Each day began in the same manner. With first light the city stirred to life. Like the others Kerrick washed himself, but unlike them he was thirsty in the morning—hungry as well. The Yilanè ate but once in the day, sometimes even missing days, and drank their fill at the same time. This was not his way. He would always drink deeply from the water-fruit, perhaps in unconscious memory of his brief days as a hunter. Then he would eat the fruit that he had put aside the evening before. If there were other matters of importance he would order a fargi to do this task, get the fruit for him, but he tried to do it himself whenever possible. The fargi, no matter how carefully he instructed them, would always return with damaged and rotten fruit. To them it was all the same, fodder for animals—creatures who ate what they were given regardless of its condition. In fact, if there were any fargi present when he was eating, they would gather around, watching with dumb intensity, speaking among themselves and trying to understand what he was doing. The more adventurous would taste the fruit—then spit it out, which the others always thought was most amusing. At first Kerrick tried to dismiss the fargi, was annoyed at their constant presence, but they would always return. In the end he suffered their attentions, was scarcely aware of it like the other Yilanè, dismissing them only when something private and important had to be discussed.

Slowly he began to see through the apparent disorder of Alpèasak to the natural order and controls that ruled everything. If he had been of an introspective turn of mind he might have compared the movement of the Yilanè in their city to that of the ants in their own cities beneath the ground. Apparently a senseless scurrying, but in reality a division of labor with workers gathering food, nurses tending the young, armored and clawed guards preventing invasions—and at the heart of it all the queen producing the endless stream of life that guaranteed the ant city’s existence. Not an exact analogy, but a close one that he never even considered. But he was just a boy, adapting to extraordinary circumstance, so like the others he made no comparisons and unthinkingly ground the ants beneath his feet and passed on.