‘For every cry, there follows a silence. For every laugh, there is weeping. Yes, yes, Hanako.’ Raest waved a long-fingered, almost skeletal hand. ‘But alas, what you describe to me is the mind’s game with itself, haunted by the need to make sense of senseless things. To be certain, there are vague rules at work, which observation can detect. Crumbling mountains and flooding rivers and the like. The grinding wheel of the stars at night. But such predictability can deceive, Hanako. Worse, it can lead to complacency. Better to heed the unlikely, and assemble such rules only after disaster’s dust settles. After all, the heart of that need is comfort.’

Hanako glanced away, and then scowled down into the flames of the fire. ‘You mock our beliefs.’

‘But gently, I assure you.’

‘As you would a child, you mean.’

‘Such is our curse,’ Raest replied. ‘In fact,’ he added, ‘one cannot help but detest the Jaghut in general. Permit me, if you will, to explain.’

Hanako pushed more of the branch into the fire. He considered the Jaghut’s offer. There would indeed be value in learning more of these strange people. After a moment, he nodded. ‘Very well.’

Raest reached out to collect a stick, one end of which he thrust into the embers. ‘Some dread failure overtook us, one in which the intellect, knowing only itself, rose to dominate our proud selves, and by the seduction of language then set about denigrating all that was not rational, all that hovered tantalizingly out of reach, beyond its power to comprehend, much less explain away. Although it works hard at doing precisely that: explaining away, dismissing, impugning, mocking. The cynical eye is cast, and the cleverness of the mind ascends to assume the pose of the haughty. What results, sadly, is an intellect that won’t be denied its own sense of superiority.’ He held up the stick with which he had been stirring the embers, studied the small flames flickering from its blackened tip. ‘Is there anything more obnoxious than that?’

Hanako found himself matching Raest’s examination of the small tongues of fire writhing about the stick’s tip.