Naunet caught the first piece of earth as it fell apart.
It had struck her palm, a small hard thing in water that had never held anything hard. She closed her fingers around it. Brown threads escaped between them.
She closed them tighter.
More of it ran away.
“Nu.”
He was beside her before she finished saying his name. There had never been far to come. His hand fitted beneath hers, and together they cupped what remained: a ridge of grit, a clot of darkness heavier than the darkness around it.
“Open your hand,” he said.
“It will fall.”
“It is falling now.”
She opened one finger. The grit settled against his thumb. Opened another. Between their palms, the little ridge held.
Something pale pushed through its crest.
Naunet bent close. A folded tip, no longer than her smallest nail, had pierced the earth. It trembled without a current to move it.
She wanted to touch it.
The water followed her reaching finger, spread over the ridge, and took the tip out of sight.
She pulled back. The water pulled back with her. The pale point appeared again.
“There,” Nu said.
Naunet held herself away from it.
For the first time, there was something between them that was neither of them.
A Place Without Water
The other six gathered around the small rise. Heh and Hauhet drew apart until there was room for its edges to spread. Kek and Kauket kept the darkness close. Somewhere within it, Amun and Amunet worked where Naunet could not see them; she felt the earth gaining weight against her palms.
The tip became a stem. Folded petals pressed against one another at its head.
Underneath, the earth sagged.
Naunet lifted her hands. Water welled between her fingers and ate a channel through the slope. The stem tilted.
“Lower,” Nu said.
She lowered them. The whole rise sank.
He caught its opposite edge, and they held it level, each watching the other across the closed flower.
Its outer petal had begun to loosen. A thin brightness showed inside the fold.
Naunet knew nothing of brightness. She knew that she wanted the petal to open again.
She drew water away from the stem, then from the grit around it. The slope emerged, shining and wet. More followed: hollows, ridges, little seams where water had run. Nu watched her and withdrew from his side too.
The island stood clear.
Naunet laughed. The sound startled her in the empty place they had made.
“We can do it.”
Nu looked down. “Your hand.”
A crust had formed against her fingers. She eased one free, and the crust broke with a noise sharper than her laughter.
The break ran uphill.
She put her finger back. Too late. The crack reached the stem and split the earth beneath it. The flower leaned toward her, brightness pinched shut between its petals.
Naunet sent water into the crack.
The edges softened. For a moment they joined. Then the earth slid, and a whole piece of the slope slipped away against her wrist.
She caught it. It dissolved in her hand.
“Give it back,” she said.
Nu was already pushing from his side. The island tipped toward him. The flower’s head swung across the gap, heavy on its thin stem.
Naunet pressed upward beneath the root. Nu stopped pushing. Between them the land steadied, but the crack stayed open.
She could feel the root now, a fine, insistent pressure seeking her through the earth.
“It needs us,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And it cannot bear us.”
Nu looked at the water seeping around her wrist. He made no answer.
Beneath the Root
Naunet tried small movements. A little less pressure, and the earth settled. A little more, and a bead of water broke through beside the stem. She drew the bead back before it could widen the crack.
Nu kept his hand over hers beneath the broken slope. It helped. She could tell where she ended by the place where his fingers pressed.
The flower opened a fraction.
Warmth touched the back of her hand.
She jerked, and the island shivered. Nu tightened his grip.
“Did it hurt?”
“No.” She waited for the warmth again. “Do not move.”
But something had to move. The root was lengthening. It pressed against their joined hands, turned, and pressed again. Above it, the stem strained toward a place that did not yet have a name.
Naunet slid one hand beneath the island. The root followed. She slid the other after it, leaving her fingers in Nu’s grasp.
Earth closed above her wrists.
From underneath she felt every weakness: the loosened slope, the hollow beneath the flower, the narrow crack that their efforts had almost torn in two. She spread beneath them. The weight ceased to pull at separate places and lay across her instead.
The stem straightened.
She could no longer see it. Nu told her.
“It is standing.”
“And the flower?”
“Still closed.”
She reached farther. The island’s underside was rough against her, full of small spaces she could enter. In each she held still, letting the earth rest, letting the root find moisture without a current to tear it loose.
Above, grit pattered into the crack.
“Naunet.”
Nu’s fingers slipped against hers. She caught them harder. Water rushed along her wrist, through the space she had left between their arms. It struck the underside of the split and burst upward.
She heard Nu drag in a breath.
“The petals.”
She pulled the water down. Loose earth came with it. The opening widened.
“Come back,” he said.
His hand pulled at hers, the old familiar pressure. She could come back. Let the land loosen. Let the folded thing sink between them. They would be together throughout the water again, with no grit against their skin and nothing that could fall.
She began to draw her arm out.
The island dropped onto her shoulder.
The root scraped her cheek.
Naunet stopped.
It was such a small contact. The root had no hand to close around her, no voice to call her back. It was simply growing into the place where she had been.
“Keep your side still,” she told Nu.
“I can pull you through.”
She turned her palm against his. For a moment they held one another flat-handed, as they had held the first crumb of earth.
Then she folded her fingers away from his.
The First Shore
Water drove into the space between them.
Naunet went down with it. She spread beneath the island, catching its weight before the broken center could fall. Above her, Nu pressed the outer waters back. She felt the effort reach her through the earth: one side lifted, settled, held.
The opening where their arms had been was still a funnel. Water twisted through it and worried at the root.
She pressed herself against its narrowest part.
The flow stopped.
It found another way. A seam opened beside her face, and brightness came down it.
Naunet turned toward it.
Through the slit she saw the underside of a pale petal. It was rising. Beyond it, something moved, small and folded, drawing itself out of the flower.
She pressed closer. The seam widened under her cheek. Water slipped past her and ran upward, carrying grains of earth toward the light.
She could widen it enough to see.
Above, the stem bent.
Naunet withdrew her face. She gathered the loosened grains against the seam and held them there. Light narrowed to a thread across her palm.
For a moment she kept that much.
Then she closed her hand against the earth.
The thread disappeared.
The island bore down on her. She received its weight across the breadth of herself, keeping still wherever it rested, yielding only where the root needed to grow. Somewhere beyond it, Nu held the shore. She could feel the pressure of his water at the edges, but she could not reach his hand.
A sound came through the ground: a thin cry, broken by its first breath.
Naunet waited.
The root moved against her wrist. Its tip had divided into two pale threads. She loosened around them, carefully, and felt them drink.
Then warmth traveled down through the earth.
It touched her closed hand.
She opened it beneath the root.
