The hours between morning and two o'clock were the longest Elara had ever spent inside a building.
She occupied them the way she occupied waiting in the field. Practically. She cleaned her camera lens with the cloth she kept in the inner pocket of her bag, checked the battery, checked the memory card. She ate the food Anya produced from somewhere, dried provisions that tasted like nothing and were necessary anyway. She drank water. She read her mother's letter twice more, not searching for new information, simply sitting with the handwriting and the slanted certainty of it.
She did not talk much.
Neither did anyone else.
The room had taken on the specific quiet of people who understood that something was coming and that talking around it was less useful than sitting with it.
Liam spen
