CHAPTER 124: MOON BEHIND CLOUDS

A lamp’s shadow threw itself the wrong way for a second. Arashi spoke, and his own voice replied a heartbeat later, a quarter-pitch off, like a joke he didn’t remember rehearsing. He stopped talking. The echo stopped too, late and embarrassed.

Hikari stepped out of the tent and blinked up at the line where cloud met ridge. Snow fell. Only for a heartbeat, the flakes near the perimeter paused midair, a crowded constellation, then remembered to fall again. She watched it, not as a scientist, not as a healer. As a person who had learned to recognize when a room lied.

"Raizen" she said quietly, not alarmed, not casual.

"I see it" he said. He had; he was already looking.

Alteea found them even before he pinged. "Heads up" she said, voice steady, a little too steady. "My loops are back. Partial strings, repeating. If you hear something twice, the second time is fake. Do not answer a voice that sounds like you unless it swears in exactly your style."

"Define "exactly my style", because I’m starting to think you have a very wrong idea. That, or a very right idea" Obi said.

"It will insult the coffee" she said. "Also, you."

"Me. And I have a name, remember? You shouted it way too many times..." Raizen said.

Kori: "If it starts to sing, we leave."

"It won’t sing" Alteea said, and then, softer: "I hope it won’t sing. Really not in the mood for a performance..."

They didn’t leave. They did smaller things: checked the heater valves, tightened tent lines, reinforced the marker poles with new rope and old hope.

By afternoon, the illusions had done their work - unimpressive individually, effective in a pack. A Warden at the perimeter reported seeing someone walk past him who turned out to be his own back, which he decided hadn’t happened. A miner swore a post had two shadows. Obi insisted the soup tasted better for a full minute, which everyone agreed was dementia or hallucination. Or both.

Even Feris, who somewhere between the fourth cup of coffee and the tenth complaint, admitted "Okay. I saw the snow do a thing."

"What thing?" Lynea asked.

"A... pause" Feris said, scowling at the world for being imprecise. "A beat between breaths. It’s rude."

"Everything up here breathes slow" Arashi said.

"Everything up here breathes wrong" Feris countered.

Hikari refilled her cup and passed it to Lynea, who blinked at the unexpected warmth and accepted. "Thank you" Lynea said, surprised into politeness like it had snuck up on her.

"Drink it before Obi names it" Hikari said.

"Root Funeral" Obi said immediately.

"Unhelpful" Lynea said, but drank anyway.

By late afternoon the camp had the particular sound of people pretending they weren’t tired. Laughter had a wobble. Steps had a carefulness. Even the drone’s idle sounded self-conscious.

Alteea checked in again. "Winds holding. No new spikes." The illusion of calm returned. "If the generator complains, let it. It’s the only one allowed to whine."

Raizen walked the inner ring with the measured pace of a man not patrolling. He stopped by the thick line of prints where the morning’s resupply had come through and let his eyes wander to the ridge again. The sealed shaft sat out of sight behind the lip but not out of mind. He tried on the idea of keeping it there. It didn’t fit. He set the idea down.

"Think it’s over?" Hikari asked, coming up beside him, arm tight at her side, trying too hard to look casual.

"No" Raizen said. "I think it’s letting us rest."

"That’s worse" she said, and meant it.

They cooked dinner because Arashi wouldn’t stop complaining about canned meals. After insisting, Lynea finally agreed, but threatened to beat him up with the ladle, if he didn’t like it. The stew tried to be good. It almost succeeded. Lynea added something from a tiny paper packet and insulted the pot when it refused to improve. It... improved? I mean... Arashi didn’t say anything

Obi performed a bad magic trick with a spoon and made Ichiro smile against his will. Feris drifted low enough to bump her boots on the mat and declared herself cured. This made everyone cheer. Then she lifted clean off the mat again and everyone booed.

Alteea pinged. "Night perimeter: alright. You’re clear to pretend you’re safe and sleep. No solos. No romantic walks to dramatic ridges. Yes, Raizen?"

"Alright" Raizen said, which wasn’t an admission and wasn’t a denial.

"Copy" Obi repeated. "I will not have romance. My heart is closed to ridges. And-"

"Good" Kori cut him off, from another channel. "Marry a heater."

"I politely decline your offer, even though it’s tempting. But I shall be killed if caught in such a treacherous act"

Hikari leaned against the crate next to Raizen and didn’t fall asleep there because tonight she was stubborn about that, but she let her shoulder rest against his arm for two seconds longer than necessary when passing a cup. He let that be a fact without making it a promise.

After bowls were cleaned and stories wrung dry, after the last laugh did that thing where it tried to be brave and ended up honest, the camp turned down its lamps. The circle of gold on snow shrank. The night pressed back in with the quiet relentlessness of water, but less kind.

Inside the generator tent, a little panel blinked, steady as a metronome. Outside, the perimeter lights hummed at a pitch that didn’t feel like a voice. The wind moved and then didn’t and then remembered to do its job again.

Raizen lay down on his mat and counted the ways in which this was not the worst night. He got to three. He stopped because the counting itself felt like a dare.

Sleep came and didn’t. He got up without making it dramatic, stepped into his boots, and slipped out into the kind of cold that makes your teeth think about being separate from your mouth.

The camp was drowned in shadow. Beyond it, more shadow. Stars were a rumor behind clouds - one here, one there, like someone had forgotten to clear them away. He stood at the edge of the light and did not step over it. He wasn’t afraid. He was trying not to be rude.

The air hummed. Not sound. Memory of sound. Like a place where a choir had been yesterday and might be tomorrow. He felt it in the space between his ribs and did not try to breathe with it. The last time he tried that, the mountain had decided to answer.

Footsteps approached behind him, quiet out of habit. Obi. He flopped down on the nearest crate, elbows on knees, not looking at the dark because that was too obvious.

"So" Obi said. "On a scale of one to excellent, how excellent was my soup joke today?"

"Negative four" Raizen said.

"Rude" Obi said calmly. He took a breath that almost fogged in a different shape and didn’t.

"You going to sleep, or are you auditioning for a saga?"

Raizen thought of answers. He picked the smallest one. "Don’t know..."

"Good" Obi said. He stood, patted Raizen’s shoulder once with the care of a man trying not to wake a snake, and drifted away toward his tent, humming something badly on purpose to keep the night from thinking it had won.

Raizen stayed a little longer, because leaving immediately would have looked like fear, and then because staying too long would have been the same thing.

That’s when the illusion showed its teeth - only a little.

Somewhere near the outer ring, a voice said "Hold perimeter" in Kori’s voice. Three seconds later, the same voice said it again from the other side, pitched a hair too high, like a mirror that hadn’t learned the trick yet.

Raizen didn’t turn. He watched the line where the lamps ended, and the dark didn’t, and said nothing. Inside the nearest tent, someone laughed in their sleep. It was the right sound at the right time. He let it anchor him to the version of the world where people laugh and then breathe the next breath.

He tipped his head back and found a brighter spot in the clouds. "Must be the moon" he thought.

The moon.

He wished to see it.