---
"She hears me," Bat Bat said again, half to Sekhmet and half to herself. "She hears me."
Then the green patch reacted.
That was the next strange thing.
The grass around them stirred though no wind passed. The leaves nearest Leaf trembled and tilted toward her as if responding to pain in their smallest queen. Tiny root-lines under the soil glowed faintly green, answering whatever was happening in her spirit. The little patch of life did not merely surround her now. It responded to her.
Auri saw it too. "The patch is holding her."
Yes.
That could matter.
Leaf's light flashed again, this time red-green-gold all at once, and then her tiny body folded inward. Her wings wrapped around her. Her head tucked down. Her light compressed instead of flaring.
Bat Bat sucked in a breath. "What is she doing?"
Sekhmet already knew. He had seen enough transformations under his line by now to recognize the shape of what came before emergence.
"She is cocooning."
