4338.207 · July 26, 2018 AD
Blueprints and Blood Vessels
Paul finds himself sketching bridges in his mind — turrets where Rose might play, railings Mack could defend like a fortress. Dreams of construction feel safer than confronting the mysteries accumulating around him: Glenda's suspicious calm, her stories deflected to future campfires, the way she sends Kain elsewhere at precisely the moment he needs space. Then darkness approaches and Paul climbs the hill to check on the lagoon. Joel is walking. Joel, whose veins were empty this morning.
Building is the only thing that makes sense anymore. Tents rising from dust, bridges sketched in imagination, structures that declare intent to stay rather than merely survive. Paul stands on the riverbank dreaming of turrets where his children might someday play, and for a moment the future feels possible — wooden slats and chest-high railings and the laughter of Rose echoing across water that has already proven itself capable of miracles.
But miracles breed mysteries, and Paul is collecting those faster than he can process them. Glenda moves through this impossible world with competence that borders on familiarity. Medical tents in Borneo, she says, deflecting deeper questions to campfires that haven't happened yet. The perfectly timed distraction when Kain needs space. The calm that never quite cracks.
Then Joel walks over the hill — the man whose throat was slit ear to ear, whose body floated face-down in the river, whose veins were empty of blood. He's walking. Shuffling, leaning, barely upright, but walking. And when Glenda examines him by firelight, pressing fingers to wrists and ankles, she announces what the lagoon has done: rebuilt him from the inside out. Blood from nothing. A medical anomaly. A miracle that defies every textbook she's ever read.
