Ze shouldn’t have split up after arriving in the forest. Ze was here in one body gathering sticks; in another, ze was over past the ridge, dragging a large log back to the campsite. Ze would have to drop all the sticks if ze wanted to sort through them.

Ze didn’t like being together in the same place. Zir parents were still sending zir to somatic integration experts.

Umlish had found out about the experts at one point. Umlish had written a poem about it.

Umlish could be merciless.

Fift shouldn’t have muted all zir automated agents, which would have warned zir about the lichen. But the agents distracted zir: from the tall trunks of trees, some of them as thick around as elevator shafts, others thin as a child’s wrist; from the crunch and crackle of moss and leaves underfoot; from the roiling pale-green clouds in the roofless emptiness above zir.

“Your parents should have made sure you had the appropriate agents for a trip to the surface,” Umlish said. “They do seem very distracted, don’t they?”

{Why did the Midwives take Shria’s younger sibling away?} Fift asked zir agents.

Shria dropped the stick ve’d just picked up, and stood up in both bodies. Ve clutched vir pile of kindling. Ve was quivering, vir faces pale. Ve looked around.

{In cases where there is insufficient consensus among neighbors and the parent-monitoring reactants of Fullbelly in favor of an additional child}, Fift’s social context agent explained, {sometimes the Midwives refuse to gender the child unless the birthing cohort yields custody. Either another cohort is found, or the Midwives adopt the child into their order.}

There were a couple of other Vails—Perjes and Tomlest—across the clearing. They looked amused, and unsympathetic. Shria glared at them.

Fift could tell Shria was yearning for the other Vails to get involved, to say something, even to laugh out loud at what Umlish was saying. Them, ve could fight.

{But they didn’t take vir sibling away the first day.} Fift sent zir agents. {Wasn’t it . . . three weeks?}

{You are correct.} the social context agent said. {There was a period of negotiation regarding the child’s status.}

Shria would get in trouble for another unauthorized fight—there had already been two scuffles on this trip, and ve had been warned.

At home, in zir third body, Fift rolled over. Ze hadn’t really been sleeping anyway, just wallowing under the blankets, zir eyes closed, zir attention on the surface. The house feed showed Fathers Frill and Grobbard and Smistria in the breakfast room. Fift rolled out of bed, scratched zir feet, and went downstairs.

Zir Fathers looked up as ze came in.