She was in an open cell with a perfect view of Mount Jamanathrus. In front of her was a low wall, about knee-height on her. The cell was bare apart from a small wooden set of drawers in one corner and a crude wooden seat in the middle, on which a man in dark robes sat. The cell was shaped so as to maximise the Sound, the rear wall bowed and the corners only really there at ground level; above the floor, the walls curved in to meet each other, forming arches that met in a sort of shallow dome above.

The man in the dark robes half turned both body and head towards her. He looked like QiRia, though he appeared smaller, reduced; like something boiled down to its essence. His skin, visible on his face and hands and feet, had gone a dark red-brown, again like something undergoing a reduction in the bottom of a pan. He wore what looked like dark glasses. They had no glass or anything else transparent in them that she could detect; instead they were slatted, like half-open blinds. Tefwe wasn’t sure how to greet him so was leaving the choice to him; he had never been very forthcoming physically, even as a lover. If he approached her they might hug, but it was not something she expected.

She saw his mouth move but she could hear nothing over the vast, enveloping Sound. It filled the cell like a god bellowing in her ear.

She shook her head, though he wasn’t really looking at her. He reached to one side, picked up a cord lying on the floor and pulled it. The cell started to go dark as some sort of covering began rolling down over the single open window. The noise reduced a little. Then he got up and went to the side of the window, swinging in a heavy, wooden, two-part shutter. Tefwe did the same at the other side. The cell was almost completely dark now; her eyes were working mostly on infra-red. The Sound was reduced less than the light. It was still there, especially the deepest, most resonant and longest notes, but when QiRia put a thick wooden bolt across between the two shutters to secure them, she heard the clunk it made. It was, she realised, the first thing she’d heard that wasn’t the Sound in quite a long time. Her ears relaxed a little.

QiRia had sat down in his crude-looking seat again. She sat by the low wall in front of him, under the shutters. At first she thought he wasn’t going to look at her, seemingly gazing over her head as though still staring out towards the mountain, then he lowered his head.