Sarya woke without knowing why she was waking, which was different from every other morning since the Nexus had opened inside her, when she had surfaced from sleep with the immediate awareness of weight resuming—the specific quality of a burden that doesn't take mornings off.
This morning the weight was still there. But she had stopped, somewhere in the unconscious hours, trying to solve it before she was fully awake. The difference between those two things was larger than she would have expected.
She lay still for a moment and listened to the Balance Branch.
It had a different sound than it had carried for the past several days. Not quieter. Fuller, somehow—the particular acoustic quality of a building with people working in it rather than surviving in it. Footsteps with purpose behind them.
