Chapter 26
Keandra
The morning begins wrong, though I do not know that yet.
I only feel it. Not in any way I can name.
No obvious danger. No shouted warning. No beasts running wild at the edge of camp.
Just a restlessness under everything. The kind that makes me wake before the light has fully changed and lie quietly for a moment listening to the wind move differently against the tent.
Kaiven is already gone.
That should not matter as much as it does. These last quiet, strained days have made every absence sharper. Every small distance bigger. I feel his side of the furs cool beside me and stare at the tent roof for one long breath before sitting up.
The ache between us has not gone away. He has been careful since our awkward night and worse morning.
Too careful. Thoughtful in ways that land like distance.
Food keeps appearing. Water waits for me.
The better wraps are set closer when the air cools.
He notices everything. But he has stepped back with his body.
Given me room because he thinks room is what I need.
I understand that now. Understanding does not make it hurt less.
I dress in the low morning light and tie back my hair with fingers that remain too aware of what is missing from the tent. Warmth. Pressure. The easy dangerous certainty of him close.
Outside, the camp is already stirring. The sky is pale but hazed in a way I cannot quite place.
Not clouded. Not clear either. Just washed strangely thin near the horizon.
The air feels drier than yesterday. The wind brushes my face in short restless passes and then drops, as if it cannot decide which direction it wants.
I notice all of it. Then dismiss it because I do not know what any of it means.
That is the problem. This world keeps speaking in signs I cannot read yet.
At the morning fire, Oshara is sharper than usual.
Not angry. More brisk. The Maira move faster.
Baskets are checked twice. Water skins topped off.
A pair of boys sent running for extra cloth wraps.
One of the older women mutters something in Tigris while glancing toward the eastern horizon, and another answers with a sound that feels half agreement, half annoyance.
I catch none of the meaning. Only the rhythm. Something is different. The women know it.
Work continues anyway. That too is the rasha.
The first task of the morning is food sorting, then dividing the dried stores, then deciding what fresh gathering can be done before the day turns. I listen hard, hoping for enough English to catch the shape of what is happening. I get pieces only. Roots. Bitter greens. Fast work. Closer fields.
Closer fields.
That much I understand.
Oshara looks toward one of the younger women and says something clipped. Then, with a glance at me, adds in English, “You go with them. Gather quickly. No wandering.”
I nod at once.
The opportunity matters. That is what no one here fully understands yet, maybe not even Kaiven.
Every task is more than a task to me right now.
Every basket carried, root dug, wrap folded, child handed a cup, herb sorted correctly.
All of it feels like proof I am trying to become something more than a female being kept.
Not because I despise being kept safe. Because safety alone can feel too much like passivity if I let it.
I do not want to become a soft useless thing in the center of Kaiven’s protection. I do not want the women to look at me and see only Kai’s human Sahri, who eats his food, sleeps in his furs, and contributes nothing but the future hope of children.
So when Oshara sends me with the gathering women, I feel relief sharper than caution.
We leave camp in a group of five women and one young male guard. Not the fully guarded ring of the predator day. This is a shorter run. A nearby patch. Lower risk.
I tell myself that matters.
The land beyond camp is familiar enough now to be less frightening at first glance.
Tall grass. Low stone outcroppings. Tough ground with pockets of growth where roots and edible plants cluster if you know where to look.
The morning light stays strangely thin, though, and the wind keeps changing.
One minute it brushes warm over my bare hands.
The next it cools sharply and raises the fine hairs at the back of my neck.
A younger woman named Retha, who has been less cold to me than most, hands me a digging blade and points toward a patch near a line of rocks.
“There. Deep roots. Twist, not pull.”
I nod and kneel where shown.
The work is good because it keeps my body busy.
Blade in. Turn. Loosen the soil. Pull the root whole if possible.
Brush off excess dirt. Drop it in the basket.
I am slower than the others, but not useless.
Not today. The roots come free with satisfying resistance, and after a while I fall into the task enough that the silence between me and Kaiven blurs a little at the edges.
That is another reason I cling to work now. It gives me somewhere to put myself besides missing him or being wounded by him.
The women speak around me as they move down the line.
Short phrases. Calls to shift positions.
Occasional corrections. At one point Retha tosses me a strip of cloth to wrap around the root stems so the cut ends do not dry too fast. Another woman gestures for me to move left, where the growth is thicker.
These small things matter. Every practical inclusion matters.
I keep going.
After a while I notice the light has changed again.
The sun is there, but the color is wrong. Dimmer without cloud cover. Flatter somehow. The horizon to the east looks pale and dirty instead of bright. The wind dies for several breaths, and in the quiet the whole world feels as though it is listening.
I straighten slightly and look up.
One of the older women looks up too, then says something under her breath in Tigris. The young guard turns toward the horizon and swears.
My stomach tightens. Not because I know why. Because everyone else suddenly looks more alert.
“What?” I ask.
No one answers at first.
Then Retha says sharply, “Faster.”
That is all.
Faster.
The women do not gather the baskets and run. They do not shout an alarm. They work faster.
I obey because that is what I have learned to do when I do not understand. Follow the people who do. My hands move more quickly. Blade in. Twist. Pull. Dirt under my nails. The basket grows heavier. The air grows strangely dry against my lips. I lick them once and taste grit.
That stops me for one heartbeat.
Grit.
The wind returns then in a low strange push that skims over the ground instead of moving above it. It carries more dust than before. Not enough to blind. Enough that I squint.
The women are gathering their baskets now. Retha grabs two at once and jerks her chin toward my half-filled one.
“Take it.”
I reach for it automatically. Then hesitate.
It is only half full.
The thought hits before fear does. Half full. After all this effort, after finally being trusted out here with them again, after everything inside me still raw from feeling reduced to what my body might someday carry, the idea of bringing back a half-filled basket lands like failure.
I crouch back down and drive the blade into the earth again.
Retha whirls. “Leave it.”
“There are more here.”
The words sound weak even to my own ears.
Retha’s face hardens. “Leave it.”
The young guard is already moving between us, taking baskets, scanning the horizon, swearing again in Tigris. The older woman says something urgent. Another starts toward camp at a near trot.
My pulse jumps.
Something is wrong enough now that I can finally feel it in my own body. Not because I understand the sky. Because everyone else has stopped pretending this is just an ordinary hurry.
Still, I look down at the roots still visible in the loosened soil. Good roots. Food. Useful. Proof that I was not just standing there with empty hands.
“I can get the rest,” I say.
The words come out too fast. Too defensive. Too much about things no one else here is thinking right now.
Retha stares at me as if I have lost my mind. Maybe I have.
The wind hits again, harder this time, and tiny sharp grains strike the side of my face. Not rain. Not dirt alone. Something finer and meaner.
The young guard grabs my basket from my hand outright. “Now.”
There is no room left in his tone for argument.
Finally, finally, fear begins catching up with the part of me that has spent too many days trying to prove usefulness over caution. I rise fast enough that the half-loosened root breaks off in my hand. Useless now. The basket is already taken. The women are moving ahead.
I hurry after them, but my head turns once more toward the east.
And then I see it.
Not a storm, the way Mars did storms, with cloud build and warning sirens and sealed structures locking down in sequence.
A wall.
Far off still, but moving. The horizon is turning into a rising haze of pale gold and white and dust and something harder inside it that catches the light wrong. It rolls low and wide across the plains, swallowing distance. Not smoke. Not fog. Not simple sand. The very air looks sharp.
My stomach drops.
The women are not running yet, but only because the ground is uneven and baskets are heavy and panic wastes breath. They move fast. Heads down. Wraps lifted over mouths. The young guard curses at me once more and pushes a cloth into my hand for my face.
I obey now without hesitation. Too late, maybe. But finally.
As we move, the wind grows stranger. Stronger in bursts and then dead again.
It tugs at the grasses all in one direction, then seems to yank them back.
The light keeps flattening. Even the sounds of the world are changing.
The birds that called from the stones earlier are gone.
The open plain has gone quiet in the wrong way.
My heart beats hard enough to make my mouth dry.
I do not know the signs. That is the truth. I did not know them when the women did. I did not see what was obvious to them. I would have kept kneeling in the dirt for a half basket of roots if they had not dragged me up from it.
Humiliation flares hot under the fear.
I want to be useful. Instead, I have become one more thing they must pull to safety.
By the time we reach the rise overlooking the camp, the storm wall looks closer. Bigger. Real enough now that even I can see the danger in it. The air glitters in places. Not beautifully. Wrongly. As if broken things are suspended in the light and coming fast.
The young guard shouts toward camp. Someone answers. Movement breaks out there at once. Tents being secured. Fires banked. Loose items gathered. Children called in. The whole camp shifting with frightening speed and knowledge.
I stumble once on the slope and catch myself hard on one hand.
Retha grabs my upper arm and jerks me upright.
There is no softness in it and no anger either.
Only urgency. I run then, properly run, basketless and gritty-faced and ashamed of how long it took me to understand what everyone else already knew.
My mind keeps circling the same brutal truth even while my feet pound over the ground.
I do not belong here yet. I still do not know enough.
I could die from not knowing enough. And if they save me again, it will be because they had to, not because I earned my place.
The camp gets closer. So does the storm.
Somewhere beneath the fear and the rising grit and the sound of women shouting to one another, one thought burns hotter than the rest. Kaiven is going to know.
He is going to look at the sky, at me, at the half-empty hands I brought back with nothing useful in them, and he is going to know I stayed too long because I wanted to prove I was worth keeping.