Chapter Text
Monolith Year 33
Expedition Day
Sciel came to consciousness in stages.
She felt something cool and smooth against her cheek — stone, maybe — and a soft, heavy weight over her legs. An overwhelming pain radiated from the back of her head.
She groaned. The sound of her own voice was muffled and strange, as if it came from a great distance, and there was a constant ringing in her ears like a high-pitched whine.
With great effort, she tried to open her eyes, blinking slowly. There was a faint purple hue all around her, like a bruise, and a fog so thick she could barely see a few feet ahead of her.
And lastly, she became aware of the salt. Her nostrils were filled with the smell of it, and her mouth was full of the taste of it.
The last time she had woken up with the taste of salt on her lips–
Sciel’s heart jolted in her chest and she pushed herself up onto her elbows, looking around in a panic.
But no, she was not on the docks of Lumière. What was this place? What had happened?
The memories came back to her then in pieces: leaving for the expedition this morning, Emma and the others seeing them off at the docks, braving the sea voyage by hiding below decks, and then…
The beach.
That odd white haired man. His cane.
Alan. Dead in an instant.
And the others…
Sciel had fought, briefly. But something had come at her from behind, pitching her forward, and she remembered nothing after that. Her hand came up instinctively to the back of her head, and she winced at the tender skin and dried blood she found there.
She tried to push herself to her feet, and became aware again of the weight across her legs, pinning her to the ground. She twisted her torso around to free her legs and came face-to-face with Tristan’s unblinking, lifeless eyes staring up at her. The shock sent her scrambling backwards, and his body slid off of her into an unmoving heap.
Newly freed, she staggered to her feet. Her breath came fast and shallow as she looked around frantically, in search of anyone, anything else. But all she saw were bodies. Tristan, Margot, Antoine, Camille… everywhere she looked there were more bodies. And not just from her own expedition, but from dozens of expeditions long past.
Behind her, a wave crashed into the shore.
Sciel ran.
She had to get away, away, away. Away from the bodies. Away from the beach. Away from the sea.
She ran until her lungs burned and her legs ached. Her boots slapped against the wet sand, kicking up sprays in the tide pools behind her as she went. She heard the tell-tale clicking of nevrons from time to time, but she must have been either too fast for them to catch her or too small to be noticed, because she passed on, unhindered.
The mist was so thick, Sciel nearly ran headlong into the cliffs before she saw them, skidding to a stop. Before her, the beach ended abruptly in towering cliffs made from a deep burgundy stone that protruded from the ground in jagged, craggy formations. She craned her neck to gauge their height, but they disappeared into the fog not far above her head.
“Fuck.”
She looked around frantically for other options.
Scattered about the beach were about half a dozen shipwrecks. Some of the hulls looked to be in good shape and could probably provide decent shelter and a hiding place for sometime. But she also hadn’t seen any fresh water on this beach, so any amount of time spent here would just be delaying the inevitable. And besides, many of these ships were the same style that Pierre used to–
No, there was no chance of staying here.
To her right, she could see a ravine that cut through the cliffs at ground level. It was surely the easiest path forward, and it was for exactly that reason that she knew she had to avoid it at all costs. It was a choke point. Dodging and outrunning nevrons would no longer work in a confined space like that. She’d be forced to fight. Alone.
Sciel glanced back up at the cliff face. There were no handholds hammered into the stone, no anchor points to grapple, no rope to rappel her way to the top. She wondered if Expedition 69 had even made it this far. Had anyone made it this far? All these years, had they really been sending expeditions to be massacred in their first few moments on the continent?
Somewhere over her shoulder, a nevron clicked, then another. Close.
She glanced at the ravine once more, almost longingly, then shook her head. There was no other option.
Sciel rolled her shoulders, sucked in a deep breath, and began to climb.
———
Monolith Year 45
Gommage Day
After nearly twenty years living under the shadow of the Gommage, Sciel would have thought herself ready for this day. But, as it turned out, there was absolutely nothing that could prepare a person to watch their own parents dissolve into a pile of petals.
One moment they were there, smiling, holding her, reassuring her — and the next they were gone.
She didn't even know which petals were theirs. She couldn’t protect them, save them, bury them, anything. A whole generation of people, dead, trampled underfoot like leaves in autumn.
And the rest of Lumière wanted to celebrate.
Sciel would do no such thing.
She ran.
Someone called out to her as she fled — Sophie, maybe, or Catherine — but Sciel ignored them. She pushed her way through the crowded square, dodging fellow mourners as she went. She turned down an alley, trying to get away from the main streets, and ran immediately into a flower stand, knocking over several baskets of bouquets in the process. The flowers scattered across the cobblestones, their petals intermingling with those of the Gommaged.
“Pardon, pardon!” she called behind her but did not slow down.
Sciel gave very little thought to where exactly she was headed, except to ensure that her overall trajectory was always south — as far away from the harbor as possible.
Eventually, her feet took her to the base of the Crooked Tower, where she paused. Sciel let her gaze trace the tangled mass of iron that loomed above her. Its swirling tendrils wove in and around each other, looking less like forged metal and more like living, growing vines.
About a third of the way up, her eye caught on something she had not noticed before. A platform of some kind, it seemed. Perfectly level and precise.
Interesting.
Sciel looked over her shoulder, towards the distant sound of festivities at the harbor. She knew she should go back. It was getting late. Surely Sophie and the others would be worried about her.
But the idea of turning around filled her with an unspeakable dread.
When she was small, Sciel had rescued a cat from a tree near her childhood home. At the time, she’d asked her parents why the cat would climb up if he couldn’t get down. Why attempt such a dangerous feat without a way back to safety?
Now, she understood.
Sciel looked back at the tower, sizing up that distant platform. She took a deep breath and climbed.
Although the tower’s twisted structure offered plenty of hand and footholds, any climb of such a height was plenty dangerous, not to mention strenuous. As time wore on, her muscles ached and her joints strained against the effort. At one point, a harrowing slip had her hanging from just one hand for a breathless moment before she could get her feet back under her. Another time, a poorly placed foot had her sliding several feet down before she could stop her momentum, skinning her knee badly in the process.
But the more she climbed, the more the horror of the Gommage and that terrible golden 45 faded into the back of her mind. Time both dilated and contracted. Sciel felt as though she had only just started climbing and also that she had always been climbing, since the beginning of time. At last, with one final pull, she reached the platform and collapsed onto it, breathing heavily.
Immediately, there was a sharp inhale to her left, and Sciel startled so badly she almost fell backwards off the ledge. When she turned to look, she saw a girl, not more than ten feet away, looking as shocked to see Sciel as Sciel was to see her.
The girl appeared to be about Sciel’s age and sat with her legs pulled up against her chest, chin resting on her knees. She seemed to be nothing but limbs — long all over like she’d gone through a growth spurt and not quite adapted to her own size yet. Her mouth was set in a hard, flat line, and locks of dark hair obscured most of the left side of her face. Brown eyes peered out at Sciel, puffy and red-rimmed with tears.
“What are you doing here?” the girl asked, coldly.
For a moment, Sciel just panted, recovering from the effort of the climb. Eventually, she had enough breath to respond, “I… don’t know, exactly.”
The girl’s frown deepened. “How did you get up here?”
“I-I don’t know,” she said again. “I just… climbed.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Sciel said, a third time, feeling a bit stupified by the whole thing. This girl seemed to have nothing but questions! “The harbor… I just couldn’t…”
The girl’s expression softened then, almost imperceptibly. Her eyes narrowed — analyzing, searching — although what she was looking for, Sciel wasn’t sure.
Eventually, she seemed to find it.
“Who?” the girl asked.
“My parents,” Sciel said.
“Oh.” For the first time in this strange interaction, the girl broke eye contact, looking away sharply to her right and leaving her face completely hidden behind her hair.
The silence stretched on so long that Sciel thought the girl might simply choose not to speak to her again at all. Until at last, so quiet it was barely audible, she added, “Mine, too.”
Sciel felt her own heart soften. She folded her legs under her and slid closer to the girl, until they were sat side by side, just a few inches apart. She leaned forward, trying to get a glimpse of the girl’s face again, but her companion kept her gaze fixed towards the harbor.
“I’m Sciel,” she said.
“Lune,” the girl — Lune — replied.
Perhaps, in another world, in another time and place, Sciel would have said something like, I’m sorry about your parents, and perhaps Lune would have said it back.
But they were not in such a time or place. This was the Gommage. And Sciel didn’t want to give or receive trivial condolences that would change nothing.
Instead, she asked, “Have you… climbed up here before?”
Lune nodded, still hidden behind the curtain of her hair. “A few times.”
“I didn’t even know this place was here,” Sciel mused. “It’s beautiful."
“It is,” Lune agreed. She was silent for a moment, then added, “They say that there was a café up here, before the Fracture.”
Somehow, at the end of a long, horrifying day, it was the absurdity of that statement that shocked her out of her stupor. “What?” Sciel laughed, in spite of herself.
Lune laughed a little too, then shrugged. “It’s in the city records. That’s why I first came up here a couple of years ago. To see if it was real. Turns out it is.”
Sciel looked around the space again, appraising it with new eyes. It was hard to imagine people enjoying lunch or a coffee here… but then, it was hard to imagine much of anything before the Fracture.
Lune nodded towards the far corner opposite them. “You can see a bit of a table and a few chairs there. I even found most of a place setting, once.”
“How did they even get all the food up here?”
Lune pointed towards the southwest corner, “There used to be a lift, just there. It doesn’t work anymore though, in case you were worried that you climbed all this way for no reason.”
“Well that’s good to know,” Sciel said with mock seriousness. “Would have been a real travesty to risk life and limb when I could have just taken a lift. Even if it does sound a bit boring.”
When Sciel looked back to Lune, she found the girl had unfurled over the course of their conversation. One leg now hung loosely over the edge of the platform, swaying absentmindedly. And although she still kept the other leg hugged protectively to her chest, she had also stopped hiding behind her hair. Her head was turned towards Sciel — one cheek resting against the knee of her bent leg — and her expression was open, curious.
Though it was not an unkind look, Sciel felt completely exposed under that scrutiny. In fact, it was something about the subtle warmth of Lune’s stare that had her unsettled. She felt that Lune was truly seeing her, perhaps in a way she had not been seen before, and all at once the desire to flee returned to her.
“Well,” Sciel said, brushing her hands off on her thighs as she moved to stand, “thank you for the history lesson. And I’m very sorry to have disturbed your hiding spot. I promise not to bother you here often.”
“Wait!” Lune said, and to Sciel’s surprise, she felt slender fingers wrap around her wrist, preventing her from leaving. “You don’t… you don’t have to go. If you don’t want to.”
Sciel paused in her retreat, frozen halfway between sitting and standing. Slowly, she lowered herself back down, then turned carefully around to look at Lune.
“I just mean–” Lune continued, floundering a bit, “I’m sorry… that I was rude earlier.”
“Alright.”
“You can stay, if you’d like.”
Now, it was Sciel’s turn to watch Lune with curiosity. Something had shifted, and Sciel wasn’t sure what it was. Granted, they were both going through the worst day of their short lives. Surely that was enough to bond two people quite quickly no matter the circumstances. But there was something else there, something else that Sciel wanted to find the bottom of.
“Do you believe in Fate, Lune?” she asked.
Lune’s eyes shuttered immediately, becoming nearly as cold as they had been when Sciel first hoisted herself up onto the platform. She scoffed. “If Fate is real, she’s a cruel tyrant who will get no allegiance from me. My belief is in my own actions alone.”
“I suppose we haven’t been dealt the kindest hand today, have we?” Sciel conceded.
“No, we haven’t.”
“And yet…” Sciel started, unsure where the sentence was headed next. She felt like she was picking at the frayed edge of something that was ready to unravel — if only she could find the right thread. “And yet, somehow, here we are in an old café in the sky of all places.”
“Here we are,” Lune agreed. Her eyes had softened again, and Sciel found that the rich brown of them was almost golden in the fading light of the day.
Sciel did not say that the company made the loss of their parents any better or easier to bear — because it didn’t. The fullness of the pain and sorrow was still there, unchanged. She also didn’t say that in spite of everything, she was glad that fate had led them there – because that wasn’t quite true either. If she could get her parents back for the price of never having met Lune, she would do it in a heartbeat, and she was sure Lune would do the same. And that was alright.
But also. There was a warmth here, too, a particular kind of fondness. It was born of grief, but beautiful in its own way.
All of these things were true at once, and that, too, was beautiful.
“Here we are,” Sciel echoed.
Something passed between them then — something unspoken and heavy — and then Lune was kissing her, kissing her, kissing her.
Sciel sighed into Lune’s mouth and let herself be pulled down.
———
Monolith Year 33
Expedition Day
Sciel pulled herself up onto the ledge above the Dark Shores. She was a strong climber, but it had been a harrowing climb all the same. (Luckily she’d had practice over the years, climbing back up the Crooked Tower looking for–)
Turning around, Sciel looked back down the way she had come. She was above the fog now, and it lay low along the ground below her like a thick blanket. She couldn’t see any nevrons from here, so she supposed they probably couldn’t see her either, which was a great relief.
She also couldn’t see any of the bodies of her fallen companions, though the memory of Tristan’s haunted expression continued to plague her, his mouth forever frozen in a silent scream. She breathed deeply and closed her eyes against the mental image.
“Adieu, mes amis,” she whispered. With that, she turned her gaze away from the beach, and looked to the north.
Directly in front of her was a craggy ridge, made up of the same odd purple rocks as the cliffs she had summited. The monolith loomed huge and terrible on the horizon, but there was nothing to be done about that now. She wished Expedition 32 the best of luck, but the Paintress was not a problem she could solve on her own.
Now that the adrenaline from her initial flight had faded, the pain in her head was becoming impossible to ignore. She paused to drink a healing tint and sighed with relief as she felt the wound stitching itself back together. Then she used the water in her canteen to clean what was left of the wound and get the blood out of her hair as best she could.
The rest of her was still filthy — there was blood and dirt under her fingernails and caked onto every inch of exposed skin — but that would have to wait till later. What little clean water she had left needed to be saved for drinking.
With one last glance down to the beach below, Sciel started marching north.
The trek was easier than the climb up the cliff face had been, but not by much. The jagged rock formations of the ridge had her picking her way carefully forward — scrambling over boulders and even crawling at times to avoid slipping. She kept the ravine she had seen from the ground a safe but visible distance to her right, since it was the only landmark she had to navigate by if she needed to find her way back. She also hoped that if it had been carved by water, it might lead her to a river somewhere along the way.
As she continued on, the landscape began to change. The ridge gradually leveled out into a plateau, which was dotted with sparse trees, clinging to whatever soil they could find. The ground was dusted with a light covering of grass, and the colors around her faded from the sickly purple of the cliffs to a softer green.
She had to admit that in spite of everything else, it was beautiful.
Eventually, Sciel could go no further. Exhaustion was winning its fight against her body’s will to push forward, and she knew she would need at least a bit of her remaining energy to set up camp.
Too tired to even make a fire, she set up her bedroll under one of the larger trees and prepared herself a meagre meal as best she could.
As she ate, she gazed towards the Monolith, watching the sun as it set below the Continent to her left.
“I’ll do my best, Soph,” she said to herself, aloud. “I’ll make it through this year if I can.”
———
Monolith Year 34
One day before the Gommage
Sciel let the fading light of the setting sun warm her face.
As ever, she was grateful that her apartment faced west, where larger buildings to the north blocked the view of the Monolith and she could imagine she lived in an earlier, simpler time that only her parents’ parents knew — when Lumière was whole and there was no Gommage, no Expeditions.
She was startled from her reverie by two quick knocks.
She smiled. Sophie. “Come in!” she called through the open window.
“…Sciel? Where are you?”
“Out here! Join me!”
Sciel’s own apartment didn’t have a balcony, but the one above it did. The previous tenant, a mild-mannered man with kind eyes, had Gommaged two years ago. Sciel figured he wouldn’t mind if she helped herself to his balcony every once in a while, so she did. On the days when the crushing emptiness of an apartment meant for two got to be too much — she climbed.
Sciel heard Sophie’s footsteps moving through the apartment below, following her voice out to the window. “Where…?” Sophie asked, looking around fruitlessly, left and right.
“Fancy a little adventure?” she called, and Sophie finally tilted her head up. Sciel waved at her with a wink and a cheeky grin.
“Wh- How did you even get up there?”
“It’s easy! Come on, I’ll give you a hand.”
Sciel guided Sophie through the climb, showing her where the best holds were in the iron railing. “Put your left foot there, on the ledge by your knee… Perfect. Now, your right hand just there… a bit higher…”
At last, Sophie plopped down beside her on the cool stone of the balcony with a relieved sigh. “You call that easy?”
“Easy enough, apparently. Look at you, you made it just fine.” Sciel smiled and bumped Sophie’s shoulder with her own. “Wine?”
“Yes, please.”
“I gave away my last couple of glasses earlier today, so you’ll have to share straight out of the bottle with me, I’m afraid.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Sophie said, accepting the bottle gratefully.
They sat in silence for a few moments, passing the bottle back and forth between sips. There was salt on the air from the sea, and a gentle breeze whistled between the buildings. Down below, shop keepers were already putting up red and white banners for tomorrow evening’s festivities.
“Gustave wants to see me tomorrow,” Sophie said, at last.
Sciel’s eyebrows shot up. “Does he now?”
Sophie nodded. “All these years and now he finally decides to break the silence.”
“And? Did you agree?” Sciel kept her voice carefully neutral, waiting to let Sophie set the tone of her reaction.
Sophie sighed. “I did. It’s– it’s hard to think about seeing him again after all this time. But somehow it would be worse, I think, not to see him.”
“I can understand that.” Sciel smiled warmly. “I hope it’s good for you both, that you get the closure you need.”
“So do I,” Sophie said, “so do I.”
“I’m going to miss you, you know,” Sciel said, and her eyes welled with tears the moment she put the feeling to words. “Terribly.”
Sophie smiled sadly and took Sciel’s hand in hers. “I know. I’d like to think that wherever I end up after this, if there is such a place, that I’ll miss you, too.”
Sciel squeezed Sophie’s hand and sighed deeply. They shared a look of deep love and understanding wrought by a decade of friendship. In less than twenty-four hours, Sophie would be dust and petals, floating on the wind. And there was nothing either of them could do about it.
“You don’t have to go, you know,” Sophie said. “It’s not too late.”
Sciel sighed and shook her head. This was a well-worn argument between the two of them, a topic on which they had had to agree to disagree because they would never fully see eye to eye. “You know that’s not true, Soph. I’ve sworn the oath, I have to go.”
Sophie huffed, exasperated. “What’s the worst they can do? Leave you behind? You can stay here and live the rest of your life. You still have a whole year ahead of you.”
“A whole year of what? What’s left for me here after tomorrow?” Sciel’s heart twisted at her own words. She knew how ungrateful she must sound. Sophie would give anything for another year in Lumière, but to Sciel it sounded like as much of a death sentence as the continent. “I can’t do it, you know I can’t.”
“That’s exactly what I’m worried about, Sciel.” Sophie’s previous frustration melted into sadness in an instant, and the abrupt shift in tone shocked Sciel into silence. Sophie turned to face Sciel and took both of her hands in her own. “You may only have a year left, but you do still have a whole year left. A whole year to live. There’s no reason to… I just worry that you’re using this Expedition as a way to try to… Sciel, please don’t–” her voice broke, overcome with emotion.
(Sophie hadn’t been the one to find her on the docks all those years ago, but she had been the one to sit at her bedside until she woke up. Sophie had held her hand while the doctors shared the terrible, terrible news about her baby. She’d sat quietly with her for days on end while Sciel was catatonic with grief, and she had rocked Sciel in her arms when she cried herself to sleep.
And most importantly, Sophie had never, ever asked why.)
Sophie scrubbed unshed tears from her eyes before they could fall. “Please, Sciel. Promise me that’s not what this is.”
Sciel’s first instinct was to reassure her. Of course that wasn’t true.
But at the same time… was it?
Sophie had always been vehemently anti-expedition, that was no secret. And though Sciel had never agreed with her on that point, she knew that she herself wasn’t exactly pro-expedition. Not in the way some of her fellow party members were.
She thought of Gustave and his unflappable optimism, naïve though it may be. She thought of Lune and her single-minded focus, never straying from her goal. (That memory still stung a bit, so she set it to the side.) She thought of Alan and his dedication, taking on an even bigger sacrifice in leading the rest of the team. Lucien and his tenacity. Catherine and her resilience.
Her reasons for signing up had always been less about answers to the question why? and more about a lack of answers to the question why not? If she only had one year left, she may as well spend it seeing as much of the Continent as she could. It might be a fool’s errand, but it would be more interesting than sitting around Lumière doing nothing.
If she was honest with herself, she didn’t think they had a snowflake’s chance in hell of making it to the Paintress, let alone taking her down. At the end of the day, the Expedition was just… something to do. Like joining the Gommage Day dance troupe or ordering a second pain au chocolat on a Saturday morning.
(And if she was a bit more honest, Sciel knew there was a part of her that thought it wouldn’t be so bad to leave this world a bit sooner — to discover whether she’d be reunited with Pierre and her daughter or if only oblivion awaited her.)
But Sophie was waiting for an answer, and Sciel owed her honesty – especially today.
“I’ll admit,” she started, carefully, “I don’t have much hope in our success. But I’m not trying to die.”
Sophie searched her face very carefully then, assessing, looking for a lie.
“Besides,” Sciel added, suddenly eager to divert attention, “you don’t have to worry about me. When my time comes, death is just a friend who–”
“–who will welcome you home, I know. But I’m your friend, too. And I’ll welcome you home someday, I will. But not yet. Please, Sciel. Don’t join me yet.”
But Sciel was already shaking her head before Sophie had finished speaking. “Sophie…” she said, “Please don’t ask me to make a promise I can’t keep. The continent is too dangerous, anything could happen.”
“Just promise me you’ll try,” Sophie said, fierce with a love that was running out of time. “Promise me you’ll try to live.”
Who was Sciel to deny her dearest friend this final request?
“I promise.”
Sophie nodded, eyes closing in relief. “Thank you.”
Sciel wrapped an arm around her friend’s shoulders and pulled her close, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. Over Sophie’s shoulder, she watched the last rays of the sun sink below the horizon.
It was the second to last sunset Sophie would ever see.
After a moment, Sophie whispered, “I am sorry, you know. Leaving you like this. If I could stay I would. I hope you know that.”
Sciel rubbed her hand up and down Sophie’s shoulder, trying to impart some level of comfort. “I know, Soph. I know.”
———
Monolith Year 33
One day after Expedition Day
The next morning, Sciel sat against the trunk of the tree under which she had slept, and watched the sun rise over the continent. As she did, she fidgeted with her cards, shuffling them idly between her hands. Every few minutes, she pulled one from the stack to twirl it between two fingers — but each time, she found herself shuffling it back into the deck without looking at what she had drawn.
Fate probably had something to say to her, but she wasn’t sure she was ready to listen.
Not yet.
After the massacre on the beach, she hadn’t given thought to much of anything besides survival and shelter. But now, she had an entire continent of unknowns before her — and a whole year of life to fill.
And she had no idea where to start.
Not far to the east, she could clearly see the Indigo Tree, silhouetted by the rising sun. It was the obvious choice, of course. The next logical step. Protocol was very clear: go to the Indigo Tree, make camp, wait three days.
But after everything she had seen at the beach, she knew there would be no one to join her there.
As much as her heart ached with the possibility of finding other survivors, Sciel wasn’t sure she could take several agonizing days of waiting at the Indigo Tree just to confirm what she already knew: she would be alone on the continent for a year — if she even made it that long — and the only people coming for her would arrive exactly one day after her death.
No, Sciel decided, she would not go to the Indigo Tree. There was no sense in being beholden to protocol when said protocol was intended to protect an Expedition that no longer existed.
But if not to the Indigo Tree, where instead?
Below her, the continent fanned out like a palette. In its center was a wide valley, filled with a plain of golden grass and bisected by a meandering stream. The perimeter of this valley was surrounded by several distinct regions that dotted the surface like so many dollops of paint.
First, there was the forest surrounding the Indigo Tree, full of warm blues and greens. Just a bit farther was an odd bluish area, in which even the air seemed to be colored a brilliant turquoise, flecked with floating rock formations the color of terracotta. Across the valley was a thicket in which all vegetation appeared to be red: trees, shrubs, and grass alike. And beyond that, a copse of yellow trees growing amongst warm brown rocks that looked almost like marble.
And none of this gave her any indication as to where she should go next.
Sciel had no idea what to do next, but maybe Fate did. With a deep breath, she drew a card and flipped it face up.
It was The Fool.
She breathed out sharply, somewhere between a hum and a laugh, then shook her head. Of course.
Adventure, spontaneity, embracing the unknown.
She shuffled the card back into her deck, got to her feet, and started the long walk down into the valley below her.
“Time to take risks.”