Shria’s voice through the dream, louder now. Then it subsided to silence, and the mist began to drift back in, blue and buzzing. In the dream-skywhale, Fift closed zir eyes, ignoring the staring faceless passengers.

“So what good did any of it do, then?” Father Frill said. “All your . . .” Ve pressed vir lips together. Ve put vir hands on vir hips. “All of it.”

“Maybe you should come see,” Fift said. “Come to the Sheltering. I—”

“Ha!” Frill said, throwing up vir hands. “I’ve been to enough proper Idylls without having to sever myself from the world’s feed to be there! And I have nothing to hide that I need to do where no one can see me!”

“Maybe you’d find,” Fift said, “that you could try out new things, different things, if—”

“Please! Kumru desire me protected from such nonsense. Look, Fift,” Frill said, “I know you’re sincere, and I’m sure with you there, nothing all that amiss is going on in Windswept Sheltering—well—nothing horrible, anyway. But what about the Redoubts? Panaximandra Shebol of name registry Central Glory 2 has set up—”

Grobbard and Ellix came in. “Does anyone else think,” Grobbard said, “that despite the regard in which we all hold Arevio and Cartassia and Burin, and the eagerness with which we look forward to their latest production, that the prohibition on eating anything else in the interim, is perhaps—”

Ellix nodded at Fift. “Hello, Fift.”

Lumlu got to vir feet, squinted, and looked up out of the playpit for reassurance. The two Mothers waved and clapped. All vir heads turned in unison as ve looked from one to the other.

Then Lumlu saw Fift. Ze wasn’t sure whether or not to smile. It had been five months since ze’d seen vem; ve had barely been talking then. Now ve was three-bodied—three chunky little bodies, naked and covered in curly golden hair. Fift couldn’t, of course, tell which one was the original, though ze couldn’t help wondering. Ze remembered the moment around age seven when ze’d realized that ze had no idea which of zir bodies had been the first . . .

Lumlu looked into zir face, triply, and frowned.

“I don’t know if anyone else thinks it, Grobbard!” Frill said. “Why don’t you add an axis to the consensus moderation framework? Or just eat something! You’re interrupting. The Redoubts—”

“I, for one,” Smistria said, “don’t mind having the Revanchists holed up in one place—”

“Then you’re overdue for a collapse!” Frill said. “Because who knows what they’re planning in there? At any time, they could burst out upon us all, and—”

Lumlu turned, triplebodied, and charged the spiders.

“Oh, stop tormenting the child, Frill!” Smi snapped.

Frill arched an eyebrow. “You just said ze wasn’t a—”