The wind had dropped to nothing by mid-afternoon, leaving the yard heat-heavy and the grass along the south fence already curling at the edges. Alex kept one hand on the visitor’s upper arm, guiding it across the packed dirt between the barn and the low concrete lip of the root cellar. The being moved with the same deliberate pace it had shown since the pasture, its limbs longer than they first appeared, joints shifting in small adjustments that suggested it was still learning the weight of Saskatchewan gravity. Riley walked on the other side, their shoulder brushing Alex’s with each step, the three of them forming a tight line that would look, to any distant eye, like two ranchers moving an awkward piece of equipment.

“Five more yards,” Alex said, voice low. The words were meant for Riley as much as for the visitor. The visitor’s head turned slightly at the sound, its face still mostly featureless except for the dark wells of its eyes. No mouth yet. No expression. Only the faint iridescence along its throat that had appeared sometime after the radio in the kitchen had gone to static the night before.

Riley’s fingers tightened on the visitor’s other forearm. “The hatch is open. I left the tarp weighted.”

Alex nodded once. The plan had been simple enough an hour earlier: get the visitor underground, lock the padlock, then deal with whatever came next. The cruiser’s dust plume had not yet been visible on the access road. Neighbours had not yet arrived.

A diesel engine coughed at the main gate, two hundred metres away. Then another. Voices carried across the baked yard, sharp and familiar.

“Alex!” The shout belonged to Walt Friesen from the quarter-section east. “You got company out here. Lights were on your south line again last night.”

Alex stopped. The visitor stopped with him, perfectly balanced, as if it had never needed momentum. Riley’s breath hitched once, then steadied. Alex met their eyes over the visitor’s shoulder.

“Take it down,” Alex said. “I’ll handle the gate.”

Riley’s mouth tightened, but they did not argue. Their hand slid from the visitor’s forearm to its wrist, a brief pressure that looked like nothing more than steadying a load. Alex watched the touch land, felt the small charge of it even at a distance, then turned and walked toward the voices without looking back.

Walt and two others from the Treaty 4 grazing co-op stood at the closed pipe gate, their trucks angled across the approach road so no one could pass without asking. Behind them, a third vehicle idled, windows down. The RCMP cruiser’s light bar caught the sun in a hard white flash. The dust it had raised still hung in the air, shimmering.

Walt did not wait for Alex to reach the gate. “We seen the same thing three nights running. Not pipeline drones this time. Higher. Brighter. You running unregistered equipment again?”

Alex kept their stride even, boots raising thin puffs of dust. “Irrigation drone took a tumble in the south pasture yesterday. Gyro went. I’ve been running tests after dark to keep the power draw off the grid. Same lights you’re seeing.”

One of the other men, older, spat to the side. “Pipeline survey outfit told us last week they got satellite passes scheduled over the old riverbed. Coordinates match the Treaty land. You know anything about that?”

Alex reached the gate and rested both hands on the top rail. The metal was hot enough to sting. “I know they keep flying their toys without knocking. Same as always. If your lights are coming from my quarter, it’s my broken drone and nothing else.”

The RCMP officer, a woman in short sleeves whose name tag read Pelletier, stepped out of the cruiser. She carried a tablet, already open. “Mr. Kinew, we’ve had three separate reports of anomalous aerial activity centred on this section. Satellite data shows repeated low-orbit signatures over the next forty-eight hours. Coordinates align with Treaty 4 boundaries. You understand why that raises questions.”

Alex felt the words land like a second set of eyes on the yard. Treaty 4. The same phrase the visitor had traced in the dirt with one finger the first night, though it had not spoken. Alex kept their face neutral. “I understand the pipeline company wants an excuse to push their right-of-way through the old pasture. They’ve tried it twice already. If satellites are picking up my drone, that’s on me. I’ll ground it.”

Pelletier’s gaze moved past Alex toward the house and barn. “Mind if we take a look at the equipment? Save everyone a formal visit.”

Riley’s voice came from behind Alex before they could answer. “Drone’s in pieces in the shop. We were just heading down to the cellar for the spare controller.” They had come up quietly, hands empty now, the visitor presumably below. Alex did not turn. The hand brush Riley had given the visitor’s forearm before descending replayed in Alex’s mind, the way the visitor’s skin had warmed under the touch, adapting in small ripples.

Pelletier studied Riley for a moment. “You’re Riley Desjarlais. Nonbinary designation on the land title, correct?”

Riley’s shoulders squared, but their voice stayed level. “That’s the one on the papers. Same as it’s been since we registered the place.”

The neighbours shifted. Walt looked away first. The tension that always sat between pipeline disputes and registry questions thickened in the heat. Alex spoke into it. “We’re not hiding anything. Lights were ours. If the satellite people are triangulating Treaty coordinates, maybe ask them why their birds keep drifting over the same quarter the pipeline wants to bury.”

Pelletier tapped the tablet. “The anomalies aren’t drifting. They’re stationary for minutes at a time. Then they pulse. Same pattern three nights. Your drone do that?”

Alex thought of the visitor’s throat iridescence, the way it had matched the radio static in rhythm. “It’s been glitching. I’ll pull the logs.”

The officer looked at the house again, then at the low rise of the cellar entrance barely visible behind the barn. “We’ll need to log the visit. If the activity continues, federal follow-up is likely. Land-use violations stack fast when satellites are involved.”

One of the neighbours muttered something about sovereignty and old claims. Alex let it pass. The word had been in the air since the visitor arrived, unspoken until now. Riley moved closer to the gate rail, their arm brushing Alex’s again, the contact brief and deliberate.

“We’ll cooperate,” Riley said. “Just let us finish what we were doing before the light changes.”

Pelletier nodded once, already turning back to the cruiser. “Expect a call tomorrow. Keep the drone on the ground until then.”

Engines started. The neighbours’ trucks reversed first, raising more dust that caught the lowering sun. The cruiser followed, its plume thinner but still visible through the heat shimmer on the access road. Alex and Riley stayed at the gate until the last vehicle rounded the bend and the sound faded to the usual windless quiet.

Only then did Alex speak. “Is it down?”

“Locked,” Riley answered. “Padlock clicked clean. It didn’t resist.”

They walked back together, boots crunching the same path. The cellar hatch sat flush with the ground behind the barn, the tarp pulled aside. Alex lifted it. Cool air rose, carrying the smell of potatoes gone soft and damp clay that never quite dried even in the worst drought. The steps were cut earth, reinforced with old railway ties. Riley went first.

At the bottom, the single bulb Alex had installed years ago threw a weak yellow circle. The visitor stood against the far wall, its skin already shifting. Where it had been the pale tone of late-day prairie light, it now pulled the colour of the earthen walls, the darker patches of clay and the dull brown of stored roots. The adaptation was slow, visible in the way the surface tension changed under the bulb. Riley stepped close, their hand lifting to brush the visitor’s adapted forearm once more, a silent line of contact that held no demand, only the weight of shared breath in a closed space.

Alex closed the hatch. The metallic click of the padlock echoed down the steps. They descended, the air cooling their skin by degrees. The visitor’s eyes tracked them. No mouth still, but the throat iridescence had deepened to match the gloom.

Riley spoke first, voice low. “They said satellite anomalies. Treaty 4 coordinates. It’s already being tracked.”

Alex nodded. The realisation settled like another layer of clay. Whatever had brought the visitor here had left a signature the pipeline surveyors and their federal partners could read. The same coordinates that protected the ranch from easy seizure now marked the visitor’s position. The reckoning Alex had felt since the south pasture figure first appeared sharpened into something colder: desire for the being’s presence tangled with the knowledge that its arrival had already compromised the land’s fragile sovereignty.

They stood in the dim circle, listening. The retreating engines were gone, replaced by the faint settling of earth above them. Riley’s hand remained on the visitor’s forearm, the touch steady. Alex watched the skin continue its slow mirror of the cellar walls, the iridescence fading into the same damp clay tones.

The visitor’s mouth formed at last, a careful opening in the lower face. The syllable that emerged was shaped with effort, the first sound it had made.

“Sovereignty.”

The word hung in the cool air between them, neither promise nor threat, only the shape of an unmade claim. Alex felt Riley’s free hand find theirs in the dark, the three points of contact holding against the weight of what had already begun to close in from above.