He touched his ear.
Then wrote:
Inside me?
Rosalie nodded.
His face drained of color.
She examined his ear again and noticed something else.
The swelling had partially collapsed after the creature’s removal, exposing a narrow pocket of damaged tissue she had not seen before.
Inside that pocket was a tiny hard edge.
Not flesh.
Not bone.
Something metallic.
Rosalie brought the lamp closer.
Gideon stiffened.
“What happened to you when you were a child?” she whispered, forgetting he could not hear.
He understood from her expression.
His pencil moved slowly.
Horse accident. Age nine.
Rosalie
pointed toward the metallic gleam.
Gideon’s brow furrowed.
She wrote:
There is something else inside.
He stared at the sentence.
Then shook his head violently.
Doctors looked.
“When?”
He read her lips imperfectly.
She wrote it.
When did doctors examine you?
After accident. Then years later.
Rosalie stared at the ear again.
Something about the story felt wrong.
She cleaned away more blood.
A narrow scar curved behind Gideon’s ear, almost hidden beneath his hair.
It did not resemble the ragged scar left by a fall.
