They were alone. Without Pom there, the closeness of their snuggle felt less like comfort, more like danger. Fift sat up and Shria shifted zir out of vir lap and onto the table so they sat side by side. Shria put vir hands back in vir lap, but leaned towards Fift, bouncing vir shoulder off zirs.

“So,” ve said. “Uh, listen.” Ve stilled, sat up straight. “About that note.”

“Note?” Fift asked.

“The one I sent. About . . . not wanting to see you.” Ve looked down, interleaving vir fingers like a penitent, twisting them one way and then the other, cracking vir knuckles. “Come on. You know which one.”

“Oh,” Fift said. “Yeah.” Ze looked down at Shria’s hands. Ze wanted to take them, to stop their nervous motion, to run zir fingers across vir smooth lavender skin. “It’s okay. Maybe you were right.”

“I was being a coward. Running away from you.”

Fift’s heart tightened, and ze sat up straighter. As if waking up shivering from a lazy dream of warmth, ze thought: Kumru, here we are again. Alone in Stiffwaddle Somatic Fashion’s exaggerated privacy. Ze swallowed. “What—what do you mean?”

Shria’s hands slowed, separated. One drifted towards Fift’s hand, almost reached for it. Then ve put them on vir knees, leaning forward. “I don’t . . . Nothing. Just that. I ran away when you needed me. We got into this mess together. I should have stuck by you.”

Fift felt zir heart accelerate, but zir agents were blunted here, so ze couldn’t say how many beats per minute. “How are things with . . . Vvonda?”

With your friends, ze’d meant to ask. With your comrades in trouble. But also, maybe: With you and the one you long for, the one who carries you along in vir wake.

As you carry me along in yours.

“Things with Vvonda aren’t great,” Shria said. Ve slumped forward, vir head in vir hands, vir elbows on vir knees. “It’s kind of . . . You know Stogma’s not talking to us? The Midwives got to vem. They offered vir a deal, said they’d back vir family if ve spoke against the rest of us.” Vir fingers dug into vir scalp. “Stogma took it.”

“Do you know what we’re being asked to do in Izist?” Fasmul said to Ellix, in the empty rooms that were once Iraxis apartment. Behind the Peaceables, two trashrats backed into the anteroom dragging one of Grobbard’s white shifts in their teeth: ze must have tagged it for disposal before squatright ceased. Once the crowds came, all the family’s abandoned possessions would be fair game. “Violently breaking up the Long Conversation is the least of it. Right, Uban?”

Uban scratched zir nose. “Well . . . it’s a bad business, I’ll give you that. But they shouldn’t be holding Long Conversations in front of Vails, should they?”