The flower was white.
Small. A mountain blossom. Growing in the crack between two rocks, sustained by rain and stubbornness.
We had stopped by a stream. Wei was filling the waterskins, crouched at the bank, his hands in the current — steady for once, the cold acting as a natural dampener.
He held them there longer than necessary. Watching his fingers in the current — steady, obedient, behaving as hands should. The expression on his face, brief and private, was the closest thing to contentment I'd seen in weeks.
I was sitting on a flat stone. The flower was directly in front of me. A bud. Closed. White petals folded inward.
It opened.
Not slowly. Not the gradual unfurling that flowers performed over hours. This was seconds. Two, three. The bud opened, expanded, presented itself. White petals — perfect. Symmetric. Each one positioned with the precision of something designed rather than grown.
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I stared.
It wilted.
In seconds. The petals became brown. The symmetric form curled, contracted. The stem bent. Broke. Bud to flower to death in less than ten seconds.
Brown paper fragments where a bloom had been.
Was that—
"What is it?"
Wei. Standing behind me. Waterskins full.
"Nothing," I said. "Let's go."
We walked. Up. West. Away from the stream and the stone and the petals.
"Yun."
"What?"
"You're walking fast."
I was. I slowed.
That afternoon, the landscape changed. Subtle. Trees more evenly spaced than mountain trees should be. Rocks arranged by size — the geological gradient that would make sense on a riverbed but not on a mountainside.
Symmetry. The Heaven's Order fingerprint. Closer than I'd estimated.
I changed our route. Into harder, steeper terrain where symmetry was unsustainable.
"Why are we going this way?" Wei asked.
"Better terrain."
"Better for what?"
"For being alone."
He didn't argue.
Into the mountains. Where the trees grew without pattern and the rocks lay where they'd fallen.
