Lalani didn’t know how long she slept, but her body screamed with pain when she opened her eyes. Her lids were heavy, as if she’d slept for a thousand years.
A voice slipped into her consciousness.
“Lalani? Are you okay?”
Usoa.
Am I? Lalani breathed deeply. She smelled something sweet and vaguely familiar and turned her head—a pyramid of carefully placed osabana.
The light had changed. It was either dusk or dawn, she couldn’t tell which. A complicated knot of meha branches towered above her. When she sat up, carefully and painfully, Usoa placed an osabana in her hand.
“How long have I been asleep?” Lalani asked. “How did you find me?”
“I don’t know how long you’ve been asleep,” said Usoa. She was sitting on the ground next to Lalani, with her horns resting against the tree. “You were asleep when I found you, hours ago. When you didn’t come back, I searched and searched. When I heard the yootah, I thought for sure it got you. But then I found you here, with the osabana again. I thought you were dead, but then I noticed you were breathing.” She cocked her head to one side. “How did you do it?”
“Do what?” Lalani stretched her back. Oh, how she ached.
“Make it out alive.”
Lalani tried to remember what had happened. She’d used the arrowhead, hadn’t she? “I think . . . the tree . . .”
Usoa nodded, as if she needed no further explanation.
Lalani peeled the osabana clumsily. “Where is all this food coming from?”
“It was here when I found you, just like last time.”
Lalani stopped peeling and looked at her hands. The swelling was gone.
“The tree saved me from that thing. Do you think it gathered this fruit, too?”
Usoa raised a single eyebrow. “A tree can’t do that.”
“Then who?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s best not to question too much and simply say ‘thank you.’”
Lalani took another bite and turned her eyes toward the sky. Thank you.