Zia Sunroot's Arc

Chapter 12 of 17

They walk until the sun sits high, then stop where a stone bench leans in the sand. Someone built it here long ago, two slabs for legs and one for the seat. The stranger sets down their pack. A small bearded dragon climbs out, orange and slow, and finds a warm rock. It has ridden in their pack for days. Zia sits at one end of the bench. The stranger sits at the other. Between them, they place a bundle and unwrap it. Inside is a wooden horse, carved rough, with yarn for a mane and a red cord bridle. Zia's hand stops above it. She knows this horse. She carved it as a child, before she was sent south. "Where did you get this," she says. "My mother kept it," the stranger says. "She was your sister. I am Teo." He does not look at her. He looks at the horse. "I came to find you because she asked me to, before she died. And because the tablets said a keeper was still here." Zia picks up the horse. The yarn is brittle. The chisel marks are her own. A name. A face that shares blood with hers. The stranger is no longer a stranger, and the silence she guarded for so long breaks open into something she will have to carry now, into the crater and back. She sets the horse upright on the stone between them. The bearded dragon blinks. "Then we keep walking," she says, "together." Teo nods. He gathers wood for a fire before the cold comes. Zia watches him work and lets herself, for the first time, be known.