Chapter 115: Quiet Version
Morning made the camp look almost kind.
Frost stitched the tent seams. The generator hummed low. Steam drifted off a kettle and went thin in the air. Esen snored once like he was testing the feature. Ichiro slept without moving, fever finally sliding down. Obi was a heap under a blanket with his mouth open, proof that a person could, in fact, sleep through an apocalypse.
Keahi stood with her hands on her hips while Arashi tightened his straps. "Wood only. If the ridge does anything clever, you turn around. That’s what Alteea said"
Arashi saluted with two fingers. "Copy: no flirting with geology."
Alteea came over comms, clipped and awake. "Repeat it back: if you see anything unusual – and I mean anything - you return. No samples. No scouting. No exceptions."
"Return" Keahi said.
"Return" Arashi echoed, already walking.
The camp thinned to quiet. Raizen watched Hikari tie her boot, slow and neat. She was pale, still wrung out from pushing light through a stranger’s body the night before. He waited until she looked up and gave him half a smile that said she knew he was there.
"Want to go for a walk?" he asked.
She glanced at the sky, then at the ring of lamps. "Inside the light?"
"Mostly" he said, and let the rest be an invitation. "I want to show you something."
They took the service path that hid under the drifts, boots squeaking. The day was that clear winter gray that turns everything honest. Hikari kept a half step closer than usual. He matched it without comment. At the gate, their foam patch job looked as unconvincing as it felt last night. He wedged the grid aside with a shoulder and they slipped through, lamps down the throat of the tunnel.
"Alteea will murder you" Hikari murmured.
"She can get in line" he said, and she made a small sound that counted as a laugh.
The first turn, the old charms, the chalk not-quite-chalk - each passed without the prickle they had carried in the dark. The hum that had led them here last night was quieter now. Not gone, just... tired. Raizen felt himself start to hurry, then made his legs keep a normal pace.
He wanted to give her something. Not a story. A place.
They reached the plate they’d pulled through and pressed back. This time it took more to move. The slab lifted enough to let them through and sighed shut behind them.
Light happened, and this time it stayed small.
The geode was still there - a low crystal cathedral - but the color had gone soft. Where last night lambent blues had run into greens and silver pinks, now the walls held to pale milk and faint ash. Reflections no longer moved. They waited. The hum lived under the sound of their breath, not above it. The room felt like a choir that had sung too long and had set the song down, but kept the shape of it.
Raizen stopped on the bowl’s rim and let his lamp swing low. "It was -" He cut himself off. Words sounded like excuses when they came after brightness.
Hikari stepped forward, one palm open near a comb of crystal, not touching. The wall answered with a small, shy brightening that faded as soon as she pulled her hand back.
She smiled. "It’s beautiful" she said, simply.
"It was brighter. Prettier" Raizen said before he could stop himself. "Last night it -" He shrugged, embarrassed. He heard it as the worst kind of brag: I wanted to show you something perfect.
"Maybe it was having a good night" she said. She ignored the "Last night", and then let the glow of her lamp roam the ribs. "Still beautiful."
"It feels like I brought you too late" he said, and there it was - the same old sentence wearing new clothes. "But... It shouldn’t change..."
Hikari turned, and the lamp caught her earrings so they blinked once like small stars. "You didn’t bring me too late" she said. "You brought me."
He went quiet. The crystals sang their thin note and let it fade.
She knelt near the low center where the shards grew small and dense. Up close, they looked like frost that had decided to be stubborn. She leaned in until her breath fogged one facet, then watched the fog clear. "Do you hear it?" she asked.
"Barely."
"Me too." She tilted her head, listening anyway. "The quiet is part of it. Last night it shouted. Today it whispers. Whispering is still talking."
Raizen traced the metal rib with the edge of his lamp, remembering how last night the light had run like water down each face. It didn’t, now. It sat, patient. The purity that had tasted like cold in his teeth was softer; the sharp edges of color had gone to chalk.
"You wanted to see what I saw" he said. "It isn’t that."
"I want to see what you see now" she said. Her voice had the same gentleness she used on Esen when he pretended a bruise didn’t hurt. "It’s quieter. That’s not a failure. Things aren’t less true because they stop shouting."
He let that sit between them, then scoffed at himself because the scoff was easier than thanks. "You and your calm."
"It’s fake" she said dryly. "Don’t tell anyone."
He laughed, soft. Some knot unclenched a little. He walked the bowl while she stayed near the heart, giving the place the time it wanted. The empty pouch lay where Obi had put it back. The tally on the beam looked older by daylight. He found himself grateful for both - the proof of other hands, the restraint that had left this room mostly untouched.
"Do we tell them?" Hikari asked without looking up.
"Later." He weighed the word. "Safely."
"Not a lie" she said.
"Not the whole truth" he admitted.
She nodded once. "Sometimes the whole truth needs a better room. Sometimes... You’re just like that"
He looked at her and tried to pin the feeling: she didn’t make things less heavy. She gave them corners you could hold.
Hikari stood, slow. Her knees popped, a soft, ordinary sound that somehow made the place feel more sacred. "Thank you for bringing me" she said.
"I wanted -" He gestured at the walls, helpless. "- to give you the loud version."
"I like the quiet version" she said. She touched her fingers to a facet, not quite contact, and the crystal glowed just enough to be a secret.
Footsteps scuffed behind them.
"Uh-huh..." a voice announced from the seam. "So this is where you two go when you say walk."
Another lamp’s light cut across the bowl, long shadow, without waiting for permission and landed with a safety that made both of them wince on the geode’s behalf.