“Easy,” he said, turning it until he found a patch of a small flame.

“Where’d you get it?”

“From a friend,” he said, his eyes darting over to Zadie.

Joel squinted in the sunlight. “Where is it?”

“What do you mean? It’s right in front of you,” Zadie said, incredulous. They were staring straight at it, a snowcapped peak against a brazenly blue sky that rose from a vast desert of hardened magma that looked like it had been sculpted by mud daubers.

Joel didn’t appear convinced. “That’s a mountain.”

“It’s a volcano.”

“Where’s the lava, then?”

“There isn’t any. It’s not erupting right now.”

“Yeah, okay,” Joel said, his voice sticky with sarcasm. “A volcano without lava. Good one.”

Finn could tell her sister wanted to respond, but Zadie bit her tongue.

She slung her pack off her back and rummaged through it until her fingers brushed smooth stone. She pulled out the painted rock and held it up to the volcano in front of her. As Finn’s eyes flicked between the two, her face fell. The peak in the painting was symmetrical. The one standing in front of them was leaning noticeably to the right. “They look different.”

Zadie peered over her sister’s shoulder. “Could Luna have seen it from a different angle?”

“The only accessible trails are on the east side of the mountain,” Finn replied. “If this really was an image from Mom’s future, the only way she could have seen it from another vantage point would have been by helicopter or something.”

“That seems unlikely.”

“I agree.”

Not ready to give up hope just yet, Finn passed her pack to her sister. “I think I’m going to go meditate.”

It took a moment for what Finn was saying to fully register with her sister. “Oh. Right,” Zadie answered finally. They looked out at the pockmarked landscape, at the crumbling black holes where lava had once pooled and bubbled and spat. Some holes you could see the bottom of; others were so deep, you couldn’t. “Do you want me to come with you?”

“No, I’ll be fine.”

“But what if you meditate yourself … down there?” she said anxiously, pointing to a particularly perilous-looking drop-off where the volcanic rock had turned to scree.

Oblivious to the wordplay taking place, Joel laughed. “That makes no sense. How would she meditate herself off a cliff?”

“Wait here.” Finn left her sister and continued down the trail alone until she arrived at an outcrop that looked like a giant sundial. She sat on the smoothest slab she could find, folded her fingers around the painted rock in her hand, and closed her eyes. If her mother had been here, she would know soon.