Later, when she sleeps, or performs a convincing imitation of it, I rise and build the test.
Two lines of ash are drawn beyond camp, one leading left between birch trunks, one right through ferns. In the dark, both appear recently marked. In truth, the left path ends in a deadfall I inspected earlier. The right path leads safely to the ridge trail. At dawn I will ask which route she foresaw. If she chooses left, she guesses. If she chooses right, she knows more than she admits. If she refuses, that too becomes information. Elegant and simple.
I return to my bedroll almost pleased. Morning arrives silver and cold. Mist hangs low among the trees, turning distance into suggestion. Aeryn wakes already watching me, which means she was never asleep as early as she pretended.
“You snore strategically,” she says.
“I was baiting lesser predators.”
“How reassuring.”
I lead her beyond the stones to where the ash lines wait untouched.
“I found signs of movement in the night,” I say. “Two possible routes. Choose.”
Her eyes travel from one line to the other, then to my face, then back again. She crouches near the left mark, not touching it, merely observing.
“Why ash?” she asks.
“To track disturbance.”
“To track me, more likely.”
“Should I be insulted that you think so little of my broader intentions?”
“You should be concerned I think so accurately of the narrow ones.”
She rises and walks not to either path, but several paces beyond them to a patch of moss-covered stone.
Then she points upward. I follow her gesture. A snapped branch hangs above the left route, held by fibers ready to fall if brushed. Beneath the right, half-hidden in fern, lies the drag mark of something heavy pulled recently across the soil.
Neither path is clean. Except I know the right path was clean when I marked it. Which means something moved through camp after I slept. She turns back to me, expression almost innocent.
“You asked me to choose. I choose neither.”
I look again at the disturbed earth, recalculating the entire night.
“You altered the right path.”
“No.”
“You expect me to believe coincidence favored your argument.”
“I expect you to notice you asked the wrong question again.”
I step closer. “Did you go out after I fall asleep?"
“Did you?”
The answer arrives at once and annoyingly: yes, she circumvented the test not by solving it, but by refusing its frame entirely. Whether she altered the trail herself, noticed fresh movement before I did, or simply recognized the trap and made a third option, the result remains the same.
She won.
Most people become less appealing once they prove troublesome. With Aeryn, the opposite occurs. Difficulty sharpens interest. Resistance creates contour where obedience would flatten everything into utility.
I should dislike that realization.
Instead I find myself wanting to know what she will do next.