Fift told Shria about zir new cousin. The new cousin was Chalia Rigorosa Spin-Nupolo of name registry Yellow Peninsula Sugarbubble 3, which made Chalia and Fift name-cousins as well as birth-cousins. Everyone said that was lucky. Iraxis cohort was busy that fall, with preparations for the birth and the naming ceremony, and helping the new parental cohort get settled in Slow-as-Molasses. It was a great honor for Father—and now Auntie—Nupolo, that vir sibling Ellix’s parental cohort, all twenty-two parents plus the new baby, had moved there to benefit from vir child-rearing wisdom, and so Chalia could grow up near Fift.

“And naming it after you, Nupes!” Frill said. “What a coup!”

“It’s too much,” Nupolo said, fiercely, shaking vir head. “I don’t deserve such acclamation.”

“You do, though,” Arevio said shyly, slipping vir hand in Nupolo’s.

That winter, Fift rarely saw more than one of Nupolo’s or Squell’s or Arevio’s bodies at home. They were always out fussing over the new family. Fift got to hold Chalia, in vir fragile first body, when ve was a week old. Ve looked up at zir with questioning eyes, as if asking zir, “Well? How is it here? Have I made it to the right place?” Ze wished ze could answer vem with any certainty.

Fift and Shria’s messages tiptoed through a goopfield of too-dangerous topics. When ze told vem about Chalia’s birth, ze avoided saying anything about the Midwives who’d come to gender the baby, even though that was the climax of the whole thing. Ze didn’t ask about Vvonda, or about Shria’s work. Shria, too, often trailed off into silence. Even topics that seemed safe at first—gossip about mutual acquaintances, complaints about their parents—tended to run into walls, into {okay, I gotta go, bye}, {Bye.}

They knew their parents would be reading their messages, and Fift was terrified that zirs would begin to wonder about the lost hour, when their child was utterly hidden from the world.

It was as if a secret doorway had opened during that lost hour, a doorway to a magic world where anything could happen. And anything had. Ze had been intoxicated. Ze had lost zir hold on the center, had been flung free, into the void.

They certainly never mentioned the Clowns.

What would it be like if ze could see Shria in person, body near body, near enough to feel vir warmth? Ze tried to stop thinking about it. Ze didn’t dare visit, or invite Shria over; what if zir parents noticed something? Ze even avoided watching Shria over the feed; the feed made everything flat and strange and hollow anyway.

There was nothing to do but survive these years, to buckle down and learn, to sit and pass spoons, to recite (ze was working on the various addenda to the alternate codification of the twelfth emergent mode), to ponder, to wait.