Trey knew exactly where to find Sonda.

Her family cave was dark, but that did not mean that she was absent. Her father was a miner and her mother worked in one of the food caves along the main street. Sonda herself was training to become a topside runner, the small group of mining folk who spent their lives traveling back and forth from the home-cave to the surface to trade fledge for essential supplies. Runners were those most likely to try to make their way topside, and few grew old in the caves. Sometimes Trey mourned Sonda’s leaving already.

For a moment images blurred and fought in his mind. He drew back slightly, becoming more aware of his own body back in the dust bath, the sound of his mother’s snoring, and as he opened his eyes he saw the weak firelight still prancing across the rock ceiling. He could even taste fledge in his mouth, instead of the cavern’s fresh open air. Or perhaps it was guilt.

He closed his eyes again and concentrated, moving himself back to Sonda’s cave, hearing her soft song from within, smelling the rich tang of the river sweeping past way below his feet. He remained there for a while, a strong consciousness cast across the space of the cavern, the tinge of guilt he felt at spying more than counteracted by what he was beginning to feel for Sonda. This journey was innocent, the pure necessity of a burgeoning first love. He was not trying to see the future, he was not spying on the girl as she changed or bathed or slept. He hardly even probed inside the house.

And then her singing stopped, and Trey knew that she was dreaming a fledge dream. If only she would ride the dream and come to meet him out here.

He moved away and slipped down one of the many shafts that led to the river. Like the tunnel he traveled every day to the fledge face, this river held history and the future in its grasp. The miners buried their dead here, dropping them into the water and letting them ride the river forever. And they drew water from here as well, catching the future before it hurtled past and lost itself deep beneath the mountains. The future was upriver, the past downriver, and this one moment beneath Trey was the most important of all. The river was all noise, a mind-shattering roar which, broken down, could be saying anything. He cast his consciousness down, tempted to plunge in and see where the waters would take him. Many had done so, and some came back mad.