She heard the commotion outside her door and did not move from the sleeping platform.
Not because she wasn’t paying attention — Infact she was paying intense attention, to every sound with the focused precision she’d applied to everything since the ruins. The heavy fall of bodies that were not falling in pain. The muffled, confused sounds of men trying to understand what was happening to their own knees. The sound, very distant, of someone being denied entry to something and not accepting the denial gracefully.
And then, beneath all of it — footsteps.
She knew them immediately.
Not from their sound alone, though the sound was distinct — purposeful, carrying the particular rhythm of someone who had somewhere to be and was not rushing because rushing would imply the destination was in co
