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“Gimmee.”
    The water pack was cool in her hands, and it sizzled a little so she drank quickly. Her mind cleared a little, and she leaned back against the side of the mountain.
    “How did you get here? I don’t see tracks from a skimmer and this is a darned narrow valley.”
    He winked. “I have my ways.”
    She took the ration bar he handed her, and she slowly munched. The sun was high overhead.
    “That took a while.”
    “You could say that. You walked three kilometers. I didn’t want to frighten you with the numbers before you started. You are two-thirds of the way to the final valley.”
    The scent in the narrow valley was heady, and Leyhara knew it would get stronger. Now that she knew what was driving the migration, she could figure out what the plants did. Hormonal triggers were often found in plant matter and that was probably the cocktail required for either the males or the females or both.
    She leaned back and closed her eyes, letting the shadows cool her skin as the hot breeze caressed it. She let her thoughts drift, and Bohr took a seat near her, instead of against the stone; he sat on a rock, nearly perching. His shadow increased her shelter.
    The answer she was seeking struck her in a rush when she stared at the shadow. She kept her mouth shut and kept chewing. When she finished the ration bar, Bohr handed her another bag of water. She drank and handed him the empty.
    “Thank you, Bohr.”
    “You are most welcome. They are very excited and extremely grateful at the progress you have made. If you stopped now, you would still have saved a dozen lives this season alone.”
    She smiled. “I am glad, but I am going to continue until I reach the end. I hate leaving projects half done.”
    Bohr nodded. “Excellent. Well, I will see you underway again and I will meet you on the other side.”
    Leyhara lined up with the hole, and she pressed into the stone, smiling as it yielded easily. She could melt it at once, but she didn’t want to. She needed to be careful to make it sturdy as well as a navigational passageway. Not reinforcing it would be inviting trouble.
    Humming with the bounce of energy, her buzz quickly returned. She moved swiftly, always aiming toward daylight with the huge expanse of the tunnel echoing around her.
    She began a skating jog to speed things along while putting the arches into place with every slide of her feet.
    The next break of daylight came quickly, but she had to climb down and then up the next mountain to get into position. This required a different design to the exit and she cut two wide troughs on either side of her start position, heating them so that they would not cool when the flowing stone struck them.
    Ready to go, she pushed into the stone, and after she had a foothold, it went quickly.
    The idea in her mind was that if she could move fast enough, she would see Bohr landing and have her suspicion confirmed. His shadow had wings.
    She should have been angry to learn that the Drai who had chosen her was masquerading as her pilot, but he actually was her pilot. It didn’t matter who got her from place to place as long as she could see and do what she had never been able to before.
    He wasn’t making any moves on her, so she was content that he was not stealing her away to get her alone. He could have started something the previous night, but her virtue had been as safe as her clothing had been.
    She stumbled into the light once more and put out the flames her entry caused.
    To her astonishment, she was overlooking a flat plain covered with grass, flowers and low shrubs. A few steps away from the wall, she turned and caves were dug out to the left and right, every few hundred yards.
    Leyhara’s head was buzzing with energy, but she ignored it and twirled in the fading light. She had had four days to do it and she had done it in two.
    Now, she had to wait for her ride home.
     
    She saw him coming, and his astonishment was on his face. “I knew it!”
    He sighed, and