His conversations with Poppy and Fragrant were welcome diversions. Fragrant was small and dark, slightly built but energetic and strong-willed. The pelt of her scalp was dyed bright crimson, small brass rings were sewn into the rims of her ears and a pendant fashioned from pitted meteoritic iron hung at her breastbone. She was a skywatcher who had searched the dry deserts of the west coast for fallen meteorites, and had ground up a fragment of a stony meteorite and dissolved it in heart of wine and swallowed it, so that her blood and bones would be one with the sky. She searched for new comets and calculated their orbits and periodicities, and made studies of the wandering stars, most especially Firestar. She belonged to a small group who observed and catalogued the seasonal changes in His icecaps and other features, and believed that it was evidence of some form of life. She showed Pilgrim maps based on many hours of observations: networks of parallel and intersecting lines that sprawled across the deserts of the northern hemisphere and might be irrigation canals that transported meltwater from the icecap that crowned Firestar’s north pole to oases at His equator.

Fragrant explained that the canals might not be natural features, but could have been built by an intelligent species native to Firestar. Far older than the civilisation of the people and more advanced than even the ogres’ civilisation at its zenith, it might have dwindled and failed as Firestar grew ever drier and colder, leaving only the wreckage of its vast engineering works behind. Or perhaps some small remnant persisted, studying the Mother through huge telescopes, marvelling at Her wealth of water and life. They may have observed traces of our civilisation, Fragrant said. The smudges of cities and patches of agriculture. Angular patterns of highways and railways resembling the patterns of their canals. The wakes of ships crossing the oceans. Tantalised by these glimpses, eager to learn more, they might have made the crossing between worlds, visiting the Mother to better study Her people, just as they might have studied bear civilisation and the vast cities of ogres before them. In short, they might be the visitors Pilgrim hoped to find.