Chapter 362: 362: Miryam in Trouble?
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A long dark ribbon moved where the desert rolled into shallow waves. It was not a road. It was a column of ants soldiers. It bent when the land bent. It straightened when the land allowed. She could count ranks by how the light fell. Some ants’ armour plates shone like resin. Some ants were wrapped in cloth. Some ants’ backs carried shields like doors. Every small group kept its time without looking over its shoulder.
Her breath caught. She forgot to let it out for three heartbeats. The Friend put a paw on her body. It felt like a reminder and a comfort.
"Many ants," she whispered. "More than I have ever seen."
She wanted to turn and run for the mountain. She also wanted to look once more and learn how they moved. She watched the front of the column. The scouts were young ants. They joked and laughed about something. They did not hold their shields like a lover. One stopped and knelt. He put a hand on the sand above their tunnel. She went still. She told every grain to pretend to be something else. The scout frowned at nothing. He stood. He kicked the spot out of habit and trotted to catch the line.
The Friend tugged at her saying. Enough watching. I am scared. She nodded. She swallowed. She made a face and turned back down the tunnel, toward the mountain.
She did not rise yet. She would rise after the first bend. She would rise where the slope began, where the surface gave her softer light to run by. She did not know that the same first bend had a shallow pocket where sound collected. She did not know that a single sharp ear behind the scout line caught a new whisper under the sand and marked it without a word.
Miryam pressed her palm to the tunnel’s wall and smiled at Friend. "Lets return home," she whispered.
The tunnel accepted the word. The sand closed above her head with a soft sigh. The path ahead darkened and grew smooth and kind.
Far away, a quiet hand signal went down a line of bodies like a fish tugging a rope. It meant to mark this place. It meant wait. It meant to send a word.
Miryam and her Friend slid forward into the cool, bright-eyed and brave and happy with their secret.
The sand lay smooth above the hidden tunnel, but the air on the surface had picked up a nervous edge, the kind that made dunes whisper to each other. A scout from the dune prong paused on a rise and put his palm to the ground. Heat met him first. Then a small, wrong softness, as if a hand had pressed and the sand had decided to remember.
He lifted two fingers.
The signal ran down the line like a fish tugging a rope.
Mardek did not hurry. He walked up from the lee of a low ridge with his hands behind his back and a half smile that never said much. He crouched where the scout pointed. He did not just touch the sand. He rested his cheek against it and listened the way a man listens to a door he is about to open without knocking.
There. A breath where there should be none. A thread of cooler air moving under the skin of the desert.
"Something small," he said. "Not a mole line. Not a burrow. A made path. Either a rat with a book or a beast child with a trick."
The scout swallowed. "Sir, it moves mountainward. The location we are heading."
Mardek nodded. He drew a short crescent with his heel in the sand to mark the curve of the tunnel he felt. He set three pebbles along it where he guessed the path would pass again, then stood and dusted his cheek with a lazy hand.
"We will not chase," he said. "We will let the clever thing come back. When the sand swells here, drop the net and keep the spikes away from the center. I want it whole. A small fish can tell you where the river begins."
He looked at the horizon and smiled in a way that felt like shade. "And if it wriggles, do not get bitten. If it is a beast child, do not break its teeth."
He walked away as if he had been stretching his legs for a moment and nothing more. Nets were unrolled from reed bundles. The threads were pale and fine and dusted with grit so they would not shine. The scouts staked the edges with careful hands and pressed the mesh so shallow that it sat where the skin of sand would ripple when the tunnel rose to breathe. They did not speak louder than a breath. They did not look at each other when they were done. They sat on their heels and watched the pebbles as if watching the face of a clock.
Below, the tunnel held steady. Miryam had both paws out, shaping the arch and flattening the floor the way Luna had taught her to roll dough. The friend ran ahead, then back, then ahead again, and put its nose to her cheek each time like a quick kiss of courage. The air was cool. The path was clear. She could hear the desert above like a heavy blanket, friendly and dumb.
"We are going home," she whispered. "I will tell Papa the right words."
The tunnel climbed. The sand thinned. The light changed from coin gold to pale straw. The wind noise filtered in like soft rain. The roof rose one hand more. The skin of the desert bulged where the net waited, as gently as a breath under a sheet.
The first line of mesh dipped.
The Friend’s ears twitched. It looked up without knowing why. It pressed against Miryam’s chest, a small tight weight, and made a sound that meant wait.
Miryam stopped. She bit her lip. She felt the sand with her paws / palms again. It was kind. It was loose. It was ready to let her through. She smiled. She would pop out near the first scrub patch and race the wind to the mountain lip.
She took one step forward.
Above, a scout tapped a peg with a nail. Not hard. Just enough to settle it in a little deeper.
Under the sand, a circle of mesh that had been good enough for lizards took on a new shape, one better for catching clever things. It flexed and seemed to breathe.
Miryam leaned forward. The tunnel’s nose touched the mesh from below and did not know it. The skin of the desert dimpled.
The Friend buried its face in her scarf. The scarf was given by Miryam as a gift. The second mesh line dipped.
The pebbles moved the width of a thumb. The scouts did not smile. They did not blink. The desert held its breath. Then the story climbed the mountain.
Inside the egg chamber, the hum had become a steady, deep note that lived more in bone than in air. Kai had held it there for six hours. He had started with a careful flow, then spent another hour smoothing small spikes he did not like, then spent one more hour steadying the outer cradles so their warmth did not steal from the center. The work had the shape of patience and the taste of iron. He did not think. He counted.
"Release in three," he said to the silence, and let a slow breath out through his nose.
The familiar system bell answered, cool and clean.
[Ding! System notification: Field stability within target. You may rest the hands. Resume low duty cycle in two hours.
Note: Miryam was looking for you.]
Kai lowered his palms as if he were setting a child down in a bed. Light settled. The threads thinned and kept their own pace. The heat in the stone became a blanket instead of a fire.
He rolled his shoulders once. He turned toward the door.
Miryam was not in the hall.
He did not frown yet. He walked the short outer curve that led to the first alcove where she liked to hide when he came out, because she liked to jump out with a roar that would not scare a moth. No small wyrmling crouched there. He checked the next alcove where she sometimes set her kit’s found treasures in a neat row. The little bones and smooth glass pebbles sat where she had left them two days ago. No new things.
The forge corridor was empty. The kitchen corner was clean and smelled like tea. The east shaft carried only the breath of the afternoon wind and the far rumble of carts from a lower ledge. The work bays were loud with the right kind of loud. Lirien shouted for more charcoal. Shadeclaw coughed and told someone to stop lifting with a bent back.
Silvershadow came out of a shadow and went into another without ever looking like a ghost. Alka’s weight shifted on the high roost and made the stone around the window speak in a friendly way.