Night again. Or still. The distinction had ceased to operate somewhere in the last several cycles, the body's internal clock maintaining a rhythm that had nothing to do with the body's internal experience. The sky darkened. The sky lightened. The body walked through both states without differentiation.

  The clearing was the kind that existed because something had died in it — a large tree, decades ago, the absence creating space and the space filling with grass and low shrubs. The stump was still there. Massive. The rotting kind that housed insects and fungi and the entire civilization that processed dead wood into soil.

  Except near me. The stump's inhabitants — gone. The radius had cleared them. The grass in the clearing: browned in a circle around where I stood, green at the edges, the familiar gradient.

  I stood in the center of the dead circle in the center of the clearing. Eyes open. Stars — the density of mountain-altitude stars without cloud cover, the kind of sky that featured in poems about solitude.

  The humming was there too.

  Low. Below hearing, almost. A vibration in the chest — not from outside, from inside. The resonance of qi moving in patterns that had no purpose, the idle cycling of something vast and old that operated whether I wanted it to or not.

  The humming had been there since the hut. Maybe before. But it was noticed now. A low, continuous vibration. The sound of being alive against my will.

  The spirit-beast arrived at the clearing's edge.

  Different species from the first one. This one was smaller. The size of a large wolf, dark fur, thinner qi-armor. A younger beast, or a weaker one — the kind that operated at the margins of territories controlled by stronger beasts.

  Its eyes were pale. Reflective in the starlight. They found me across the clearing and they held.

  The beast did not enter the dead circle. It stood at the edge — the precise edge, the boundary between brown grass and green, the line that marked the limit of my chronic emission. It tested the boundary the way animals tested invisible barriers. One paw forward, a flinch, a withdrawal.

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  The paw retreated. The beast stayed. Watching me. From the safe side of the radius.

  I watched it back.

  The watching lasted. The beast's assessment was accurate. I was threat. The dead circle confirmed this — dead grass, absent insects, the silence that surrounded me.

  The beast's ears flattened. Its body lowered.

  I looked at my hand. The dried blood from the first beast was still there — brown and flaking, between the knuckles. I had not washed it at the stream. Washing required caring.

  I walked toward it.

  From need.

  Want was disconnected. Need was older, the body's own reflex, the kind the disconnection couldn't reach. The need that made the body breathe when the body did not choose to breathe.

  I needed something to respond to me. Something to be alive and near me and remain alive long enough that the gap between my existence and the world's would narrow for one instant.

  I crossed the dead circle toward the edge. The beast backed away. Step. Step. Pale eyes locked on mine.

  I stopped.

  It stopped.

  The distance between us measured six paces. Twice the radius. Safe, from its perspective. Its body remained still low, still flattened, the muscles engaged for flight. Its breath was visible in the cold air, the small clouds that formed and dissolved, formed and dissolved.

  I stood.

  Not advancing, but not retreating either. A new circle formed at the edge of the old circle where the brown grass met the green. Taking with me, what separated what I was from what lived.

  The beast waited. Maybe a minute. Then it lowered a fraction further, turned and moved into the tree line. The departure of a creature choosing distance, not fleeing danger.

  It disappeared between the trees. The forest absorbed it. Its pale eyes — gone.

  I stood. Brown grass and green grass. The transition visible on the ground. My feet stood on the brown grass because my feet were always on the brown side.

  The need remained. Unanswered. The hunger for contact that existed below the disconnection, which it could not reach. Because disconnection operated on will and need operated on something older.

  The humming in my chest continued. Low. Constant. The sound I made just by being.

  I stood in the clearing until morning, eyes open. The stars moved overhead in arcs that measured time. It told me, that I was still here and the still-being-here would not stop.

  Morning came. Light changed. Temperatures shifted. The body registered all without preference. At some point motion replaced stillness. Because motion was what the body defaulted to when stillness had exhausted its options and stillness always exhausted its options. Nothing happened in stillness and of nothing I had already plenty.

  I walked.

  The radius walked with me. Three paces. The consistent measurement of damage. Three paces between me and everything living.

  Behind me was the clearing. The dead circle. The stump that no longer housed insects.

  Ahead lay more forest. More living things. Waiting for the interference to arrive.

  The humming continued. Low. Below everything.

  I walked into the part that was still alive.