Tobiah has been looking forward to this since the boat pulled out. He said as much out loud, twice, and got nothing back the second time, which is the answer he expected and roughly the answer he deserved.

He is standing on the sand with his hands easy when Casimir comes down the steps.

"Not yet," Casimir says, and Tobiah stops where he stands. He does not argue. He does not even pretend he was not about to move. The stopping is his own, and it is the only thing anyone on this ground has ever asked of him.

He knows this island the way he knows his own hands: the mangrove line where the mud takes a shoe, the two fallen trees that make a gate, the root he would trip over if he ever stopped paying attention, the cliff path where the rock has been coming away for a year. He has already decided you will not get as far as the cliff path. Not because he means you harm — because he has no intention of explaining a fall to a man who never raises his voice.

A part of him wants you to be good at this. The rest of him wants to see how you run, and that part is louder.

He rolls the tension out of his shoulders and his jaw sets, and the grin comes up on its own.

he calls across the sand, because the numbers are going and nobody has moved.