Lynch The exhaustion here was more mental than physical, so the rest didn’t help much. What was I expecting? I was sitting by a jagged stone, resting my back against it for what felt like hours. Probably I’d spent longer, but there was no way to prove that since there was no sense of time. Beneath my palm, the ground pulsed faintly like a slow heartbeat belonging to someone else. “I’m beginning to run out of patience,” I muttered under my breath. “You'd better be close.” There was no answer. Just silence and a little wind—which was nothing, of course. When I stood up, my legs protested. There were no pains, but my legs cried out from weakness. I pushed one foot forward, then the other. I started walking again. One step after the other. There was no clear path. I based my confiden

