At 04:37 the wall cools before the air does. The lichen wakes by fractions: first the rim, then the pale cups, then the deep green seam where yesterday's dust loosened in the dark.
It has no single mouth. It drinks everywhere. Fog lays a hand on it and the hand disappears, not stolen, only accepted into thousands of quiet rooms. For three minutes the whole colony is bright enough to look deliberate.
A truck passes. Heat climbs out of the road. The outer skin tightens, color leaving like a tide under stone. Nothing dramatic happens. This is the genius of the thing: to survive without performing survival.
By noon the report is simple. Shade is shelter. Roughness is architecture. A life can be almost flat and still make a map of every mercy that touched it.