Koro blinked at me in surprise but gestured for me to follow vim. Ve led Halaavi and I to vis yurt. Strings of painted beads hung on the door and clacked when ve let us in. Ve left the door open for light, but it was cool in the yurt. Koro rifled through first one bag, then another, before ve found what ve was looking for. Ve pulled out a folded slip of paper. The Droma, who have no written language beside what I stole and transliterated into Semadran characters, have little use for paper. Whatever they want to set down for future generations is woven in a lefta, knotted in a door string, or embroidered on the skins of a yurt. They depict, they don’t write—and they certainly don’t depict with something as flimsy as paper. Koro held the paper in vis hands and looked over at me. “We were far west when we got this. It was very strange. We were far enough west that we could smell the settler’s air. That drought two or three walkings back, did you Avolayla feel it? Yes? That’s the one that pushed us west. We followed the Vanna River, which was narrow as a grass snake, because we were afraid that our fall pasture was dead and dry. We have a big herd, you know, we need a lot of pasture. And the westlands, there is much pasture there. We fled the famine into slavers’ lands.” Koro frowned and turned the paper in vis hands. “Anyway, there was a day a solitary settler rode out to us. The settler didn’t know the land, didn’t see us close in until it was too late. We roped vis horse and brought it down. The settler ran. That settler could run like a scout, even in settler clothes, even in high, dry grass. The settler ran, and the settler spoke Droma. Not much; not well. Just a string of words, but not words a slaver would know. Triloshilai, fliyya.” Shared skin, friend. “I felt it before the others. I was out running, training some of the young ones. I felt how the settler wanted to communicate. I was the one who approached vim. I sang a walking song, and the settler sang back. Not a walking song, not a Droma song, but ve sang back.”