Dara watched as Page poked the fire, watching the smoke curling from the timbers it devoured. She looked at him from the hoods of her eyelids, careful of not letting him notice. He was dressed in what Page assumed to be the local fashion, with a long, wide-sleeved shirt tucked into belted trousers, which were tucked into wool boots. His hair was pinned up with nothing but a silver pin, which stayed on even after their scuffling.

"Stop staring at me," a voice grouched and bled into Page's ears. "One would think you are quietly stalking your prey."

Page looked behind her, noting nothing but trees, trees, and more trees. "Are you perceiving a company other than mine?" she asked. "I wonder if you have somewhere to check your eyes. Or your senses."

If Dara were offended by that, he didn't show it. Instead, he curled his lip inward, rummaging in his pack and pulling out a small, round fruit. He began peeling it, revealing plump, fleshy bits clumped together. He popped one into his mouth. Page pursed her lips, stopping herself from blurting to get him to give her some.

It was something of a miracle to find themselves sitting opposite each other in the middle of the vast forest untouched by the Plague. When she walked out on him earlier, she expected him to have continued on his way, leaving her alone. Instead, not only did he stalk after her, he never strayed away from her path. He offered no sign of interference, letting her have her own way. Only then, did she realize he was following her lead despite not knowing where she was going or if she knew what she was doing. That was a different kind of trust given to a stranger who tried to kill him at one point.

Maybe he felt guilt, leaving off a foreigner to die on a different planet. Or maybe he wanted to find Athepaliah too and use its resources against her. During the length of the journey, she turned and asked for his name. "Dara," he replied with a begrudging nod. When asked why the gesture was included, Dara responded with, "I suppose I judged you too soon. You have amended my impression of you when you asked for what I am called."

Which was a long way to say he didn't think of her as bad when she showed the least amount of concern for him.

Soon after, Page admitted to the canopies that she was lost, and that she didn't really have anything to go on. Dara then took the helm, propping her on a random slab of rock, starting a fire, and telling her to sleep the dark away. "You don't want to invite predators on your trail by moving about with a torch. Worse, you will start a forest fire and kill off everything the Blight didn't."

The last part made sense, but sitting in the dark with a burning campfire was the equivalent of waving a torch around, right? Page was in no position to argue, though. Dara got one thing correct about her—she was a foreigner in a world she knew nothing about. Even the archives in Nuvis' best space navigating school barely had any information about a planet called Guahiri. Maybe this really was Page's discovery, and she would write a book about it to teach in the next semester in the Academy. An ambition worth pursuing.

So, she stayed put, occasionally helping Dara tend to the flames. Like in Nuvis, smoke rose heavenward. The religious sect on her planet believed it was because the gods deserved or demanded the aroma of burning things, but to the scientific community, it was because of the principles of buoyancy.

Dara finished the fruit, reserving nothing for Page even though the last meal she had was the cooled meat from the Callagheen's private stocks. Her teeth dug against her lips. She'd find something to eat long after Dara had fallen asleep. Let him have his fruit. Fine.

"If there's something you want to say, spit it out." Page grunted when she saw Dara oscillate between her and his bag. She stood up and rounded the fire to settle beside him on the fallen log. "You've been looking at me then at your things for a while."

"I was thinking about whether to give this to you or not," Dara admitted, hands curling atop his knees. "It was a common material in the trading squares, but many scholars have assumed it was a fictional map. To Athepaliah."

Page narrowed her eyes. "Show me."

He brought it out of the bag and passed her a folded piece of parchment. "There are various copies spread around various archives, and I managed to get one when I...ah, tried to look for it."

"Let me guess," she said, unfurling the map to get a spread of at least a foot. "You tried to dissuade me when you didn't find it."

Dara's silence was enough of an answer. Page peered at the lines of ink drawn into the parchment, using the fire behind it as a source of illumination. Hmm. This was...

"In my defense, I have tried everything I can to read that thing," Dara said. "The navigational charts offer no guidance. The compass is useless. I've tried the mountains, the water, the landmarks. I still haven't found it."

A small smile crept into Page's lips when she noticed a small mark at the edge of the grid lines. It was the most obvious clue to those who knew what it was and where to look. "That's because you haven't tried the last method yet," she said.

"Which is?"

Page reached beside her, and her fingers caught Dara's chin. Slowly, she tilted his head up so they viewed the sky together.

"What am I looking at?" Dara prodded.

"The answer to your navigational problem."

Dara frowned. "The canopies?"

At that, a chuckle flitted off Page's lips. "No, silly," she said. "The stars. It's a well-known cartography technique in Nuvis and in the neighboring planets in the same cluster. We put a small mark at the beginning of the axes to let each other know the stars were the scale. Have you ever been to the grasslands? Or places without canopies? That's where we will have a better chance of finding Athepaliah."

"Why do you think the Guardians made it so that a Nuvian can read it?" Dara asked. A good question, but a loaded one.

Page shrugged, bringing the map down. "Because they are Nuvian to begin with?" she said. "The legends on my planet talked about their home being Nuvis."

Dara rolled his eyes. "Of course, they do," he said. "The legends here claim they are Guahirin."

"So, do you think this map's accurate?" Page waved it in front of Dara's face. "Or is it just another country bollocks after all?"

"It's worth a try, don't you think?" Dara inclined his head at her.

Yeah, she thought. It is.