Reed-of-Glass returned along a line the humans had not drawn as a road.
Iven watched from the northern bluff while a vast dark flank passed beyond the flooded trees. Water shone in channels between its lower plates. A grove that had looked tall from the boat disappeared beneath the slow moving curve of its body, then emerged again behind it with every branch intact.
The animal had room for that care because it had chosen the higher line early.
The watch boats had reported its southward turn nearly a fortnight earlier. Each later position had come by ordinary boat, one after another, across the floodplain. Now the crown stood six kilometers north of Sedge Ladder, near the dry nursery margin.
Not called home by a person striking a frame. Not arriving from the far north overnight.
The pale-flanked youngster followed on the inside of the line, where the older body’s passage left less troubled water. Another young one had taken a different route with the dust-covered visitor from the earlier meeting. The group was no longer the same group that had fed together three weeks before.
Pera stood beside Iven with her field glass pressed against one eye.
“It will meet us at the outer listening shelf this afternoon,” she said.
