The morning after the brand.
The compound's gates were still sealed and the grass of the clearing was still warm from five days and the air was still carrying the flat, dense, multi-layered cultivation energy of everything that had happened in the last five days.
He stood at the clearing's edge.
They were already there.
All of them.
Twenty-six women.
The specific, assembled, forward-facing, entirely-unclothed reality of twenty-six women who had made their decisions at different points over the last five days and had arrived at the same morning in the same place with the same architecture.
Standing.
Hips raised.
The specific, present, hip-forward, slightly-elevated posture of women who had been told — or had decided without being told — that this was the morning's required position and were maintaining it with the flat, cultivator-straight posture of women who had done five days of cultivation work and had Core Formation light sitting warm in their skin.
Not a performance.
