White-Nape entered before the water stopped turning from Black-Crown's dive.
The parent left one wet footprint at the rim and vanished after the dark shape below. Split-Beak followed when enough open water returned for its shoulders.
Two more hungry adults crowded behind.
Jiang remained on his breast.
Deep Lung sat inside him as a choice already made. His wound stayed open, and the foot under him slid when he tried to stand.
Black-green light moved beneath the lead.
The pressure tongue kept crossing Jiang's pale return groove. By the time the last adult entered, the gap had narrowed around its flanks.
From the huddle, the worn-grey chick called.
No adult at the lead turned for it.
Jiang pulled his right foot beneath his body. His left found the rim only after the sling had taken part of his weight. Being last meant every bird carrying food would meet the closing throat before him.
It also meant no injured stranger would block their exit.
He drew as much air as his aching chest would hold and slid in.
Water opened under his weight. Jiang waited until his right flipper began the first sustained stroke, then reached for the new adaptation.
`[DEEP LUNG I ACTIVE]`
The breath he had carried down settled into a steady pull while he moved, stretching its useful part.
Pain stayed where it belonged: shoulder, jaw, bad foot, failed flipper.
Jiang followed the groove.
Ice dust still clung inside its cut. Black-Crown's feet passed beyond the pressure tongue, followed by White-Nape's pale belly. Split-Beak entered behind them with its head turned toward every living body in the route.
Pale-Cheek cried from the lower branch.
White-Nape veered toward the voice.
The copied chick sounded hungry enough to make an empty parent choose badly. Jiang crossed beneath White-Nape's beak and turned his bright underside toward the return groove. Black-Crown showed the same turn ahead.
White-Nape saw two moving bodies and corrected between them.
Grey-Throat called from above the pressure tongue. Split-Beak looked up, almost striking the ice, then found White-Nape's tail and followed it through.
Gredudande sent the voices farther apart.
The hunters tightened together instead.
They held a hunter's distance, close enough to see flipper tips, white breasts, and the pale scrape. Their living line passed through the throat while perfect family voices fled into solid ice.
Silver fish flashed ahead.
The school had packed against the underside where the shifting tongue drove small prey from the root. Black-Crown rose first, beak cutting through silver. A fish vanished into its mouth. Another turned past its breast toward White-Nape.
Jiang swam beneath the school.
He rolled until his dark back faced the deeper water and drove upward with the right flipper. His bound side curved the climb, forcing him to use both feet to hold the fish between his body and the ice.
Black-Crown outpaced him with every clean stroke.
Deep Lung kept Jiang moving below the school after injury pulled him toward the lead. Fish turned from his dark shape and crowded toward the adults at the roof.
White-Nape swallowed the first fish.
Split-Beak missed, struck again, and swallowed the next fish headfirst. The other adults cut through the silver fold and carried their catches inside their bodies.
Jiang found a fish facing the wrong way.
It darted past his cracked beak, hit the pressure tongue, and turned back into him. Jiang snapped. The body bucked between his jaws, alive and heavy enough to make hunger feel like a hand closing around his throat.
He had brought one home.
Black-green root crossed the pale return scrape.
Its strands pulled hard around the pressure tongue, drawing the ice toward the only exit. One adult had already turned back with a full belly. White-Nape and Split-Beak were still among the fish.
Jiang could swallow his catch and follow.
The root would close behind whoever reached it last.
He opened his beak.
Silver kicked free and vanished into the school.
Jiang drove toward the exposed strand.
Gredudande filled the water with Pale-Cheek, Grey-Throat, Bent-Toe, and Jiang himself. Every voice called from the closing lead. The noise crowded his head while the black-green braid slid beneath his breast.
Jiang caught it in the cracked part of his jaw.
Harder than flesh and softer than ice, the strand hammered stolen calls through the contact.
`[COMPLETE FORM I: COMPATIBLE CONTACT HELD]`
Coherence gave him contact, not stronger muscles. The root kept moving through his bite. Its rough surface tore at his beak while his right flipper fought to keep his body beside the pressure tongue.
Black-Crown turned for the exit.
White-Nape followed with its catch swallowed. Split-Beak came behind, then the two other adults. Each crossed the narrowing before the next entered it.
Jiang remained under the roof, jaws clamped around the root.
He pressed his breast against the moving pressure tongue and planted both feet in the water beside its lower edge. The failed left foot slipped. His right held long enough for cold water to touch the feathers and skin he needed.
Jiang called Frostwake into contact.
`[FROSTWAKE I: CONTACT ICE]`
A thin white crust formed where his breast and feet met the water. It reached no farther. The moving tongue caught that fragile edge and dragged it toward the roof.
Ice cracked at once.
For one beat, the crust held the tongue while the root kept pulling.
Jiang bit until his jaw shook.
The root tore itself across his beak.
Black-green light burst along the break. One end recoiled beneath the feeding shelf. The smaller end slipped into wet ice leading away from the sea, carrying an unfamiliar rhythm while water hammered the roof.
The pressure tongue dropped.
Jiang released the torn root and turned after the hunters.
His pale groove ended beneath a slab that had already shifted across half of it. Deep Lung kept the breath useful while Jiang chose the line himself. He found the remaining scrape, aligned his body with the return current, and drove the right flipper.
Ice lowered behind his tail.
The sling caught nothing this time. His failed side dragged through first, then his feet. Black-Crown's white breast showed beyond the shrinking gap and disappeared upward.
Jiang followed the current alone.
The lead became a grey cut above him. He kicked, struck the rim with his shoulder, and turned the collision into one last right-sided stroke.
His beak reached air.
Black-Crown had already climbed out. White-Nape and Split-Beak stood farther back with wet bellies and empty beaks, their catches carried where Jiang could no longer see them.
Jiang hauled himself onto the rim.
Behind his tail, the pressure tongue struck the underside. Ice rolled into the opening with a grinding crack. Water jumped over Jiang's feet, then fell away as the gap sealed beneath new white fracture.
The sea lead was gone.
Air returned to Jiang faster than it had after the last dive. Each breath found the next before panic could break it apart.
His empty stomach paid the cost.
Hunger clenched so hard that Jiang folded over the sling. The smell of fish inside the returning adults became unbearable, and the ice beneath his beak again suggested terrible culinary possibilities.
`[DEEP LUNG I COST: HUNGER]`
Cold followed from somewhere else. Frostwake had taken heat through his breast and feet, leaving the feather edges stiff and the right claws numb. Countercurrent Lock could preserve what remained only by abandoning those same limbs sooner.
Jiang crawled after the hunters without using it.
White-Nape reached the huddle first.
Pale-Cheek pushed through the older chicks at its call. Parent and chick found each other by living answers that changed with every step. White-Nape bent over its chick and fed the fish it had carried inside.
Split-Beak called from another edge.
Grey-Throat answered rough and immediate. The chick pressed close, received its parent's catch, and swallowed while Split-Beak stood over it against the wind.
Other returning adults found their own young. Food passed along those specific bonds, not across the ice.
The worn-grey chick came out last.
It called to each wet adult and received no matching answer. Its body looked smaller beside chicks whose crops had begun to round.
Jiang lowered his beak.
He had closed his jaws around one fish. Letting it go had brought every carrying adult through the lead. That choice gave him nothing he could place in front of the chick now.
The chick approached his breast.
Black-Crown stepped between them.
One strike landed beside Jiang's cracked beak. A second drove him beyond the huddle's moving edge. The adult had followed his marks, waited under ice, and trusted him with the return. None of those choices made Jiang safe beside a hungry chick.
Wind entered the gap Black-Crown opened.
Jiang stayed outside with the cold he had bought and the hunger Deep Lung had sharpened. Behind Black-Crown, Pale-Cheek and Grey-Throat ate while the worn-grey chick kept calling.
Something answered beyond the low rise.
Running water moved where the frozen land held no river. Beneath its rush came the uneven knock of copper cups against stone.
Heads lifted across the rookery. Adults answered first, then chicks, turning inland toward the counterfeit thaw.
Jiang knew that rhythm.
River-Open Night had found the colony.