"Maybe I won't. Maybe somehow…" He made a face, unhappy. "I've done real things here, Kira. Face to face. I know I can do real things now. I really don't want to go home."

"Because of me."

"Not just because of you! A lot about you, but not just because of you. There is nothing about Earth that I would miss. But there is so much about here that I would miss. . ." He shrugged again. "I guess it would be easier for you if I left, though."

"Maybe I don't want it to be easier," Kira said.

"What do you want?" he asked, his voice so low she could barely hear.

"I wish I knew."

After a dinner that proved to be a lot of fun as Petr's family teased each other and Kira, they all settled for the night. Kira offered to help ride herd part of the night to ensure the horses didn't spook, but her offer was politely declined in a way that didn't outright say Kira probably didn't know enough about the task to do it right.

Petr's family had spread some blankets for Kira and Jason a little ways off from the rest, a respect for their privacy that Kira found both welcome and uncomfortable. She looked over at where Jason lay nearby, wishing that the easy conversations they had become accustomed to hadn't become hard to reclaim. "Jason, I need to work on some, um, drills that Mage Alera taught me last night, so I shouldn't talk much."

"Sure. I understand."

Did he? Kira looked up at the stars, then stared. There was a star up there that she didn't recognize, and it was moving much faster than even the twins. "Jason? Do you know what that is? That light that's moving so fast."

He followed her pointing arm. "It's a satellite. The ship deployed some. They were supposed to do a lot of general surveys, but they've probably been reprogrammed to look for me. Don't worry. That one's way too high to spot me when I'm around other people and all these horses."

"How high is it?"

"Probably a couple of hundred kilometers."

Kira stared at the fast moving star. "A kilometer is a thousand of your meters, right? So two hundred thousand meters, which would be about one hundred thousand lances. How can you get something that high?"

He looked at her. "Kira, it's just technology. Someday, you guys will get to the same place and be able to enter space again. Even if Earth never helps you at all, even if they quarantine you like some interstellar theme park to 'protect' you, you'll get there. Someday, you guys will send a ship back to Earth. And when you get there, do you know what you'll say?"

"What will we say?" Kira asked, smiling.