DUKE
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Duke had kept drawing through everything — the crisis, the journey to Vesk Hollow he'd stayed behind from, the fear of Silo's injury, the slow rebuilding after. It was, he'd come to understand, simply how he processed a world too large to hold any other way.
He'd filled most of the new sketchbook now, the one that had begun with him properly in the frame rather than at its edge, and looking back through the pages one evening, he found the whole shape of the last several months documented in a way words alone couldn't have managed.
Wren found him at the east wall, going through the book slowly.
"You've been quiet," she said, sitting beside him.
"Processing," he said. "The same as always."
She looked at the open page — a drawing from the day Silo had come home injured, Vael'
