Lina looked out over a long spill of water dropping through stepped basins toward the lower channel. “I knew the not-looking part.”

Elias said, “That isn’t an answer.”

“It is here.” She glanced at him, then at the path ahead, where a group of residents stood at a rail watching the water as if it were a show. “We do not keep the hard names. They slide away.”

He wanted to stop walking. He wanted to turn her toward him and insist on direct speech, on sequence, on cause. Instead he kept moving because she was still moving, and because every sharp question so far had made her fold inward, as if his need itself was a kind of threat.

The park changed as they went. The sheltered gardens thinned. The air picked up a salt edge. Stone here had been worn smooth long before the current age had dressed it in pleasant lines. Old flood barriers rose from the ground like broken walls cut flat on top and turned into walking paths. Between them, fast water rushed in engineered channels, drawn from somewhere inland and sent toward the drowned coast beyond the domes. The sound filled the space under every conversation.

Lina pointed to a strip of bright red growth clinging to a damp wall. “That was blue yesterday.”

Elias glanced at the red growth on the wall. “Was it?”

She nodded. “After rain, it changes.”

Elias looked. She was right. The red was strongest where the runoff hit. Out of habit, he filed the fact away and hated himself for it. She was trying to share the world with him in the only way she knew.