Where the path left the outer lip of the quiet spring basin, the water below had no steam on it, only a thin skin of cold mist that broke whenever a frog kicked from the reeds.
Osha paused at the upper bank to look back where the two mounds of fresh stone lay side by side. She did not rearrange the flat granite marker she had chiseled above her father’s head the afternoon before, and she did not add anything to the longer mound beside it where the unnamed sacred beast lay buried. Instead she brushed wet gravel from her hem, checked that Amren’s water-stained expedition ledger rode safe inside her satchel where the lining was still dry, and turned back to the trail.
Ashaun was already ten paces higher on the terrace, pressing the heel of her right boot once more over the two small patches of damp black soil beside the overflow runnel where she had poked the holes the evening before and pressed the earth firm with her translucent stone left wrist. The two seeds from her lost village—saved for decades in Mother Suth’s dry pouch—were settled under the dirt now, just above the high-water mark where the mineral seep stayed sweet through winter.
