Elysse smiled at her, but there was doubt in her eyes. “I am glad I have you to keep my counsel,” she said.

“Always,” Wyllin promised. Then she sighed. “Very well. Go. Say your goodbye.”

Their moonstones were almost identical, perfect circles of pure white, except Elysse’s was larger than Wyllin’s. They had both had them fashioned into rings—Elysse wore hers on the middle finger of her right hand, Wyllin on the ring finger of her left. They chose pools that were next to each other, and Wyllin gazed down at the planet, at the familiar sprawling brown-green continent. Then they both jumped.

The scene dissolved and suddenly Wyllin was watching from afar as Elysse embraced a male with alabaster skin and hair the color of moss. She was whispering something to him and he shook his head, and then she was crying, and he talked softly in her ear. She nodded. He asked her something else and she nodded again. When he held her close against his chest, Wyllin saw a gleam she did not like in his fire-red eyes. She had always found the eyes of the people who inhabited this planet to be unnerving, but this was different.

“The others are in the forest,” Wyllin said, when Elysse left the male behind and joined her. “I spoke to Gailen through my moonstone while I was waiting for you. We have almost finished giving back what we took from this planet. It is time to go. Let’s join them and return with the rest, and no one will ever know why you and I came.”

She didn’t like that Elysse kept this male a secret. But her friend had always been so reserved in her feelings. At first Wyllin had just been happy to see Elysse in love. But something had changed in her over the course of the City’s time attached to this planet. Orial, it was called, and while some of its people were dangerous and fierce, there were others who were kind and curious. Not everyone on the planet was the same. Elysse had spent more and more time on its surface, and yet still insisted she did not want to stay behind when the City moved on. Wyllin sensed her friend was torn. She wanted both, her male and her City, and that was simply not possible.