Zoe feels VERY similarly.

Why Do Humans Bite Themselves.

A Mystery.

So Many Unknowns.

She fears that her hand won't heal enough for her to use it in her routines anymore, but she is too dehydrated to cry.

Mordred has wanted to bite himself more often than he hasn't for the last few days and honestly Zoe is profoundly relatable.

"Let's not... focus on him too long," Oswald says after a moment. "I'm not sure he should be sure we've spotted him. Those are a lot of battle scars."

"I'm not sure they are battle scars - remember the, the thing the person asked about Anemone's hands when we were in LA -"

“What did they ask?”

Zoe starts to ask how someone could do something like that to themselves, then immediately swallows the question.

"She'd burned her hands, badly, and someone said 'it was a sacrifice, wasn't it, you can tell the truth here', or something like that anyway I didn't write it down until afterwards and a lot of things had happened and - sorry, I'm rambling -"

"All the more reason not to tip him off."

To Mordred: “It’s alright. Recent events have been—much. Thank you for the information.” To Oswald: “So, we should continue as planned?”

"I think so. Yes." Even though making the active decision to move is painful to him. Mentally and physically.

The man continues to openly watch them, remaining at a distance of more than a half-mile, until it becomes clear where they are going, at which point he leaves.

With her hand the way it is, Zoe is not capable of much more travel; they make camp and she rests for a day.

And with one thing and another they arrive at the Dallol dig site.

Dallol mountain is on a broad expanse of colorful salt flats periodically interrupted by mineral pillars and brine pools. The immediate landscape is similar to what they have seen so far as they’ve traveled around Kolluli and Iron Point.

The squat Dallol “mountain” rises only about 150 feet above the plain, a stretched oval roughly two miles by one mile. The southwest side of the mountain boasts impressive salt canyons caused by slow erosion over the centuries.

He's circled back around to hating pillars. Hate hate hate.

A bird lands promptly on Oswald's head.

He barely registers this bird. He is too busy resting in place. The bird can rest with him.

................

“Oswald,” Sister Araari says, “There is a bird on your head.”

"...Oh. So there is." He attempts to wave it away but if it pecks at his fingers he is just going to go back to ignoring it.

They find a new crater not far from the mountain, which overlaps where Acuna told them the dig site is.

Just outside the walls of the 1926 crater, there is a small cairn for the dead, with the following carving on it.

"For my lusts, no penance is enough." He does not have enough energy for tones of voice. "I denounce now all flesh and shut my mouth. I pass now into the dream-somethinged halls of... Oloth-Waag? That sounds bad?"

"I thought it was 'renounce' but. Yeah. Sounds bad."

"It doesn't sound like just a tomb. It sounds... suicidal."

"Dream-scourged?"