Both the humans and the Wranaui followed her lead. She watched from the walls and the floors and the ceiling, for she was all of those and more. Falconi looked uncertain of himself, but she was glad to see that he seemed whole and healthy and that his shoulder injury no longer pained him. Klein showed no emotion, but his eyes darted from side to side, watching for anything unexpected.

Aside from the Marines, all the humans were wearing skinsuits with helmets firmly attached. The Wranaui, as usual, made no concessions to the environment, trusting their current forms to protect them.

As the visitors entered the presence chamber she had created to receive them, Kira shifted her view back to the flesh she had formed for herself, that Klein, Lphet, and Falconi would have an image of her to look at. It seemed the polite thing to do.

The chamber was high and narrow, with an arched ceiling and a double row of columns grown of nnar, the coral-like excrescence she knew of from Qwon (and was fond of because). Walls were framed with spars of polished metal, dark grey and adorned with lines of blue that formed patterns of meaning known only to the Old Ones … and now her. Filling the frames were great curving sections of wood and vines and dark-leafed greenery.

And those were from her that was Kira. Also the flowers that rested in crannies dark and shadowed: drooping flowers, with purple petals and speckled throats. Midnight Constellations, in memory of her home and of Alan—of all that she had once been.

She had repeated the shape of the flowers on the floor, in fractal spirals that coiled without end. And the sight pleased her, gave her a sense of satisfaction.

Among the spirals stood one of the crystals she had made of Ctein: a frozen flame of faceted beauty. Life arrested, yet still reaching and yearning.

A few glowlights hung from the branches of nnar above, ripened fruit pulsing with a soft, golden ambience. In the broken beams of light that reached the floor, pollen swirled like smoke, heavy and fragrant. A trickle of running water sounded amid the pitted columns, but otherwise the chamber was still and silent, sacred.

Kira made no demands, issued no ultimatums, but Klein spoke a single word to his troops, and the Marines held their position by the arched entryway as the admiral continued forward. Lphet did the same with its guard (including Itari), and human and Wranaui advanced with Major Tschetter and the crew of the Wallfish in tow.

As they neared the far end of the presence chamber, Kira allowed the glowlights to brighten, banishing the shadows before a rising dawn so they might behold her.

The visitors stopped.

She looked down upon them from where her new body lay embedded within the rootlike structure of the wall, green upon green and threaded throughout with the glossy black fibers of the Seed, the wonderous, life-giving Seed.