I didn’t bother asking how he knew that. His work takes him all over the country, since it’s not like reptiles have the courtesy to all live in the same place for ease of study. Everyplace we’ve ever gone, Graham has had some little piece of local knowledge that makes it clear he’s been there before. It’s comforting, in a strange sort of way. I can’t get lost when I have someone to show me the way. There’s no replacement for familiarity.

Something about that thought snagged in my mind like a fishhook, tugging and tugging and refusing to be dislodged. I worried at it as I followed Graham out of the hotel and into the crisp morning air. It was early enough that the humidity hadn’t fully descended to wrap the city in a warm, wet blanket yet, but it was coming: oh, yes, it was coming. And when it got here, we were all going to pay for doubting its power.

Our driver was a pleasantly smiling woman in overalls and earmuffs, which seemed idiosyncratic for the season, to say the absolute least, but was none of my business. We slid into the backseat, and Graham confirmed the address of our destination. I leaned against the window, staring at the buildings around us as they scrolled by, dense at first, then giving way to residential streets speckled with trees, and finally becoming nothing but forest.

Familiarity. It was something to do with familiarity. That was the key to everything. That was … that was …

We turned up a winding road that could have done with some serious repaving. I squeaked as I was jostled away from the window by the bouncing of our tires.

“Sorry,” said the driver, in a cheerfully unrepentant tone. “We haven’t been able to get this road repaved in years. Budget cuts and private land and you know how it is, right?”

“Right,” said Graham, with a laugh, and the two of them began talking rapidly about the difficulty in getting fair distribution of civic and federal funds. I tuned them out, returning my attention to the window.

The trees were so different than the ones in Washington. I was used to oceans of evergreens, a living sea defined by needles and cones and the smell of sap. In contrast, these trees were tall, skeletal things, their bark white, or brown, or even gray, peeling and pitted and altogether strange, but familiar at the same time. All trees were the same trees, in the deeper pulse of root and wood and slow, constant growth. All trees carried the weight of the world.