Page 53 of Autumn L.A.W

Sahara set her notebook between them and clicked her pen. The familiar ritual steadied her. Paper. Ink. Clean black lines. Things that behaved.

“So,” she said. “We’ve established the rules for the obelisk and the crew.”

“The ones you recited to me three times before we left the dock,” Ezra said mildly.

“I like my brain to have things to hold onto.”

“You and me both,” he said. “May I make a suggestion?”

“That depends,” she said. “Is it going to involve extra chaos?”

“Quite the opposite.” He wrapped his hands around his mug, fingers long and steady. “I like your rules. They’re very thorough. I’d just like to accessorize them.”

She gave him a look over the top of her notebook. “Accessorize.”

“Yes.”

“You know they’re rules, not outfits, right?”

“Everything benefits from the right finishing touches,” he said.

“Fine.” She sighed, but it was the softer kind. “What did you have in mind?”

He nodded at the notebook. “Write this down, or it won’t feel official.”

Bossy, but not in the annoying Joell way. She uncapped her pen. “All right,” she said. “Rule One: Ezra has opinions. Proceed with caution.”

“Rule One,” he said, ignoring that. “We eat three meals a day. Actual meals. Not coffee plus whatever’s within arm’s reach.”

“That’s not a rule, that’s a suggestion.”

“It’s a safety protocol,” he said. “I’ve dealt with artifacts that prey on exhaustion. When you’re tired and hungry, your judgment goes slippery. You start saying yes to things you wouldn’t entertain with a full stomach.”

She hated how reasonable that sounded. “So now you’re my nutritionist.”

“Think of me as your boring future self, calling from a week ahead to say, ‘Please eat something that doesn’t taste like caffeine, sugar, and despair.’”

She snorted. “Fine.” She wrote: We eat regularly. “Happy?”

“Ecstatic,” he said dryly. “Rule Two: We sleep in shifts.”

“I had that in mind,” she said. “I just hadn’t written it down yet.”

“Then we’ll record it now,” he said. “No one stays up all night on watch alone. Not even you.”

Especially not me, hung unsaid between them. She added: Sleep in shifts. No solo all-nighters.

Ezra continued, “Rule Three: If either of us hears or feels anything unusual—voices, visions, dreams that are clearly not ours—we say so. Immediately. No ‘it’s probably nothing.’ No waiting to see if it gets worse.”

That one slid under her skin like a key finding the right lock. Sahara stared at the blank space on the page for a moment before writing: If we hear/see anything, we tell each other.

“I don’t—” She cleared her throat. “I don’t want to overreact to every strange thought.”

“I’m not asking you to overreact,” Ezra said quietly. “I’m asking you not to handle it alone.”

She kept her gaze fixed on the paper. “You say that like it’s easy.”

“It isn’t,” he said. “Believe me, I know. But if that thing tries to crawl into your head through a side door, I would like to know before it redecorates the place.”