Pale-Cheek met Bent-Toe beyond the huddle and shoved its head into the wounded parent's beak.
White-Nape arrived one step behind. It saw the blood along Bent-Toe's neck, struck the ice with an alarm call, and tried to force itself between parent and chick.
Bent-Toe held its ground.
The chick called. Its parent answered around a throat raw from the petrel's grip. White-Nape heard both identities and moved aside.
Pale-Cheek begged a second time.
Bent-Toe bent over the smaller body. Its throat swelled, worked, and gave back the fish it had carried from the sea.
Silver scales flashed once inside Pale-Cheek's mouth.
The chick swallowed so greedily that its feet walked backward. Bent-Toe followed, keeping its beak over the chick until the last softened piece passed between them.
White-Nape touched its beak to Bent-Toe's torn feathers. The wounded adult flinched but stayed over the chick. When Pale-Cheek called again, rounder from food, both parents answered. Their songs touched for one beat, then separated cleanly.
One fish made no dent in a hungry colony.
It changed everything for one family.
Jiang reached the rookery on Aylin's pull, shoulder burning beneath the sling. He watched Pale-Cheek press against Bent-Toe's breast while White-Nape examined the torn neck feathers with careful touches.
Hunger knotted inside him. Relief sat beside it, equally real and far less polite.
"You are staring at the chick's mouth," Aylin said.
Jiang looked at her banded forearm.
"I am staring at your blood. It is different."
Her ruined voice flattened the joke, but he appreciated the effort.
A shadow crossed Pale-Cheek.
White-Nape spread both flippers over the chick. Bent-Toe looked up.
The giant petrel circled beyond the huddle, keeping the wind under its wings. Jiang's bite had curled one foot close to its belly. The injury had taught it caution rather than mercy.
From above, the packed adults offered no clean place to grip. The loose edge offered chicks, tired parents, and Bent-Toe's uneven walk. One hurt foot kept the petrel higher while every weakness kept it interested.
It watched the chick edge.
Jiang wanted it driven off before Pale-Cheek's meal became the colony's next opening. His body offered no reach into the sky, so he watched where the petrel wanted to land.
Black-Crown saw it next. The adult moved between the sky and three young birds, chest low, beak tilted upward. Split-Beak drew Grey-Throat beneath one flipper and turned its split tip toward the same shadow.
None of them looked at Jiang.
Their defense began without him, as it should.
From beneath the far side of the huddle, a chick screamed.
Two adults turned. The sound came again from open snow, closer to the sea than any young bird should have stood.
Pale-Cheek lifted its head from Bent-Toe's breast.
Grey-Throat answered from safety too.
The fragment had mixed their calls into the colony's own noise. It placed one voice beyond Black-Crown, another behind Split-Beak, then let living parents tear openings through the chick line as they searched.
The petrel widened its circle.
Jiang aimed his bill at the torn silver on Aylin's shoulders, then traced a low line across the snow.
She followed the direction and shook her head. "The glare fooled it once."
He struck the ice, pointed at the bird's shadow, and dragged his beak toward the huddle edge.
"You want a landing line."
One tap answered her.
"With what remains of my road home."
Jiang held his body still.
Aylin's fingers tightened on the silver. The sheet had carried them across worlds, exposed the fragment, sheltered her from wind, and already lost strips to fire and frost. A narrower piece might never open anything again.
Her thumb found the last unburned center. It was broad enough to catch a memory and too damaged to promise a crossing. Tearing it would leave her a weapon, a wrap, and no comforting lie about repairing the road later.
Above them, the petrel turned toward a chick wandering from the huddle.
Aylin tore the sheet down its burned seam.
"I am beginning to resent birds," she rasped.
Jiang pushed out of the sling.
His left foot folded at once. He caught himself on breast and right foot, then slid low across the packed snow. Standing would have made him larger. Belly travel kept his black back below the adults and let him move under spread flippers without adding another tall threat among the chicks.
Aylin ran the silver strip beside him.
Cool essence darkened its reflection until it held the color of open water. She laid the false lead along the colony's empty edge, away from every chick, and rippled the metal with both hands.
The petrel saw a moving surface and banked.
Its shadow left the wandering chick.
Jiang reached the small bird and struck the snow beside its foot. The chick pecked his beak. He shoved again with his breast, turning its body toward Black-Crown.
The adult met them halfway.
Black-Crown swept the chick behind one flipper and drove its beak at Jiang's face. He rolled aside, accepting the warning as the price of delivery.
A call rose under his belly.
Grey-Throat's identity came through the ice while the real chick remained under Split-Beak. Another voice followed, then Pale-Cheek's hungry cry.
The false lead in Aylin's silver trembled with every recording.
"It is using the sheet," she said.
Black-green frost raced along the strip toward the huddle.
Aylin seized one end. Pulling it away would drag the copied calls across the chick line. Leaving it would give the fragment a bright road through them.
Jiang bit the silver near the middle.
"That will cut your mouth."
He set his beak harder.
Aylin understood. She planted one boot on the far end and pulled the near end upward.
The metal folded where Jiang held it. Frost met frost inside the crease, severing the reflected path without carrying it farther.
The petrel abandoned its false water.
It dropped toward the chicks.
Black-Crown pushed its group inward. Split-Beak did the same from the other side. Between them, a smaller chick stood fixed over the copied voice beneath its feet.
Bent-Toe left Pale-Cheek's side.
White-Nape called after it. Bent-Toe crossed the opening on its good foot, reached the stranded chick, and struck it sideways with one flipper.
The chick tumbled under Black-Crown.
The petrel hit Bent-Toe.
Its bill caught the same torn side of the neck. Bent-Toe's body slammed onto the ice, bad foot twisting beneath it. Broad wings covered both birds and beat snow into Jiang's face.
White-Nape started after its mate. Pale-Cheek followed against its legs, dragging the adult back toward the chick. White-Nape turned across the smaller body and stayed there while Bent-Toe fought alone.
Split-Beak charged from the huddle.
Jiang slid from the opposite side. The petrel faced Split-Beak's raised beak, leaving its injured foot near Jiang.
Tactical Strike offered no mark this time. The foot kept moving. Jiang attacked anyway.
He drove his beak into the brown feathers above the ankle. Split-Beak struck the petrel below one eye. Bent-Toe twisted beneath them, pulling skin and feathers through the hooked bill.
The petrel released its grip.
One wing struck Jiang across the back. His belly left the ice, sling twisting behind him, before he landed on his open shoulder.
Split-Beak caught a mouthful of tail feathers and tore them free.
The petrel climbed through the blows. Brown feathers spun onto the snow while it dragged the bitten foot close and circled beyond beak reach.
Bent-Toe remained on its side.
White-Nape reached the wounded adult first. Pale-Cheek pressed in after it, calling with the sharp change Jiang had heard whenever fear replaced hunger.
Bent-Toe lifted its head.
Blood ran between the yellow neck feathers. The adult drew one full breath and answered its chick. Both acoustic sources held, though the second frayed near the end.
Black-green frost formed beneath Bent-Toe's breast.
The fragment repeated the parent's opening beat while the living call was still leaving its beak.
Pale-Cheek turned toward the ice.
Bent-Toe called again, shorter now. The fragment took that ending too and carried the complete identity toward the sea.
Above them, the petrel narrowed into another dive.
Beside Pale-Cheek, Bent-Toe spent another ragged breath on a call.
From beneath the chick, its stolen voice answered first.