I was fascinated! Never had I seen Forerunners so different from our root stock: less than a meter and a half in height, broad across shoulders and midriff, thick of leg and short of arm, with long, curling fingers—five fingers only on each hand.

I subdued a familiar giddiness of discovery. My ancilla would have controlled that response with a subtle tickle in my brain stem. Now, I swallowed hard and drew myself back to full alertness, forcing a deliberate pinch of anxiety.

The wind ruffled my underlinings, as I had expected, making my own shape clear. To them I would appear strangely tall and slender, eyes large, skin pale. I doubted they would recognize our kinship by sight alone.

I held out my hands.

One thing we do know is that early Forerunners had a keen sense of smell and used it to determine kinship and other social relations.

The breeze now blew from behind. The male sniffed through wide nostrils, wider than my own. He stepped forward with a light sway, bandy-legged to a degree that reminded me of a first-form Warrior-Servant, around the corner of the dwelling, where he stopped and gestured to the female, who now also came forward.

“All is well, we have traveled far, and we are here to speak with you,” I said in the most ancient known Digon dialect. “We come from our old home to this new home. Are you well?”

The male waved his hand and made an ululating hoot. The female shunted sideways toward the male. Neither seemed afraid. The female canted her head, studying me. Her nostrils flared. It didn’t seem much of a stretch to interpret her reaction as intrigued but puzzled.

Throughout the dwellings, more hangings parted and other figures appeared—males, females, all of middle age or older. Obviously, they allowed themselves to age in natural time. No children were visible.

On all the dwellings, the walls had been stamped with unfamiliar symbols. But along the outward-facing wall of one dwelling, prominently displayed, ten large, circular emblems had been carved, repetitions of a mark so often found in Forerunner decorations that, in our daily lives, we hardly notice its presence: a circle around a treelike branching of angular veins.

Long ago, among Lifeworkers, I had heard it referred to as the Eld. Others—mostly Builders—called it the Tree-mark. Forerunners had associated it with the Mantle for as long as can be remembered, but its origin remained a mystery.

And yet here it was—confirming … what?

Memorializing what, precisely?

Again I felt a deep unease. To come all this distance and find brothers and sisters completely isolated, and in such circumstances … yet still exhibiting the most ubiquitous mark of Forerunner culture! Why should that surprise or chill me? But it did.

Something in me did not want to find the Eld, with all its associations and connections. Not here.