The answer moved the forest before Jiang understood it.
Red branches rolled beneath his feet. Water vanished from one hanging river and burst out of another above it. Every hollow root rang with the two voices an emperor penguin made through one throat.
One voice was his.
The other was too large to belong to anything that needed a throat.
Jiang had lost his human voice long ago. The paired call was the one sound this body had taught him from the inside, shaped by breath, chest, and the way he held his head. Hearing a living world use it without breathing felt like another theft.
Up the Bellmother's underside surged black water pulled from the depths.
It entered the torn brood chamber from below, flowing against its own fall. Six root feet braced while the antlered adult hooked its calf higher and backed onto a dry red fork.
Its amber chest answered the river with a frightened clang.
