She was babbling out words as she worked. Seemed appropriate. When he grew nervous, he grew even more quiet. She would do the opposite.

She was good with a bandage, again surprising him. The wound had not hit any major arteries. He would be fine, though using his left hand would not be easy. This would be an annoyance. When she was done, looking sheepish and guilty, he reached down and picked up the mating plume she had dropped.

“This,” he said with a harsh whisper, holding it up before her, “is the symbol of your ignorance. On the Pantheon Islands, nothing is easy, nothing is simple. That plume was placed by another trapper to catch someone who does not deserve to be here, someone who thought to find an easy prize. You cannot be that person. Never move without asking yourself, is this too easy?”

She paled. Then she took the feather in her fingers.

“Come.”

He turned and walked on their way. That was the speech for an apprentice, he realized. Upon their first major mistake. A ritual among trappers. What had possessed him to give it to her?

She followed behind, head bowed, appropriately shamed. She didn’t realize the honor he had just paid her, if unconsciously. They walked onward, an hour or more passing.

By the time she spoke, for some reason, he almost welcomed the words breaking upon the sounds of the jungle. “I’m sorry.”

“You need not be sorry,” he said. “Only careful.”

“I understand.” She took a deep breath, following behind him on the path. “And I am sorry. Not just about your arm. About this island. About what is coming. I think it inevitable, but I do wish that it did not mean the end of such a grand tradition.”

“I…”

Words. He hated trying to find words.

“It … was not dusk when I was born,” he finally said, then hacked down a swampvine and held his breath against the noxious fumes that it released toward him. They were only dangerous for a few moments.

“Excuse me?” Vathi asked, keeping her distance from the swampvine. “You were born…”

“My mother did not name me for the time of day. I was named because my mother saw the dusk of our people. The sun will soon set on us, she often told me.” He looked back to Vathi, letting her pass him and enter a small clearing.

Oddly, she smiled at him. Why had he found those words to speak? He followed into the clearing, concerned at himself. He had not given those words to his uncle; only his parents knew the source of his name.

He was not certain why he’d told this scribe from an evil company. But … it did feel good to have said them.

A nightmaw broke through between two trees behind Vathi.