The gaps were closing, the strange matter extinguishing itself. The terrible, beautiful possibility of transformation evaporating, leaving only a shockwave of emanating debris . . .

“They’d find out. They’d guess,” Fift said, zir voice almost a whisper. Ze could barely say the words. “This is . . . too big a secret.”

Shria put vir hands in vir lap. Ve looked at them.

The words were like acid in Fift’s mouth. “With . . . with the world watching. With your family at stake . . .”

“I get it,” Shria said, quietly.

Orphaned, incriminated, astray, without a profession, without benefit of sibling relationships, Fift was like a piece of debris zirself, tumbling in the void.

Shria’s touch felt safe, but it wasn’t. Nowhere was safe.

Ze wanted to be five again, cuddled up in a bed with zir parents fussing over zir. But they were gone, too.

“I get it. You’re right,” Shria said. Ze took a deep breath, smiled a tight smile, jumped down from the table, and straightened vir clothes.

In what was no longer Iraxis apartment, Fift struggled into the Peaceables’ robes.

“Shria—”

“It’s fine, Fift. Look, are you okay? Are you ready to go out there? If you’re not up to it, I can tell Pom . . .”

Shria stood at the room’s cervix-like door and visibly forced vemself to meet Fift’s eyes. Vir skin was smooth as flower petals, vir bare shoulders powerful above vir opalescent dress. If only they could be telling jokes in the supper garden at Iraxis cohort again; if they could be watching unpurposed wild fireflies in a surface forest smelling of thunder. Anywhere but here, any time but now.

“Ellix,” Fift said, “I’m sorry for what I . . .” Ze glanced around the walls of the apartment, like the carapace left over when something had died. Squell’s cuddles, Frill and Smistria flirting and fighting, Arevio’s gentleness, Nupolo cupping vir drink solemnly in both hands, Grobbard listening to zir with quiet patience, Thurm’s voice rising to an excited pitch as ve explained something, Miskisk’s booming laugh, even Pip . . . even Pip just sitting by the window, watching the light. It had been full, and now it was empty. It was hollowed out, and Fift had done that. “I . . . I just . . .”

Ellix shrugged. “Kids make messes. It’s what they do.” Ze straightened the Peaceable’s robe over Fift’s shoulders, draped the hood over zir face. “Even with the feed down, this will only fool them for a few minutes. Let’s move.”

Shria rolled vir eyes. “Kumru, Fift, you look like you just swallowed a trashrat and it’s wiggling on the way down. I’m fine. I’ll get over it.” Ve crossed back to the table where Fift sat and took zir shoulders in a firm, friendly grip. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah, okay,” Fift said.