Page 21 of Sixth
“Then later we should… you know… keep the planet calm.”
“Emmeline,” he said, and the warning in it made her toes curl. “I will make the planet shake.”
She choked on a laugh and pressed her face into his shoulder because if she looked at him she’d climb him. “Noted.”
They held that quiet for as long as the planet held it with them. When the wrong-sound finally drifted away entirely and the hum of the forest came back up like tide, the motes eased into their slower orbits again.
Asingle one, braver than the rest, drifted close enough that it hovered just beyond the arc of Apex’s mouth, as if tasting his breath.
“The Core was right,” Emmy murmured, the words a soft echo of the line that had followed them out of the sky and into this new world. “This world hears us.”
Apex’s gaze stayed on the lights. “Then we will listen in return,” he said, every word avow.
Outside the wreck, the motes rippled through the forest’s blue-violet dark, their movement too exact to be random. Ahigh, melodic chitter shimmered from the shadows, bright and familiar. Acreature swept in on silent wings, her fur catching the bioluminescent light until she looked spun from starlight.
Her huge eyes changed color as she hovered—rose gold to sapphire to soft green—as if greeting old friends. The motes reacted instantly, gathering around her in an orbit of living fire. They knew her, and she knew them. With a delighted trill, the fairy-like creature twisted midair, scattering tiny trails of light that formed fleeting patterns, spirals, pulses, something almost like language.
Apex’s breath caught. Emmy’s hand slid into his, their joined marks pulsing in response to the same rhythm the motes now followed. The planet listened. The bond burned. And as the fairy creature turned in slow, effortless circles within the glow, the lights responded in kind—forming shapes that pulsed once, twice, then steadied into a single, unmistakable pattern.
“They’re communicating with us,” Emmy whispered.
Apex didn’t answer. He couldn’t. The pattern hovering above them was not random. It was a symbol, and it was glowing in the exact same shape as the Valenmark on their wrists.
The planet had spoken.
