Koro came and sat before me at the mouth of the tent. Both ve and I stared down at the paper in vis hands. “I was able to echo because of the song. ‘Have you come to take us?’ I asked. ‘No, I’ve come to find someone,’ ve said. ‘Who is out here in the grass for you to find?’ I asked vim. Ve went dark, troubled. I’m an echo, not an empath, but even I could feel it without amplification. ‘My roots,’ ve said. ‘My roots, ve is out here.’ The settler asked if I’d seen a silver elf, not a slaver. A person who ran east, a person with silver skin and white hair and green eyes. Thin, with large hands. Black birthmark on the ribs.”

My breath came shallow. Halaavi sat up tall, alert, like a rabbit a half-second before it bolts. “Did the settler you spoke to—did this person, did ve have red hair?” Koro nodded. “Dark skin?” Koro nodded again. “You say you found vim far west?”

Koro nodded once more. Ve handed me the slip of paper. “The settler said if I found this person, this green-eyed silver elf, to give vim this.” Koro tapped the paper, nodded to Halaavi, and left us there in the borrowed privacy of vis yurt.

My hands trembled as I unfolded the paper. The creases were worn through in places; the paper had gone from stiff and structured to soft and cloth-like. The note had been written in pencil, which the years had smudged and worn away. I held the letter up to the light.

I love you. We keep on look out. Me and Shayat going southways.

“What does it say?” Halaavi asked.

“My…my people are looking for me. Laavi, they’re looking for me.” I read and reread the note three or four times in quick succession. I stopped when tears slipped down onto the fragile paper. I hadn’t realized I was crying, but I was not ashamed by it. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I was not ashamed by it. I folded the paper and tucked it in my lefta. I looked over at Halaavi. Ve took my face in vis hands, careful, worried, asking a thousand questions with a glance. “With you I have a shared skin. I have a…a shared heart with two others. And, Laavi, they’re looking for me. All these years and they’re looking. Together! Together, they’re looking for me! I have to go south!”

Halaavi’s grip on me tightened. Vis mouth turned to a hard line. “South?”

I held onto vis forearms and nodded. “Yes. South. I have to go south.”

“How far south?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, shared heart?”

“Like triloshilai, but with sex.”

Laavi pulled back; vis hands dropped to my shoulders. “Three triloshilai?”