She’ll heal, thanks to your makers. As you will. And you’ll shed your makers wherever you pass. You constantly shed them into the sand, and beetles take them up… small use, those. But we can direct their structure. You shed them everywhere. You’ve begun what the ondat decreed. You are that change. You war with the Ila simply by breathing.

Dots built intricate structures, moved, shifted, built towers and strings and divided. Some beat like imprisoned birds, only fast, far, far faster. Some turned and shed pieces of themselves. It became incredibly sinister, the activity of those moving forms.

Big eaters eat little eaters and on they go, our makers, the Ila’s makers. They carry on warfare, and that war spreads wherever you go, and they change what they touch. If the Ila offers a man a cup of water, these nanoceles, these makers, go with that touch.

If a man goes back to his village and sleeps with his wife, so the makers will spread, and spread when she prepares a meal, or goes to the well, or kisses her child. All through the world, these makers renew themselves and become newer kinds.

And all these things the Ila does, because she contains her master makers. As you contain mine. And mine are essential. You have to live.

“That’s comforting to know.”

You have to live. Tain has become my enemy and her friend.

“Tain wouldn’t like being the Ila’s friend.”

Do you hear me? Repeat what I say.

“Repeat it, repeat it, repeat it. God, I have your makers in me! The Ila has her own. And you’re against my father and he’s for her for some reason. But I don’t understand. And I don’t give a damn.” He wanted the rapid dots to stop, slow down, cease their actions. But he would not betray a weakness. His father had taught him that among his first lessons, never betray a weakness, never admit to one.

Had reticence and deceit helped Tain? Was it a reasonable way for a man to live, who hoped to be loved?

“Hush,” Hati said, and wiped his brow. “He’s dreaming.”

The world became a treasure set way up on a shelf, something he could almost reach, and was not tall enough. His mother had used to put things above him, and frustrated his reach. He would sit below the counter, discontent with whatever was in his grasp. He remembered the tiles near the kitchen table. One was cracked. It sat not quite level. Out of such incredible fine detail a man built his life, his remembrances, his loves and his hostilities.