Chapter 387: What the Lines Left Open
Day 34 opened the way recent mornings had. Kai read his pool before he did anything else. Ninety-five percent. Ceiling, same as it had been every morning since the second line finished.
He wrote the number down. Under it, without deciding to, he wrote: still holding. Not a fact anyone had asked for. Just one he noticed.
Camp was already moving by the time he stood. Smoke from two fires instead of one, the water barrels frosted again overnight, a little thicker than the morning before. Someone had strung a second line of drying cloth near Edra's tents, a small sign that people were settling in for longer than they'd planned. Nobody said the word "winter" yet. Everyone was thinking it.
The record-keeper boy found him there, ledger already open. "Thirty-three days," he said. "Checked twice, same as always."
"You could stop checking twice."
