The summoning ceremony happened at every meal in Kookaburra Creeka, and today it was a bit late.

Kylara would not have cared, except much of her plate was fish. You were forbidden from eating meat or fish before the ceremony. Hers were already starting to get cold.

“Ahem–” Pemulabee said, standing up. Kylara had thought she liked him. He was one of the few elders who hadn’t scorned Kylara after the fire. But if he had really changed his vote to agree with Malyun, she wasn’t so sure anymore. “I’d like to say a few words before we all dig into our main dishes.”–Some groaning came from the crowd–“I know, I know, settle down! We’re all hungry, but I will not delay our eating for long. First, I’d like to thank those who went out and caught our meal. They worked hard to give you a share.” Pemulabee paused, and the crowd clapped.

“Second, we welcome a guest. Some of you might have already met Multhamurra of Warrung. For those who have not, give me the honour of introducing him.” Pemulabee gestured to the magsman, who stood up. All eyes fell on him.

“Told you he was from Warrung,” Yalmay whispered.

“He has come to Kookaburra Creek on very important business. We’re grateful to him, but we ask that you do not bother him about it, as it is somewhat sensitive. He will stay here, in our village, until it is complete.” Pemulabee looked around the crowd for any objections or comments. There was none. He went on, “As you know, these past few months have not been easy on us. After the events of last spring, much of our land was destroyed. Good food was hard to come by. But look at how far we’ve come! This Wrestday is a proper feast. I officially declare our time of hardship over!”

Kylara stared at Pemulabee for a second in disbelief. She hadn’t expected an official declaration, let alone this soon. The land hadn’t yet recovered. True, there were areas where the vegetation had come back fully, pockets of plant life in the less burnt areas, but it was mostly small things–berries and grasses and mushrooms.

People like Dhaligir still had nothing.

Had the declaration been for her sake?

It had been months, and she had not made much progress fixing her reputation. Half of Kookaburra Creek still blamed her for the fire.

If the time of hardship was officially over though… maybe people would be more likely to forgive.

“With our hardship now passed,” Pemulabee continued, “I am confident we will welcome Multhamurra into our community with open arms. We are a people that believe in hospitality and the sharing of our good will. Our place is yours, our food is yours.” He looked at the magsman in anticipation, who bowed, but said nothing.

That was rather unusual for a foreigner, Kylara thought. In Kookaburra Creek, as was tradition, no thanks were given for the sharing of food. It was simply expected. It wasn’t like that in other countries, where silence was considered a sign of rudeness and ungratefulness. So when visitors were welcomed into town, there was always a pause in the welcome speech to accommodate their thanks, like was traditional in other countries’ ceremonies.

But the magsman had said nothing. Perhaps he was already aware of the custom? Or perhaps he was just rude. Kylara wasn’t sure what things were like in Warrung. Maybe he didn’t understand.

“And with that said,” Pemulabee finished, “let us eat what the land has given us!” He held out his hand a muttered a word into his palm. Finally, Kylara thought, the summoning ceremony.

She held out her hand. Next to her, Yalmay did the same. “Burrud-dyara,” she said. You didn’t need the word, but it was nearly effortless with it.

And then suddenly, without sound or light or flourish or flare, a moth appeared in her palm.

This was Kookaburra Creek’s summoning. The local magic.

The moth rested in her hands, a dull brown-black colour with wings tucked near its body. It was slightly triangular in shape and didn’t so much as twitch. They said the summoning couldn’t create life, just the semblance of it. The moth had never been alive. It was a body without a soul.

Kylara pulled off its wings and legs, placed the discards on the table, and vanished them with another whispered word. Then she put the rest of the moth in her mouth.

She supposed there were worse customs. The flavour wasn’t bad, but in Kylara’s opinion, it wasn’t good enough to justify eating every meal either. It was unique–sort of fatty and crunchy with a nutty aftertaste. She swallowed, and took a sip of gadju to wash it down. The moths were better in something–she liked them best with spiced breadcrumbs, or some green mango, or fingerlime and chard. They were not good plain.

She glanced over to Yalmay, who was grimacing. “Need a cuppa?” Kylara asked. She held her gadju out as an offering. “You mess up the summoning?” It didn’t happen often, but if you weren’t paying attention you could get moths with some sort of defect. Those usually didn’t taste great.

“No thanks,” Yalmay said. “Just in my own head is all. Tea won’t help.”

“You sure?” Kylara held out her glass again. She was a big believer in tea. As far as she was concerned, it always helped.

“Yeah. I was actually thinking about you. Pemulabee said the time of hardship is over.”

“Right. It puts some pressure off me,” Kylara said. “At least people don’t have an official reason to hate me anymore.”

“True,” Yalmay said. She sounded completely somber. “But it feels fake. Like, we’ve been having these big Wrestday feasts for nearly a month and the second some important guest comes to town, he declares it all over? He could’ve done that weeks ago and you’d be better off. It’s like he’s trying to paint a picture of the town as all nice and perfect. Half the village hating their warder isn’t a good look, and they must know it.”

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“I wouldn’t read too far into it,” Kylara said, despite the fact she already did. “It might be because of the robberies too. He might want to get people’s assurances up.”

“Perhaps,” Yalmay said. “I guess it just rubs me the wrong way.”

“Well, I’m just glad he did it,” Kylara said. She fidgeted with her fork. “Even if he has secondary motivations.”

“You think?”

“Yeah,” Kylara said, “People get upset when their homes burn down, their crops turn to ash, and the land they’ve used for generations becomes unusable. And if there was someone whose job it was to prevent that very thing, but didn’t?” Kylara stabbed her fish. “They don’t take kindly to it. At this point, I’ll take anything.”

It wasn’t even like Pemulabee was lying. The time of hardship was over. They were in the middle of a literal feast. The first weeks after the fire, they had rationed food. No one had gone hungry, of course–they had the summoning. No one could starve in Kookaburra Creek. But people couldn’t live on moths for long without tensions arising, and tensions had arisen.

“Can I ask something?” Yalmay asked.

“Sure,” Kylara said. “But no guarantees I’ll answer.”

“You said something before, to Billy. You said he’d get another try to get a warder’s mark.”

“I said it was likely he’d get another try. Not that he’d have one.”

“Oh.” Yalmay looked down and twiddled with her fingers. She wants to ask me the same question she asked at the Nest, Kylara thought. She wants to know if I have a candidate yet.

She really didn’t want to talk about this but…

“I said Billy will get another try because I think he will. That’s all.”

Yalmay gave her a pointed look. “That’s all?”

Fuck, I should have said nothing, Kylara thought.

“It’s just,” Yalmay continued, “there’s the five year rule, and it got me thinking. If Billy gets another chance, and he’s six, that means the next warder had got to be eleven or older. And I know that’s it obvious that you’d pick someone on the older side, but at least its a step to narrowing it down, right?”

“It would be,” Kylara said.

“So you’ve chosen someone?”

“No.”

“But you’ve at least narrowed it down?”

Kylara sighed. “I’m still working on it. But I am trying to chose someone on the older side, hopefully around thirteen or fourteen. Anyone too young and we’re just going to be stuck in the same situation, but this time with no way out.”

Yalmay looked at her for a long time. She’s feeling bad for me again, Kylara thought. It left a sour taste in her mouth.

“This whole situation sucks, you know,” Yalmay said. “It was your mother who messed up the age thing, not you, but you’re getting blamed for it.”

Kylara laughed at that. It was a short and bitter laugh. “A lot of things can be blamed on my mother. That’s not exactly new.”

“So you need to tell them that! Stand up for yourself. I know warder’s marks are incredibly rare and valuable but–”

“–a fact of which I was constantly reminded of as a child,” Kylara said bitterly, “and now that it’s being handed to a child again–well. No one’s happy, to say the least. I don’t want to talk about this. Let’s move on.”

The conversation retreated into a suddenly uncomfortable silence. Kylara closed her eyes.

Considering how much grief the situation had caused, the core rule was laughably simple: a warder was as good as their word. Break a promise or tell a falsehood, and you lost the ability to empower a ward. Trigger wards and other secondary powers still worked, but nothing else. You couldn’t dam a river. You couldn’t block an arrow from hitting its target. You couldn’t stop a bushfire from spreading. But you could still pass the mark on to someone who could.

Kylara’s own mother had broken a promise ten years ago, right before the Snap, and passed the ability down to Kylara. Now it was her turn to do the same.

The problem was finding the right person. With the five year rule, the mark could only be passed to someone five years younger than her. Which in Kylara’s case, was fourteen.

It was difficult. The mark had been creeping downward for generations, being passed to younger and younger people. Kylara had told a lie, so the mark had to be passed to someone at least five years younger than herself. So a fourteen year old. Or more precisely, fourteen years, three months, and thirteen days. If they did the same, the mark would go to someone nine years old. Then four. Then it would be gone. You couldn’t exactly hold a four year old to a promise. Even fourteen was pushing it.

Kylara herself had gotten the mark at the age of nine, and it had been a huge scandal. Her mother had been exiled from the village, and Kylara had barely been allowed to talk as a child. She’d been constantly monitored, barely ever left alone until she was deemed responsible enough to not tell lies.

And now it was Kylara’s job to pick which child would be subject to the same fate as her. She just couldn’t do it. Not with the amount of certainty that she needed.

“I thought of something,” Yalmay suddenly declared. She slammed her hand on the table as if making a proclamation. Again. The whole table shook. If Yalmay’s glass of wine had been even a drop fuller, it would have spilled. Also–apparently–her sister had procured two glasses of wine on her trip to the grog tray, not one. Kylara hadn’t even noticed before. “The curry of chaos,” Yalmay said.

“We still on this?” Kylara asked.

“What? Does a curry not count as a soup?” Yalmay made a innocent face and blinked at her. Kylara almost burst out laughing. Yalmay was trying a bit too hard to cheer her up, and they both knew it.

“Er… maybe?” she said. “I guess it depends on how you eat it.”

“Uh-uh,” Yalmay said. “Wrong. Since when is soup an extrinsic property? No, it’s either soup or not soup. It can’t be soup only some of the time.”

“Extrinsic? That’s a big word. Your dictionaries tell you that?” Kylara teased. Her sister collected dictionaries, for some reason. Something about studying for the University linguistics exam. She’d somehow come upon seven of them. Apparently they were a more common item for tinkers to have than you would think.

“Don’t be condescending,” Yalmay said. Kylara raised her eyebrow. Another big word. “And yes, in fact. I learned it from my Aeyiya dictionary. You know they have completely different grammar structure depending on if the adjective is intrinsic or extrinsic? It’s fascinating.”

Kylara nodded. Linguistics. Great. Time to change the subject.

“If we want to get into the metaphysics of soup,” Kylara said, “we need to start with a definition. I think we’ve got a decent base here, we just need to add some formal theory. Like, if soup is soup, then what is soup?” She tried to say it seriously, as if the sentence was some deep philosophical question, but her resolve cracked halfway through. She barely made it halfway through.

Yalmay opened her mouth, and then frowned. “Ah fuck,” she said.

“What?” Kylara asked.

“You know how I said we need to have a party when you give away warding?” Kylara nodded. “Well, I changed my mind. I don’t think you’ll be a sappy drunk at all. You’d be the dramatic know-it-all who gets super philosophical and then falls asleep halfway through the party.”

“That’s–” oddly specific, she wanted to say, then remembered Joontah. A dramatic know-it-all who gets super philosophical and falls asleep halfway through partys? Yeah, the description fit him to a tee.

She tried again. “That’s–” This time, she tried for not at all true, but stopped herself before she said anything. Denying she could be a dramatic know-it-all? Yeah, that would probably be considered a lie. Unfortunately. Well, at least she was a self-aware one.

“I– I don’t even like philosophy,” Kylara settled with after a moment.

Yalmay grinned at Kylara like she’d just won a bet. “Too much of a lie?” she said.

Kylara slumped in her chair and glared. “Oh, fuck off,” she said.