“Do? Oh, hardly anything,” Miolasia said. “Certainly nothing you wouldn’t be eager to do anyway, given your loyal resolution to aid in the healing of our world.”

Fift splashed into the water. Its heavy warmth swallowed zir limbs, and zir white shift ballooned beneath zir. The foam structure loomed dimly ahead in the fog. Fift waded towards it. Pockets of boiling water scurried out of zir way.

“You will simply have to explain to the public,” Miolasia said, “your regrets, which you have already expressed here, and Fift will have to express zir regrets . . .”

“Fift doesn’t have to go,” Squell whispered, “if ze doesn’t want to.”

“Oh, blistering voids, Squell,” Frill barked. “Of course ze does!”

“Fift will have to explain a little about what happened,” Miolasia said, “to cast the correct light on things.”

Fift told the foam structure to flatten and rolled awkwardly onto it. The steam was so thick ze could barely breathe. Ze lay on zir back and told the foam to inflate. Ze rose toward a blur of light, the central exhaust column.

Over the house feed, the bathing room was an opaque wall of white.

“Or do you have some other plan? Do tell us, Squell,” Frill said.

“Dissolution. And an Idyll,” Squell whispered.

“Oh, yes,” Frill said. “Since there’s plenty of room just now, and we’re such desirable associates, we’ll just arrange for spacious accommodations for Fift at an Idyll—”

To the Pole, forever. Ze’d never see Shria or Dobroc again. Or at least not for years and years . . . maybe a century. Who would Fift even be, after a century of cold?

Above zir, the blur of light grew closer.

“Fift will disown the impropriety of those clip-ops, for instance,” Miolasia said.

“The important thing there,” Umlum said, “will be to push those tantalizingly shadowy intimations into the light of day and disavow them as the disgustingly false rumors that they are.”

“And if the Idylls just happen to be full, Squelly?” Frill spread vir arms wide. “Or overrun by rioters and unlicensed—”

“Stop it!” Squell cried, vir eyes filling with tears.

“It’s okay, Father Squell, Father Frill . . . I’ll go . . .” Fift said, but no one in the breakfast room was listening.

“Miskisk’s not going to come,” Nupolo said, fingering the cold remains of a broibel.

“Miskisk is irrelevant,” Grobbard said, rounding the table, heading for the kitchen, “and Thurm will have to decide where ve stands.”

Ze would lose them. Dobroc, the weird brilliant staidkid with the voice like a warm, thundering ocean: ze’d just met zir, and now they’d never sit together again and talk about Mundarn and the willow wind, now ze’d never touch the labyrinth of Dobroc’s skin again. And Shria . . .

If ze ever did see Shria again, would Shria . . . would Shria . . .