The world was still unraveling; the tumult was growing; the cage meant to hold Fift safely in place had come undone. But that moment—when the little rag of beige and white fell and flowed and emerged standing from that red-and-blue tumult—

“I could burn this prison, and plant a garden!” Panaximandra roared.

“I don’t intend to lose another world,” Thavé said.

—it echoed in Fift’s mind.

Fift and Shria locked in an embrace, amidst the riot, Fift’s forehead pressed into the crook of Shria’s neck as Shria began to sob—

“Revolution,” Panaximandra said, “against this deadness—”

Leaning back from zir mangareme fluffy, Fift was laughing, eyes closed, and Shria was looking at zir fondly, vir curling fiery eyebrows raised, sipping vir drink—

Panaximandra: “—this confinement—”

Streaks of white fog, rough silver bark glistening with dew; the redbird launched itself into the cold forest air. “Corpsemunching?” Fift said.

Umlish had seemed so frightening then. Fift’s nine-year-old heart had been racing when ze said that.

Shria giggled. Vir thin lavender face was smudged with bark and dirt. “That’s good! What’s that from? Yes, call me a ‘corpsemunching sisterloser,’ Umlish—”

Panaximandra: “—means feeling alive—”

“When a culture like yours falls,” Thavé said, “it falls hard. You need to start loosening—”

Shria, sixteen, slowed to a stop an arm’s length from the crowd of anonybodies, and looked, uneasily, back at Fift—

“—the stranglehold—”

—and Fift came forward—

“—of consensus.”

“It is time,” Pip said, “to be what you are, Fift.”

—and took vir hand.

Four-year-old Shria, bouncing up, squealing with glee—

“They have mangareme fluffies,” Shria said, and grinned, and took Fift’s hand. “Come on.”

The display went blank.

Chapter 16

16

Fift blinked. “That’s . . . that’s amazing.”

“It’s just a clip-opera, it’s nothing that—” Dobroc said, then stopped as Fift took zir hand.

It felt as rough and smooth and callused and soft and leathery and cool and warm as ze had imagined.

After a moment, Fift exhaled.

In the clasp of their hands, there was something of the still center—an expectant but unhurried calm. You could let go, in that calm; you could arrive. “To find, in the turbulent escalating gyre which tears all forms apart, the stable point”—so begins the very first discourse of the first work of the first cycle, Brenem’s meditation, which Uriz chose to place there as the entrance gate to the Long Conversation.

A hand closed on Fift’s shoulder and ze stumbled to a halt. It was Pip’s hand, in the reactants’ hall—ze’d lost track of where ze was.