I must confess I was also intrigued by Abira. She was unlike anyone I’d ever met. She struck me as someone totally unfettered, a person with no comprehension of law. That she was Dirva’s sister fascinated me. They had been raised together yet were so different. Part of me had always wanted to be wild and lawless, and that part of me had been handily seduced by Abira. I struck the match. Abira grinned and nudged me with her elbow. My heart pounded against my ribs. She elbowed me again, harder this time, and I sucked in a huge, billowing lungful of smoke. It was heavy smoke, dry smoke, which felt like it was strangling me from the inside. It sent me into a violent coughing fit. I doubled over, gripping the edge of the table for dear life. My eyes watered. I felt I was going to vomit any second. The pipe clattered to the floor.

Dirva rushed around the corner asking questions I couldn’t quite hear and couldn’t answer. He shoved Abira out of her chair and ordered her to get me a glass of water. He pulled me back into my seat and patted my back until the coughing subsided. I felt safer when he was next to me. Once I felt safe again, the situation struck me as impossibly absurd, and I began to laugh. It was a painful sort of laugh, one of those laughs where it seems like there’s a muscle trying to launch itself out of you, and the more you try to stop, the harder you seem to laugh. Dirva snatched the glass out of her hand. “Drink this, it’ll help,” he said. I took the glass in both hands and drank as much of the water as quickly as I could. The pipeherb had taken hold by then. I remember having some strange epiphany about the pureness of water, which I fully believed was quite profound. “Abbie, what the hell is wrong with you?” Dirva hissed.

“Hell, I didn’t know he was going for half the bowl,” she said.

Dirva plucked the empty glass out of my hands. “Ariah, are you all right?”

I let out a couple of weak-sounding coughs and nodded.

“He’s fine! Look at him, happy as a clam,” Abira said.

I grinned and gave Dirva’s sister a playful shove. She no longer seemed so threatening. “Did you bring drums? Did I see drums?”

Abira sat next to me. “Oh, sure. I’m a drummer.”

“Let’s play the drums.”

“Do you play?”

Dirva sighed. “No, he doesn’t play. Ariah, I think you should lie down.”

I let him lead me to my bed. Sometime soon after that, I fell asleep.