“Hello, smoothling,” Frill said. Ve raised vir head, and a swarm of bright cosmetic midges launched themselves from vir gilded eyebrows to dance in the air. “How is it going with your—ah, yes,” vir eyes shone. “Out in the wilds! Looks damp.” Ve grinned, goldenly.

“I never go to the surface,” Smistria said, leaning back—vir other body leaned forward, messily chewing a crusty broibel, which flaked into vir braided beard—“if I can avoid it. We had this nonsense when I was your age, too. It’s perverse up there. The sky can just dump water on you or electrify you any time it takes the notion. Horrible place.”

Under that dangerous sky, Umlish took a step closer to Shria. “I wonder if they might still be a bit overburdened? Your parents.”

Across the clearing, Perjes turned to Tomlest. You could tell they were sending messages. Tomlest’s eyes screwed up in amusement, and ve laughed.

Shria’s bodies both twitched. Vir empty pair of hands came up, almost to a guard position. But Tomlest didn’t look over.

“Oh you,” Frill said, swatting Smistria. “You have no sense of romance! The wild sky, our ancient origins!”

“Our ancient origins, for that matter, were under an entirely different—”

“Oh, don’t be such a pedant! I know as well as you—”

“Um,” Fift interrupted. “Um, I have a question.”

Perjes and Tomlest ran off into the woods. Shria exhaled a shaky breath. Ve turned abruptly and started to walk away. Not run; ve moved slowly, like an animal preserving its energy. Ve kept vir eyes focused on vir feet. Umlish, Puson, and Kimi trailed after vem.

“Yes, little stalwart?” Frill said. “What is it?”

“There’s this Vail in my class, Shria”—in the forest, still watching Shria, ze checked lookup—“um, Shria Qualia Fnax, of name registry Digger Chameleon 2?”

Smistria looked at Frill and bared vir teeth. “Oh yes. That one.”

“What, what happened? They took away vir sibling, but why—why did they wait so long? And why did vir parents have the baby if they didn’t—”

“Because they’re slackwits,” Smistria said.

Fift frowned.

Grobbard spread zir hands. “It was a gamble, Fift. Fnax cohort thought that once the baby was here, opinions would change.”

Shria trudged through the underbrush, crushing dawnflowers and gemmon underfoot. Ve reached the trail, a ragged strip of bare dirt traced by surface animals, and headed toward Fift.

“A slackwitted gamble,” Smistria said. “If people didn’t trust you to raise another child in the first place, why would they trust you after that behavior? Provoking a standoff with the Midwives? Letting your child just . . . hang about for three weeks—”

“Ungendered,” Frill added, shaking vir head, “not entered into lookup, not enrolled in a name registry, like—like a surface animal, or—”

“Or someone who doesn’t exist at all!” Smistria cried.

Grobbard sighed. “Yes. As if lingering still unborn, outside its Mother’s body.”