The supply table was set up near the back of the camp every evening. It was practical, not romantic, a flat surface where things that needed to be found quickly in the morning were laid out the night before so nobody was digging through packs in the dark. It had been Cael's system for years and it worked.
She came to it just before last light because she needed the spare lamp wick, which was near the back of the third pile on the left, which she had noted its location the previous evening because she always noted where things were. She came around the side of the table from the left.
He came around from the right at the same moment.
She reached. He reached. His hand and hers arrived at the same section of the table at the same time.
His hand brushed hers.
— — —
Neither of them moved.
It was not a long time. Two seconds, maybe. Possibly slightly less. The kind of span that a person counting casually would not even register as a pause.
It felt much longer than that.
