A shutter tapped once in the cooling air, then stilled.
Somewhere at the edge of the fields, an animal shifted in its pen and lay down again. The sound traveled only a little way before being absorbed into the greater quiet.
Rhys did not sleep immediately.
He let the layers of the day settle without arranging them. The climb. The plateau. The descent. The river. None stood apart now. They lay within him as the village lay within the valley—distinct, yet continuous.
A coal collapsed inward with a soft sigh.
Across the fire, the woman who had tied the vines earlier rose and covered the embers with a practiced hand, banking heat for morning. No proclamation. No ritual beyond what worked.
Caria turned once in her sleep and stilled.
Puddle's awareness thinned gradually, not withdrawing but distributing—attentive to the perimeter of sound, to the rhythm of breathing nearby, to the slow, subterranean conversation of roots beneath the packed earth.
Rhys closed his eyes.
