The mud on her arms cracked three hours ago. She didn't fix it. The armored creatures had settled — two at her left foreleg, one pressed against her flank, shell rising and falling slower than her own breath. She matched the rhythm without deciding to. The green light came through the canopy with weight, pressing against her bare shoulders like a hand she'd been waiting her entire life to feel. The warmth in her chest spread downward, through her folded legs, into the soil. She closed her eyes. Somewhere east, three hundred paces, the roots had stopped. She felt it the way you feel a door closing in another room — not heard, *known*. Her fingers moved against her thumb. Index, middle, ring, small. The bow wasn't in her hands but her body tested the string anyway, the way a heart beats without permission. The forest was listening. She listened back. And in the space between her breath and the ground beneath her, something older than her mother's mother whispered a word she didn't have language for but her hooves understood.