“Star-ships?” Fift said, frowning into vir shoulder.

“Yeah,” Shria said. “That collapse-ripe idea of zirs, giving up everything just to build somewhere new. It seems absurd, but also . . . brave. Sometime in the Ages Before the Ages, someone was bizarre enough to do that, to give us . . . this.” Ve buried vir nose in zir hair. “Somehow that image made the Shelterings seem . . . less like a dead end? Less like a retreat. More like something we need to learn: how to give up everything and start over.”

“Well, I’m ready to blast off when you are.”

Shria pulled away and looked at Fift, eyes crinkling. “You’re making fun of me.”

“No,” Fift said. “No, I like it. Our own little hollowed-out rock, all alone in the night, hurtling between the stars.”

“Yes,” Shria said, resting vir chin back on Fift’s head. Vir voice was soft, a little drowsy. “Like that.”

They slid down on the soft couch-floor, and Fift crawled behind Shria and gathered vem into zir arms, encircling vem. Ze slid zir thighs under vir buttocks. Ze snuggled against vir back, and ve nestled back against zir.

In the corridor, zir Fathers shuffled quickly around Father Squell, who was leaning up against the wall. Grobbard, Ellix, Thrimon, Frill, and Smistria jogged down the stairs towards the supper room.

Squell looked down at vir hands. Vir eyes were still a little red from when ze’d cried at Fift’s arrival. Ve glanced up, briefly, and frowned.

Fift slowed down as ze passed, and Squell began walking, so that they were walking side by side.

Fift could feel the muscles of Shria’s back relaxing, one by one. Vir breathing slowed.

“Dobroc’s started training Vails in the Long Conversation,” Fift said to Squell. Ve blanched.

“Including Shria,” ze said. Ze wasn’t sure why ze said it. Was ze trying to provoke Squell into a storm of outrage? Ze felt an angry restlessness moving inside zir, even as zir other body relaxed, nose in Shria’s hair, smelling vem, drifting into the safest sleep.

They were engaged in something so important, so entrancing . . . I used to listen at the crack of the wall when they had their lessons . . .

Squell walked in silence for the length of the corridor, and down the stairs. Then, at the door to the supper room, ve smiled, shyly.

“Well, cubblehedge,” ve said, “Ages pass.”

Introduction 2

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Interlude 8

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