Jiang pulled the sling forward with his beak.
Aylin stepped on it.
"You will reach them with one flipper, one useful foot, and the power of being disagreeable?"
He bit the strap and pulled harder.
"A formidable plan. Stay still."
She knelt in the lee of his body and freed the wet strap from beneath his belly. Her fingers explored the base of his left flipper through the feathers, gentle until they found the swollen place under his shoulder.
Jiang snapped at the air.
"You may bite me after I bind it. That is the medical arrangement we have developed."
Aylin folded the flipper against his side. She used the long pull strap around his body, padding the knot with cloth torn from the inside of her sleeve. The binding held the limb where water and crawling could no longer drag it loose.
Nothing eased. The pain merely stopped shifting.
Jiang looked toward the distant fish.
"Warmth, stillness, and food," Aylin said. "Your face becomes insulting whenever the System tells you something sensible."
He had never shown her the notice.
She tightened the knot with her teeth. "I have spent enough time keeping you alive to recognize the list."
Another gust shook the huddle.
Aylin turned toward the inland horizon.
Cloud had lifted from one part of the white horizon. Dark humps broke through the ice haze, low and uneven, too far away to offer shelter before the next wind.
"Those are basalt ridges," she said.
The word changed her posture. Her shoulders straightened despite the torn clothes, bruised throat, and blood drying through the wrap on her forearm.
She unfolded the last silver inside her sleeve.
Bent and smoke-stained, the strip held no crossing. A thin green sheen still moved along one edge when she faced the dark ridges.
"The coast road lies past those heights. If anything from my country survived, the road will find a settlement before it finds Eres."
Jiang struck the ice beside his beak.
Aylin looked down. "I know where the fragment is."
He scraped the cracked tip of his beak through crusted snow. Each stroke jarred his face. The first word leaned badly because his body kept sliding with the wind.
He scored two words: `ROOT STAYS`.
Aylin read it without helping him finish.
"Yes," she said. "And Eres remains too."
The black-green branch under the sea carried a stolen adult call. Far behind them, a chick answered before its living parent covered the sound.
Jiang scored a line from the words toward the rookery.
"You think staying keeps the root occupied. Perhaps it does. Leaving might pull your recorded voice away. It might also give me the chance to return with people who can break more than one strip of silver."
Her finger followed the faint green edge toward the hills.
"I do not know how long I have been gone. Eres may have had a night. It may have had a season. Every hour I stay because I can see your wounds, I choose against people whose wounds I cannot see."
Jiang watched Black-Crown brace another chick.
The adult's feet dug furrows. White-Nape brought Pale-Cheek close enough for the chick to enter the older group, then moved back into the exposed wind.
No bird waited for Jiang's decision.
Aylin gathered the sling in both hands. "Come with me, Jiang. The branch follows you. Distance may help them more than another ruined dive."
He looked at the long white ground between the sea and the ridges.
His bound flipper hung against his body. One unreliable foot twisted every push sideways. Aylin could drag him until her open forearm failed, or leave him halfway where neither sea nor road offered life.
That was only his body.
Behind him, the fragment held the rookery's food route and wore the voices of its dead. Ahead, Aylin's country held people he had never met and one enemy that had already crossed worlds.
Both directions deserved more than they could give.
Jiang wanted Aylin to stay. Her hands could bind wounds, her voice named dangers his beak reduced to scratches, and her warmth had kept him alive. He also wanted her to reach Eres before another city learned Gredudande's voice. Every direction demanded that he lose sight of someone.
Jiang turned his breast toward the huddle.
Aylin kept holding the sling.
"Look at me before you decide."
Jiang met her eyes.
Anger sharpened her tired face. So did fear. Neither feeling asked permission to replace the other.
"I chose your body," she said. "I brought Gredudande to Earth. I watched four candidates die while I kept believing the next order would work. Eres is my responsibility even when staying beside you feels easier."
Jiang pressed his good flipper into the snow and shifted toward the chicks.
The movement hurt enough to leave no room for ambiguity.
Aylin released the sling.
"You always choose the nearest wound."
Jiang answered with one tap.
She tucked the folded silver against her injured arm. "I am done letting distance make mine less real."
He pointed his beak at the strip, then toward her path.
"I am taking it," she said. "You cannot shape it, and I refuse to return later and find you built another wall."
Jiang gave her a flat stare.
"That wall was your idea."
He tapped twice, naming it a bad idea.
For one breath, her mouth almost softened.
The expression went away before it became forgiveness.
Aylin pulled the loose sling end within reach of Jiang's beak. She checked the binding around his flipper again, then stood without touching his head or promising a return.
"The ridges first," she said. "Then the salt road. Then whatever remains."
Jiang tipped his beak toward the rookery: chicks first, then whatever remained here.
Toward the inland ridges, Aylin started walking. Her first steps punched deep, but firmer snow held the next. She kept her injured arm against her ribs and used the good one for balance while the silver edge guided her toward the dark stone.
Wind took the sound of her boots.
Jiang watched her become smaller.
She looked back once from the top of a low rise. Distance hid her face. Aylin raised no hand and offered no last words; she only measured him against the route she had chosen.
Then she walked down the other side.
Her shallowest prints filled first.
Black-Crown called behind Jiang.
The colony's outer band had folded inward, but the turn came too slowly for every chick. A stronger gust struck the loose edge and peeled four grey bodies away from adult warmth.
White-Nape caught Pale-Cheek beneath its breast.
Black-Crown reached two older chicks and drove them toward a hollow in the snow. Split-Beak appeared beside Grey-Throat farther upwind, using its whole flank to stop the smaller bird from sliding.
The last exposed chick rolled past them all.
Jiang recognized the shoulder rubbed thin by wind. It was the hungry youngster Aylin had brought back by letting it bite her sleeve.
He dragged the sling across its path.
His right foot found purchase. The left folded. His good flipper pushed once, and his body moved only far enough to turn his wounded side into the wind.
The chick struck his breast.
Its beak caught the feathers below his open shoulder. It scrambled upright, shoved closer, and pressed its bare patch against the heat under Jiang's right flipper.
Pain ran through him as the small body settled.
Beyond the filling footprints, Aylin kept walking home.