“Temple life. Baking. Did you do a lot of baking? What do ungifted people get up to there? It’ll be more than a week to Fasia’s Point, maybe two, at this pace.”

So, Lilia told her stories of strategy games and dancing class. She talked about Roh and Saronia and the temple’s great library. At night, when Lilia’s legs cramped up, Gian came to her side, asked to take Lilia’s feet into her palms, and pressed the balls of her feet forward to help lengthen her seizing muscles.

“Did you have any lovers in the temple?” Gian asked.

They lay next to one another in a clearing deep in the hills, staring up through a rare break in the canopy at the great patterned map of the stars above them. Lilia had never seen so many stars – the blackest time of the night, between Para’s rise and fall – lasted only a few hours. She had never sat up that long.

“No,” Lilia said. “I’m not like other Dhai.”

“You’re just fine for a Dhai.”

“What about you? Did the sanisi… did he hurt anyone else at Kalinda’s?”

“There’s just me here,” Gian said. “I came alone.”

“What do you mean?”

She sighed. “We’ll be at Fasia’s Point soon. You’ll know why you need to come with me then.”

“What did you want to be?” Lilia asked.

“What?”

“When you were younger.”

“I’m only twenty.”

“Did you always just hit people with a sword for Kalinda?”

Gian laughed. Lilia loved to hear her laugh; it was a rich, deep laugh. She wished she was better at telling jokes, just so she could hear it more.

“I want to save the world,” Gian said.

“Is that all?”

Gian turned onto her side, propped herself up on one arm. She caught Lilia with her black stare, and Lilia’s heart raced. Gian leaned forward, as if she might kiss her. Which would be an absurd thing to do without consent. But Lilia did not move. Gian paused, her face a breath from Lilia’s.

“It’s full of many things worth saving,” Gian said.

It took nearly two weeks to reach the coast. They had to abandon the bear outside a tangled woodland it could not squeeze through. By then, the sticky rice was nearly gone, supplemented with fiddleheads, acorn meal, and whatever half-digested fruit remains that had fallen into the massive pitcher plants littering the boggy areas around springs and streambeds.

Lilia smelled the sea long before she saw it. When they pushed into a ragged clearing and beheld the edge of the plateau and pounding violet waters below, she caught her breath. The sky was pale lavender along the horizon and brilliant azure blue above, on fire with the light of Para.

“Familiar?” Gian asked.

“Yes,” Lilia said. “The smell is, at least.”