It started with Roan.
He came to her, specifically, on a morning when she was doing the thing she did when she was figuring out what she was — walking the compound's edges at a deliberate pace, taking the measure of the space. Not patrolling. Not aimless. The specific walk of someone who is deciding whether a place has room for them and finding out by moving through it.
I watched from the kitchen window.
Roan fell into step beside her without announcement. They walked the eastern perimeter together — Aldis with her hands in her pockets and her deliberate pace, Roan with the measured efficiency of a Delta who understood perimeter walking as function. They did not appear to be talking. Then they were. Then Roan pointed at something in the tree line — a specific section, some feature I cou
