The sun rose to a sound as sweet and sharp as a sugared lemon. Light streaked across the valleys east of the Bowl in thick strokes of gold paint. The sea green and hay-yellow grass was flooded with heat. A barrage of butterflies shattered the light off their wings as they peppered themselves over a thatch of wildflowers. Keema could smell the perfume powder of their wings, the musky sweet nectar they drank from ecstatically colored pores, but he didn’t know that was what he smelled—that his nose had become so sensitive to such a small detail of the world. All he was aware of was that something
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