Morning arrived without ceremony, the sky lightening as the wasteland shifted from dark to grey and then to the usual ambient tone. Everyone was already moving by the time I stepped out of the bunker.
The mood was heavier than yesterday, not something anyone said out loud, but it showed in the way Finn sat while looking at his hands, in how Coll stood at the corridor's edge looking toward the serpent territory.
He was the oldest One among us, he told us he had survived exile through what he called luck, which meant he had seen enough people not survive in the wasteland to understand exactly what walking into a serpent nest alone meant. He didn't argue, just stood there, probably thinking of alternate solutions and finding none.
