Dogs started it.
Not one dog — all of them, every animal in the village going off within the same handful of seconds, a chorus of barking that climbed too fast and too uniform to be one stray fox at the grain store. Rama was on his feet before he'd fully processed why, the specific old reflex arriving ahead of conscious thought, body already moving toward the door while his mind was still catching up to what had woken it.
"Sekar."
"I hear it." She was already up too, already reaching for their daughter.
Their daughter had stirred at the noise, sitting up in the dark with the particular alertness she'd built across weeks of learning that sudden sound meant something worth waking for rather than something to cry about. Rama scooped her up without a word, felt her arms lock around his neck automatically, no questions this time — she'd learned that too, in a village that had never once needed the lesson until tonight.
