The pulse of warmth spreading from the shrine's base wasn't light, not exactly, more a suggestion of light, a faint shimmer at the edge of what the eye could properly register, rising off the dead soil the way heat rises off stone at the end of a hot afternoon. Sekar's every protective instinct screamed at her to snatch her daughter back from the clearing's edge, and she felt her own hand tighten reflexively around the small fingers still gripping hers.
"Sayang." Her voice came out rougher than she intended. "Stay close to me. Whatever this is, we don't run toward it."
"I'm not scared," their daughter said, and it was true, Sekar could see it was true, the girl's small face holding none of the tension gripping every adult in the clearing. "He's not scary. He's just been alone a really long time."
"How do you know that?"
