So much had happened since that first Glitch — the Glitch that had taken her father from her. Several times she had thought her life was finished — she'd never really believed she'd return to the Mantle, from the moment she boarded the "Flying Pig" in Parz's Harbor. Now, she realized, she was simply grateful to be alive; and that simple fact would never leave her, would inform her enjoyment of the rest of her time.

And yet...

And yet her experiences had changed her. Having seen so much — to have traveled further, done so much more than any human since the days of the Colonists themselves — would make it impossible for her to settle back into the cramped lifestyle of a City dweller — and still less of a Human Being.

Absently she folded her arms across her stomach, remembering her single moment of passion with Hork — when she had allowed her intense need for privacy to be overcome, when she thought her life was almost lost, deep in the underMantle. She had found a brief spark of human warmth there; and Hork was surely wiser than she had first realized. But still, she had seen into Hork's soul in the Ur-human chamber, and she had recoiled from what she had found — the anger, the desperation, the need to find something worth dying for.

Hork could not be a companion for her.

"I've changed, Adda," she said. "I..."

"No." He was shaking his head sadly, reading her face. "Not really. You were alone before all this — before we came here — and you're still alone, now. Aren't you?"

She sighed. A little harshly, she said, "If that's how I'm meant to be, then maybe I should accept it." She turned; beyond Parz's cloud of rubble she could see the ceiling fields of the hinterland: bare, scrubbed clean of their cultivation — and yet, in a way, renewed. "Maybe that's where I will go," she said.

He turned to see. "What, and become a farmer? Making pap-wheat for the masses? You?"

She grinned. "No. No, making a place of my own... a little island of order, in all of this emptiness."

Adda snorted with contempt, but the pressure of his fingers around hers increased, gently, warmly.

The pipers' calls were bright and harsh. From all around the cloud-City people were Waving into the Air, converging toward the Wheel at the heart of the cloud. Peering that way now, Dura could see the massive form of Hork — a colorful speck in his robes, his massive arms resting on the huge Wheel. She imagined she could already hear his voice as he recited the litany — the first legal Wheel-litany, a list of all those known to have died in the final Glitch, whether they were from Parz, the hinterland, the upflux, the Skin.

It was a litany intended to conciliate and heal.

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