Voices, before anything else.
Not words Rama could parse — rhythm first, a call-and-response cadence carried on wind moving the wrong way, toward them instead of away. He'd doubled back for Sekar within the hour, their daughter riding his shoulders now, and the three of them had covered the distance to the tree line in near silence, stepping where the leaf litter looked softest, stopping every dozen paces to listen before moving again.
"Stop." Sekar's hand flat against his chest.
He stopped.
She tilted her head, eyes half-closed, the specific stillness of someone listening past the words for their shape rather than their meaning. The voices carried again — two registers, one low and patient, one younger and quicker, trading something back and forth across the terraced field below. A third voice joined briefly, further off, answered by what might have been laughter.
"Say something," Rama murmured.
"I can't yet." Her jaw worked. "Give me the pattern again."
