An hour before dark, the sleet cleared and the razorback spine ended at a broad, wind-sheltered saddle of shattered granite directly above the entrance to the Wild Cradle.
They made a cold camp without fire behind a breastwork of fallen boulders while there was still enough gray twilight to see their boots. As Kiv unstrapped the packs and Osha wrapped the mouse’s box in an extra wool muffler against the high mountain frost, Pip walked over to a flat shelf of snow-scoured rock ten paces from Ysabet’s mat and lay down with all six legs tucked neatly beneath its green-and-white shell.
At first Ysabet thought the creature was only resting after the steep climb. Then she felt a quiet, warm shift along their bond—not the violent tearing of the observatory backlash or the feverish, desperate growth that had followed the beetle bridge, but the slow, deliberate settling of bone that has finally figured out what shape it needs to be.
Ysabet walked over and knelt beside the rock shelf.
Near the base of the left branching fork of Pip’s relationship-sensitive lattice antlers—right where the pale mineral tines wove together like a basket to catch and carry the rhythms of nearby bodies—a thin line of faint green light appeared across the bone.
