That's A Terrible Plan
That's A Terrible Plan
“Don’t let go,” Harper blurted, surprising herself.
Morgan turned her head, eyes glassy but alert. “Of course not.”
“No, I mean—” Harper’s throat ached. She looked at the scars, the tremor she thought she saw in Morgan’s arm. “Don’t let go of you.”
Morgan’s lips pressed thin, then softened. “I won’t,” she said, and she sounded like someone making a promise to herself as much as to Harper.
They reached a wide ledge where the gorge spilled out toward the main road. The ordinary world spread ahead: trees bent in the wind, a strip of asphalt baking in the late sun, the smell of pine sap and dirt. It was so normal it felt foreign. Harper half expected the sky to shimmer open again, for the seam to claw itself back. But nothing warped. Nothing hummed. The only distortion left was inside them.
Lila dropped onto a boulder with a groan. “I’m not moving for at least ten minutes.” She stretched her legs, coin still balanced in her hand. “Neutralization is hell on the thighs.”
Harper almost laughed. Almost. Her nerves were too raw for it to come out clean. She lowered herself to the ground, cross-legged, Book across her lap like an animal that needed petting. The dirt under her nails comforted her more than it should have. It was proof that the world had weight again.
Morgan stayed standing. She didn’t fidget, but her jaw tightened and loosened, her body restless in stillness. Harper watched her until the silence pressed too hard. “What’s it like?” she asked softly. “Carrying it.”
Morgan looked down at the Binder. Its latch was fastened again, but the covers flexed faintly, like a heartbeat hidden under leather. She lifted her scarred hand, turning it palm-up. The graphite veins pulsed once, then dimmed.
“It’s like holding a courtroom that won’t adjourn,” she said finally. “Every page whispers precedent. Every breath counts as evidence. I can feel the shard in there, straining. Not to break free. To…be heard.” She blinked, swallowing. “It wants trial without end.”
Lila whistled low. “That’s going to make sleep a real party.”
Morgan ignored her. She rubbed her scarred palm over her forearm, as if the pressure could keep the marks from spreading. “The Binder’s not stable. Not anymore. The shard fused too fast. The grooves I cut…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “It’s still settling.”
Harper hugged the Book tighter. It pulsed, sympathetic, as if to confirm her fear. “And because it’s unstable—”
“The others will feel it,” Morgan finished. Her gaze lifted to Harper’s arms, then to Lila’s Coin. “The Book. The Coin. They’re all bound to the same fracture. One vessel shakes, the others rattle.”
As if on cue, the Coin slipped from Lila’s fingers. She caught it midair with a curse. “Okay, that wasn’t me,” she said quickly. “That was it twitching.”
The Book thudded once in Harper’s arms, deep and resentful, like an animal disturbed in its sleep. She gasped and pressed it tighter. “They’re already reacting.”
Morgan lowered herself at last, sitting stiffly beside Harper. The Binder rested across her knees, too alive for comfort. “Every neutralization destabilizes the rest,” she said. “We knew that in theory. Now we know in body.”
Harper rubbed her thumb along the Book’s edge. “So it’s only going to get worse.”
Lila leaned back on her elbows, looking at the coin like it might sprout fangs. “Each trip will be rougher than the last. By the time we hit the final shard…” She let the thought trail off, because finishing it was more curse than prediction.
Harper finished it anyway. “By then, we’ll barely be holding together.”
The wind skittered a dry leaf across the ledge, ordinary sound mocking extraordinary truth. Harper wanted to fling the Book away and cling to normalcy, but the Book hummed, heavy with purpose, reminding her that throwing it would be throwing herself. She sighed and rested her forehead against its cover.
Morgan’s hand twitched toward her, then drew back. Harper caught the motion and grabbed her wrist before she could retreat. The scars were hot under her fingers. Not burning. Not safe either. She squeezed anyway. “You’re still you.”
Morgan looked at her, eyes ringed in exhaustion but lit with a fierce, aching gratitude. “So far,” she said. “So far, I am.”
Lila sat up, brushing dust from her hands. “So we rest, we eat, we walk out like it’s any other day. That’s the plan. Pretend normal until we trick ourselves into believing it.” She forced a smile. “And when that fails, we tell jokes about neutralization thighs.”
Harper smiled despite the sting in her chest. “That’s a terrible plan.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got.” Lila flipped the Coin, caught it clean this time, and held it up between two fingers. “Besides. Intuition says we’re not broken yet. Just bent.”
Harper touched the Book. “Heart says we’ll bend back.”
Morgan pressed her palm to the Binder. “Rules say: bending isn’t failure. It’s design.”
They looked at one another, and the silence that followed wasn’t empty this time. It was full of agreement, fragile but whole. They had survived. They had paid. They had bent. And still they were here.
The Binder pulsed, faint but audible, like a sigh caught in leather. Harper shivered. Morgan lifted her chin, acknowledging it. “It breathes,” she said simply.
And with that, the gorge was no longer their trial. It was just landscape, already turning back into memory. Ahead waited the road, and after the road, the next seam.
For now, though, three girls sat on a ledge with dust on their boots, their vessels alive and trembling, and their bond steadier than any law the shards had tried to write.