Fift sat up in bed and watched zirself reciting zir Long Conversation homework on the canvas mat on the floor. After the first few thousand stanzas, Ranhulo’s metacommentary on the eighth work of the tenth cycle—which had been straightforward, elegiac, celebratory, and somewhat pompous—began to develop an undercurrent of sullen hostility, hiding rage deeper underneath. Doing the didactic fourth subsection justice meant balancing its expansive, positive, forward-looking embrace of the eighth work’s account of the original Compromise of the Spoons (which had led the way to the Permissive Compact and the temporary acceptance of the presence of Vails as silent observers during the Long Conversation), with the sour note of bitterness, regret, and disgust that underlay them. The genius of Ranhulo was holding the two in superposition, never allowing the metacommentary’s ambivalence to collapse into polemic.

Fift was butchering it.

Pip was now twelve steps ahead of zir.

Ze opened the note from Shria.

{Look, Fift, I know you mean well.} it said. {And meant well. But I think maybe I . . . look, I can’t believe that I led you into . . . that. Or that you followed me into it. You shouldn’t have had to see that, Fift, shouldn’t have had to be in it—and it’s my fault. I didn’t protect you. You deserve to be protected, Fift, not . . . exposed. But Fift . . . I don’t think I can protect you. There are things I can’t turn away from.

{I just feel like it’s not safe for me with you. Maybe that sounds weird. But I got bruised enough physically in that riot without being bruised more by . . . by your words. I’m not saying it’s your fault, Fift. It’s not. You don’t know any better. I just think I need to be with Vvonda and Bluey and Stogma now. It’s not that I don’t think you and I could be friends. In some ways we could be realer friends than . . . I mean, I can tell you things I can’t tell them, for instance. But I don’t even know if that is fair to you.

{I go too fast sometimes, Fift. I let things run away with me. I do foolish things.

{I hate this; it feels like I’m giving up. Maybe I am giving up. At least when I’m with them, I know what I’m doing, and I’ve got backup, and . . . oh, Fift, I hate myself for sending this note. Let’s just keep away from each other for a while. I’m so tired. Maybe I’ll collapse and find myself an Idyll. I don’t know. Maybe that’ll help. Anyway, I still think you’re a great person. Hugs, Shria.}

Fift stopped walking.

Thirteen steps.

Fourteen.

Pip turned around. “Fift?”

“What are we doing here?” Fift said.