"We're lost in time" was not a sentence either of them knew how to act on, so they did what they knew how to do instead, which was survive the next six hours and worry about the rest afterward.
"Shelter first," Sekar said, already moving. "Then water. Then we think."
Rama didn't argue. He'd learned, across seven years of crisis after crisis, that Sekar's order of operations was almost always correct, and that arguing with it cost more time than it saved.
The clearing where the canopy had thinned wasn't defensible — too open, too exposed to whatever had made that heavy, unhurried movement in the underbrush earlier. He found a better spot within twenty minutes: a shallow overhang where a slab of rock had split away from a low outcrop centuries ago, or possibly a thousand years ago, or possibly more than that, leaving a dry hollow just large enough for the three of them to sit with their backs against stone instead of open air on every side.
