Questions and Headaches

 
Lyra didn’t sit.

She circled instead—slow, deliberate. Eyes scanning every shelf, every cable-tied bundle, every hanging shard of half-buried memory. She moved like a researcher in a field lab, not a guest in someone’s home.

> “You’ve catalogued none of this,” she said eventually, crouching beside a suspended wire-vein relic that pulsed every few seconds like a slow heartbeat.

> “Never got around to it,” Gaius replied. He stayed seated, watching her with a resigned sort of patience.

She rose, brushed dust off her knees, then wandered toward a metal root-structure curled like a claw along the wall. Her voice was lighter now, but her focus only sharpened.

> “This thing’s reacting to me. Is that from Grief Hollow too?”

> “Was embedded in a drone husk near the crawler. Half-machine, half-wood. I don’t touch it anymore.”

> “Why not?”

> “Because it hummed the first time I lied near it.”

She paused. Looked back at him.

> “You're joking.”

> “I really hope I was.”

She grinned, clearly enjoying herself now. Gaius did not grin. He pinched the bridge of his nose instead.

> “Do you ever stop asking questions?”

> “Only when I run out of anomalies.”

> “I need a buffer. I’ll make something that passes for drinkable.”

He rose and stepped into the tiny kitchenette, leaving Lyra to peer at a frayed map pinned to the wall—inked in layers, stitched with thread, etched over with marks that didn’t match any known survey.

From behind the counter, Gaius called:

> “Rust, dust, or less-burnt-rust?”

> “Surprise me,” Lyra said. Then, quieter to herself: “I’ve survived worse.”

Steam hissed. Something clinked. Outside, the glow of Nexus Prime blinked steadily through the blinds.

Inside, a relic on the shelf pulsed twice—once for her, once for him.

It hadn’t done that before.