He found a jagged formation, something like the looming nest on a smaller scale, fashioned by wind and rain rather than tem’ondri claws. He grasped the rock and began to climb, tentative at first, but with more vigour when he realised there was easy purchase, until he was ripping at handholds, tearing flesh from his fingertips, scrabbling with his feet when they slipped. Outcrops sometimes housed smaller beasts, poisonous creatures that bit and stung, but he kept going, arms and legs moving in unison, higher until he was level with the lights of the nest, and still he kept going until he could climb no further. He pulled himself onto a section of the rock large enough to perch upon, if not sit. He half crouched and gazed at the land, the light of the glowing sky. He rested his cheek against rock.

Ula remembered his son running at full speed to greet the gathered tem’ondri. The worry in his wife’s eyes. The glittering scales of the mita dragon as it writhed. He felt the mi’owa key in his pocket, firm against his thigh, cool where the flesh was hot.

The sun rose. He climbed from the rock, backwards until he felt warm ground against the soles of his feet. Ula watched the growing dawn until the sun prickled his cheeks and then returned to the nest, to Fellucia.

CONTROL

He woke up to hear some weird noise, a scratching close in his ear that made him jerk like a sleeping dog, eyes open, seeing nothing. He stared into darkness. He rolled over and so did Michael, curling into a ball as he did it. That’s when Danny guessed what had happened: his brother had pushed a finger into his ear, probably in his sleep. Michael always did stuff like that. Lashing out and hitting Danny in the face, giggling at something funny in his dreams, sometimes even talking out loud. That morning he didn’t wake up, course not, just lay on his side soft-snoring, the soles of his tiny feet pressed flat against Danny’s thighs, water-bottle warm. That was nice. Danny kept still and straight, breathing shallow air through his nose, blinking at fading night. The birds were tweeting quiet half-songs, sleepy beginnings. The smell of Michael’s nappy was regular as the kitchen clock. A siren called blocks away then shut up, said nothing more, leaving a faint murmur of dawn.