An hour and a half passed.
They ate from their storage beads in the foliage, each of them in turn, the unwrapping and the chewing done as close to silent as a body could manage when a wrong sound would undo the whole of the waiting. Asp leaned near Tula at one point and spoke to her low, under the threshold the glade would carry — the spirit nagas' own learning, the things the Black Bowels taught its children about Viletails, how they came and where they struck and what a body did to live a few seconds longer than a body otherwise would. Tula listened. She took it in the way she took in everything, filing it against need, and when Asp finished she said her thanks, and meant them.
