The canyon is in your head from yesterday’s tour: left at the pillow lava, down the step, don’t kiss the wall. Yesterday you had Sprat in front as a teacher. Today you have a memory, and memory is a chart drawn in steam.

Reed will take you if Vargas allows it. Vargas allows too much when kids say I know the way with their whole chest.

Black water parts around Minnow. The lamps make a polite coin. The wall does not RSVP.

Yuna on comm, tight: “I can still give you a grid. You can still not be a legend.”

You feel the terrace in your bones, or you tell yourself you do. There is a difference, and the difference is made of basalt.

A current shoulders the sled. Trim ticks toward heavy, then light, as if the water cannot decide. Reed watches you, not the window. “Windows are for postcards. Pick.”