Rania came to Amara when the conversation with Gabriel had reached its natural pause.
Not interrupting -- reading the rhythm of it the way she read inscriptions, for where the text breathed between statements. She came and sat beside Amara and looked at Gabriel with the direct, careful look she brought to primary sources.
The look of someone who had spent fourteen years learning to read the oldest available records and understood she was now sitting across from something older than the records.
"The fifth mural," she said. "My profile in the stone. Carved before I was born."
She was not asking for comfort. She was asking for the architecture of it. "How does that work."
Gabriel looked at her with the quality of someone who appreciated a question shaped precisely enough to have a precise answer.
"The Wall is a living grimoire," she said.
