I say all this to say Laavi was happy with the Allunga. Ve was happy with the Allunga, but there was a seed of chaos in our yurt. We were all right, I don’t mean to say we weren’t. Halaavi came with me to the Allunga of vis own accord, and I was grateful for that. The love was still there, the easy intimacy always was there, but there was a sadness in vim that neither of us could ignore. Ve asked me many times what Sorcha was to me, what Shayat was to me, what they were together to me. I explained it as best I could, but Laavi could not quite understand. To vim, skin did not stretch that far. To vim, the only way it made sense was if I split myself apart, shredded my skin to ribbons, and handed out the bloody pieces. It nagged at vim, and it nagged at me that I could give vim no comfort, but Laavi was Yavinaha, and Laavi had long ago perfected a submission to the present moment, and Laavi did not want to prematurely confront something with that much chaos wound up inside it. And I, I was a coward. There is no other word for it, no better way to explain it. I knew what would happen, and I drank Laavi in anyway, held vim close, shared a bed and a life like the days weren’t limited. There were nights as we traveled farther and farther south when I listened to vim sleep and thought of Liro. I thought of how Liro took Dirva in, coaxed him back to the living, and I remembered that desperate pain he carried across borders when Dirva left. At the time I’d thought Dirva heartless, callous. I knew I’d never do that to anyone. But night after night I lay there with Laavi, doing it to vim.

* * *

The Allunga took us far south, but not far enough. Southways, Sorcha had written. For him, for Shayat and myself, the only thing that could mean was all the way south, to the southern coasts and beyond to the Pirate Isles. The Allunga was a large enough clan to be brave, but certainly too large to be stupid. They took us south, and lingered long enough to pass me off to the Kivvni before they turned north to safer plains again. The Kivvni were a small, spare clan, hard-eyed and haunted, a group of people who seemed to only find harmony in grave suspicion. They didn’t want to meet with the Allunga at first. They were a small clan pushed farther and farther south because the larger clans needed more pasture for their larger herds. It wasn’t malevolent or forced, but the Kivvni had learned to be as wary of other Droma as they were of everyone else.