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“Uh, sure,” she says, not sounding at all sure. “We can talk about it.”
I nod, then close my eyes, sending away the travel tent and bringing us instead to the clearing in the forest where Anghar stepped into the rotten roots. I open my eyes to my Angie staring all around her, looking round at the trees, then up at the canopy overhead.
“You have not been outside yet?”
“No.” Her cheeks start to pink. “I, uh, where I come from, there isn’t any wilderness like this. I’m used to city life, not…”
She gestures around us.
“So you are afraid to come out here?” I say, shooting her a teasing grin.
She scowls at me, but the expression quickly shifts, and she looks down at the floor as she speaks.
“Coming out here - it’s the last thing left. Once I do that, there are no more chances for this to all be some elaborate hoax.” She looks up at me then, her eyes imploring. “I know it’s real. I think I knew that even before I tried to pull your tail off.”
“But it is one thing to accept a truth, another to accept a reality.”
Once again, shock flickers across her face - she is not used to hearing her own thoughts from someone else’s mouth. Not used to having someone pay close enough attention to see the workings of her headspace.
“I’m getting there. I’ll come outside soon. Meet everyone soon. I know I need to.” She’s quiet for a moment. Contemplative. Then she looks at me, and all the vulnerability, the undercurrents of sorrow are gone. She is serious. Focused. “Weren’t you worried we didn’t have much time left here? You should start explaining.”
“Easier to show you.” I rise to my feet, holding my hand out to her. She hesitates for only a beat of her heartspace before taking it.
I lead her over to the trees, showing her the signs of the blight - just as I showed Anghar and Gregar earlier. I tell her about the absence of forest creatures, how the trees seem to be most affected close to the base. How the females have assured me that the building cannot make the trees sick.
“They’re right about that,” she says.
I show her the place where Anghar slipped, the rotten mulch of roots his foot left behind. The rancid smell of the ichor follows us into the dream and my Angie’s nose wrinkles.
“That’s disgusting,” she says.
“Worse when it touches your skin.” I scratch absently at my hands, even though the itching is long gone. “I got the ichor on my hands and it caused much irritation and itching. It is what drove me into the showers that day.”
Her cheeks heat. When I laugh, she scowls at me again, fire flashing in her eyes.
“You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”
“Why would I, when it is such an amusing and pleasant memory for me?”
“Amusing? I tried to pull your tail off.”
“Perhaps that was the part I found pleasant.”
I waggle my eyebrows at her. She rolls her eyes at me, wise now to my teasing ways. And it is funny, but it thrills me as much to see her unaffected as it does to see her blush and squirm.
“It’s odd,” she says, her expression going thoughtful. “Rot is gross, but I didn’t think it would cause a reaction like that. Unless your skin is sensitive?”
“I can be very sensitive,” I say, curling suggestion around the words. “But no, I am not prone to rashes and irritations.”
“Then why so itchy?”
It is another question with no answer.
I tell her the rest of it - the mapping, what the four of us found. The burn that we will need to do to stop the blight spreading further. Like Jaskry earlier, I draw out a map on the forest floor. My Angie smirks, and then we’re back in her workplace, my dirt map now glowing on the table. She goes up to it, leaning against the edge as she looks down at my drawing, rather than taking a seat.
“I’m no epidemiologist,” she says. “But that does not look like any sort of disease spread that I’ve ever seen. Are there any features in the area that might account for the shape of the spread? A physical barrier? Does the path that Jaskry took run through a ravine or something?”
“No ravine, no. There is a stream that runs here.” I touch my finger to the surface of the table, trace the path of the stream. “And the Mercenia hut sits at the top of a slight incline.”
