Here’s the thing about Big Toe: it’s small, and we’re all stacked close. The Keratinocytes live right above us in the Nail Plate, near enough that they’d heard every word.

(Their whole country would fit in a space you could cross in an afternoon: the Nail Plate and the Nail Bed, the two Matrix districts, the pale little Lunula, the Cuticle, and, down at the far edge, the Distal Groove. The Groove used to throw parties so good that people renamed it the Disco Groove. Nobody’s danced there in a long, long time.)

A sound comes down from above us. Slow. Grinding, almost, like something old and heavy turning over.

An Elder is speaking, a stem cell, they say, and I don’t think most Myocytes have ever heard a voice from Toenail before. Hers is deep and cracked and unhurried, exactly the pace you’d expect from a people who grow a hair’s breadth in a week.

“Young Myocyte.” Each word takes its time. “You are right.” She lets that settle. “We of Toenail are suffering, and it is only getting worse. It began so small we barely saw it. Then it spread. Now it is beyond us. We call it the Dreaded Onychomycosis, and it is taking our children.” A pause. “You Myocytes believe you are safe.” Here her eyes slide, deliberately, to our Priests and Elders, and rest there a beat too long. “You are not. It will come for you too, unless we face it together.”

Why the look at our Priests? Later. I file it.

“Ahem.”

Someone wants the floor, and right on cue, a scatter of Yummies sparkles down onto the Receptor Gates. Every Myocyte head swivels to me. Which is absurd, honestly. Nothing’s changed.

I stay put. Obviously.

It’s easier this time. The dread that felt like boiling lava an hour ago is barely soap bubbles popping at the bottom of my belly now. Same act, same crowd, minutes apart, and completely different from the inside. Strange. Worth thinking about, when there’s time. The fear was a phantom I’d let grow fat in the dark. If I’d known that years ago, I’d have said no years ago.

And what a picture we make: me, still as a post, while grown Myocytes leap and wail with their hands over their faces, watching perfectly good sparkles hit the ground uncollected. Some are spinning in circles. It would be funny if it weren’t so real, they’re not being silly, they’re in withdrawal, and it hurts.

But wait, did nobody else hear that? Not the Elder above us. The other voice, the one from beyond the Receptor Gates, where no voice has ever come from.

“Who are you?” I call, steadier than I feel. “Where do you come from?”

Nobody’s ever asked it. And the whole of Big Toe seems to lean in for the answer, even the spinning, wailing Myocytes go quiet. For as long as any of us can remember, we’ve swallowed the Yummies without a single thought for where they’re made. Now, one day off them and shaky with it, a different hunger is elbowing out the old one: we want to know.

We wait, holding our breath, for something to answer from the other side.