Emberwood please be quiet

When he responds to his question, it is with more tension in his voice— No, I'm from Redsand Canyon. He doesn't know it but Ico's fear is bleeding into him. It was an inescapable evolutionary trait. Surely if one man was scared to death, then the other had good reason to be. The skin on the back of his neck prickles with the heat of a gaze that isn't there.

Reasonably, this invisible enemy had nowhere to hide. It was hard to imagine that any kind of malevolence could exist in these woods, choked by sunbeams and dust like seeing an attic in your summertime house through rose-colored glasses. But Colin is shaken by the white-haired boy's anxiety all the same.

What happened, if I may ask? The inevitable question, the pinpoint on the horizon they were hurtling towards, it is said in a near-whisper.