A lot of Gwymr/Frina rose high into the air, buildings that stood four or five stories. The tallest buildings leant against cliffs, among them the inviting curves of the Moyo-Makao, now far behind me.

The buildings all had an alien squatness about them, broad and thick. The mounds of ash piling on the roofs or yards and various ruptures or faults all around betrayed the motivation: these buildings have to weather the ashstorms for gyras to come, and the quakes.

On the hills and buttes among the buildings, streams of dragons walked or milled about. Here and there I could spy a red sash, sometimes made easier to see from being mounted on a mighty tortoise.

I flew past the bridge over the canal cutting through town. With nothing else to think on, except the gnawing worry of being late, I stared down at the panes of metal and glass, and remembered the bland histories studied in the Sgrôli ac Neidr:

The Dyfnderi had fledged a gift of this canal back when Dwylla had still lain in the town hall. Connecting to a bunch of channels far north, and running water from some Dyfnderi diversion dam they’d built gyras and gyras ago, it was water. Gwymr/Frina could drink and farm because of it, and sometimes you saw little boats going up or down it.

I guessed it emptied in a distant river or something, but I could only stomach so much of the trivialities. What mattered was that relationship of Gwymr/Frina (or was it Cyfrin ac Dwylla back then?) with Dyfnder/Geunant hadn’t soured yet, and Chwithach-sofran said the canal was some kind of symbol of goodwill between the two. Dwylla never let the relationship grow beyond that, though, and between his eternal stubbornness and their ever-deepening insistence it did sour.

When the eternal faer alighted and faer Mlaen took his place, it gave the Dyfnderi another chance to establish with us something more than just peace. If what I had seen in the hall last night showed anything, though, the faer was flying on her predecessor’s winds.

“What,” I had asked Chwithach, “do the canyon-dwellers even want with this town?”

“It’s a point of pride for them,” the librarian drake had said as he adjusted his sash. “Dyfnder/Geunant is old, and in fact more of a small country than a city. They hold the deepest gemstone mines, and they maintain an mighty military with a flawless record of defense. It’s the carrot they dangle in front of any newcoming settlement: We can protect you, make you rich.”

“Then why didn’t Dwylla take that offer? It sounds pretty nice.”

“From the beginning, Cyfrin ac Dwylla had been his⁠ ⁠—⁠ it’s right there in the name. If you lived here then, you lived ac Dwylla. So his refusal had been plain jealousy, not wanting to relinquish control of his town to would-be sovereigns.”

At that I had found myself imagining Dwylla with deep blue scales, silvery eyes, and that all-too-familiar sneering hauteur. My next words might have come out a little harsh, a little high. “Why? That sounds so frilly, refusing an alliance-jassa sekkyytt⁠ ⁠—⁠ err, I mean refusing out of… err, egoism?”

“Some think that, yes. I do. But in the end it seems to have worked out for us and thus has remained a sore point for the Dyfnderi. We grew rich on our own, and, nestled up against the blazing Berwem, we had faced down all enemies alone. Even our faer had seemed immune to death, back then.”

The librarian had then did that thing where his clouded eyes caught the light in a glint, and he added with a light tone, “I do think the canyons may have gotten the last laugh, here; for when they at last grudged to recognize us as a stronghold, we were named Gwymr/Frina, the glass of secrecy. Ostensibly, they meant it in the old sense, secrecy being merely set apart, as our faer was so bent on having it⁠ ⁠—⁠ but the subtext is there to be read. We had to be hiding something, to dare abstain from joining their protectorate, hehe.” His voice had faded to a murmur. “I’ve begun to wonder if they were right.”

I glided up the canal, angled for the sloped and rising part of town. I’d decided I had to know the details of local politics, if I were to lay myself in the faer’s administration. And if that didn’t fly, I still had my debt with Adwyn to worry about⁠ ⁠—⁠ some grounding with the relationship between the land of glass and secrets and the land of chasm and wisdom would help, there.

On either side of the canal sat thick panes of tempered glass, split by rods of aluminum. When the ashstorms came, they’d push those panes over the canal, and ash couldn’t touch the water. The fat bridge crossing it, sturdy even compared to the town, was arching high enough not to block boats.

Sometimes, you saw laborers lugging carts of stuff over the bridge, and you didn’t wonder at its extreme stockiness after that. Except for poor dragons crippled or clipped, flying always trounced walking. Faster, cleaner, easier —⁠ flight was draconic par excellence. But you can’t fly around carts, and no simple beast could do that either. So stuff was carted over the ground.

I flew lower, snatching a better look. The bridge was framed in bronze, but its deck was cobbled tephra. The deck tended a wingbeat thick, but it fledged sense; caterpillar cows could get huge.

A few guards lay on the bridge. They looked up at me as a passed, and peered.

As the rolling slopes flattened, the houses and streets and the entire atmosphere grew more sophisticated, more wealth on display. Any occasional panhandlers or starless walking about didn’t⁠ ⁠—⁠ couldn’t⁠ ⁠—⁠ come here. The roads looked better, not clear of waste; but I could almost feel comfortable walking on it. Almost. The yards stretched open, spacious and covered in mosses or hardy fungi. It tended something of a familiar rolling green look.

Something felt missing, though. While some yards had really big ferns or bamboo sprouting out, you didn’t see much of it. Maybe two yards had those decorations.

One yard has no flora at all. Just bricks. Across the whole yard.

Around the yards’ perimeters lay various kinds of walls, some of scoria brick, or black bamboo or just piles of dustone⁠ ⁠—⁠ and above them, more nets. Some looked frayed or had holes, but most looked intact enough.

Yet on the whole the nets seemed less intact than the nets I had seen on the outskirts of town, over the farms. I flicked on my tongue. Maybe it wasn’t so strange. In town, the nets were images, there to look secure. But in the cliffs, you needed the nets. They protected you every day, keeping pests and predators out.

I sighed. Some things hadn’t changed.

----------------------------------------

Just moments of flight after that, I was gliding down to the road that led to the Gären estate, Hinte’s house. It stood low and sprawling⁠ ⁠—⁠ and only one story high! A concave roof sloped, way steeper than any other you saw. That seemed dangerous, because ashstorms. But maybe they were braced. They should be braced.

Once you looked away from the small house — was that wood? — there yawned an estate like it had eaten four other yards. You could tell, from just their decoration, that they missed the forests. More flora grew in just their yard than the entire neighborhood. It held had the first trees I had ever seen in the cliffs. Hardy ash willows, a bleached white. I had liked them since I’d first seen them, even when their droopy melancholic look.

Trees looked, smelt, and tasted nice! Ferns, massive though they were, just clouded in contast.

Only gyras ago the trees had been planted, and now they were thin, just tens of heads taller than me, and their limbs already tended to droop. Poor things.

On the porch little flowers grew out of little pots that lined every surface on the porch, crowding over the mats and the slab. Did they just really like flowers? Or maybe they were just alchemical.

I was gliding down beside their net, a thing as well maintained as any other net in the neighborhood. Beneath the net, there crouched a scoria brick wall on the surrounding gravel, and there was a gate.

The feeling of the dirt under the soles of my shoes was not the feeling of the gravelly lapilli in the rest of the town. This dirt grew real grass, instead of the textureless mossy imitators in the rest of town. While it looked pretty and natural and different, stepping on it flipped my mind. It was familiar, and not in a good way.

For just a moment as I walked into the yard, I stepped instead into Specter Manor. If I clouded my eyes and held my tongue, it was like I never left, never wanted to leave, the sky. I could almost forget what happened, why I was so alone.

I was shivering. When I clear my eyes the illusion broke, as I’d hope. The house stood before me, and it looked like Specter estate the way a chunk of wood looked like a shard of star-blessèd Stellaine.

Some of the flowerpot’s buds had appeared in the alchemy scrolls I studied: whistlecones, khren roots, and a poisonous flower I knew as kuolo-suukko but the locals only called ‘the sweetness.’ Vines grew across the house itself, leaves plump and broad. In some places, they blocked out the windows. The walls were white wood, and where I could see shutters, they looked a very black brown.

I knocked on a door made of another wood I didn’t know. After a few beats, it swung open. A light-green dragon stood in the doorway, wearing a black halfrobe that only covered them past the wings⁠ ⁠—⁠ Ushra. I’d seen him once, in the distance, and Hinte talked about him enough.

Ushra seemed a small, thin figure; but also gave a sense that this impression missed something. He smelt of cloying alchemical fumes, burnt ink and mighty grapes not as strong Hinte’s grapey smell. His piercing dark eyes gave me the impression that he saw right into me, and saw things even I didn’t.

He’s a good fellow, Rhyfel had said.

“Hi!” My frills expanded a little as my gaze rose to meet his, and I smiled.

He didn’t react. I look him up and down for some shift or anything. But —

A bright red and blue bird perched on his alula! It was craning its head around, and one of it’s strange purple eyes was always pointing my way. I fanned my frills at the cute bird, but when the it squawked high and loud, it turned to a flinch.

Ushra took that moment to say something: “Who are you?”

“Kinri. Hinte invited me?”

He narrowed his brows. “Where were the two of you last night?”

I flicked my tongue and replied, “The Berwem?”

“Which mixture was used to treat your wounds, Keimfrei dust, or die Wundervernarbung?”

“Die Wunde — the second one.”

“Who else is coming to breakfast today?”

“Digrif?” I said. “Unless Hinte invited someone else without telling me, I guess.”

“What color are Hinte’s eyes?”

“Yellow?” I said. A beat. Then, “Wait no, was it orange⁠ ⁠—⁠ err, red?” I looked to Ushra’s eyes, but they had clouded and I couldn’t make out their color, other than it being very dark.

“Who was Hinte’s mother?”

“I⁠ ⁠—⁠ what? How do you expect me to know that?”

“I didn’t. When —”

A voice sounded out from inside the house, saying, “Let her alone, tartness.”

Ushra said, “Come in,” and turned around.

But as he did, the bird lighted from his wing and fluttered down in front of the door. “Last question.” Ushra’s voice came from the bird’s beak.

I jumped back, wings spread. “Ah!”

“What angle does the morrowstar make with the horizon at the ninth crestday of a sea-dweller’s left year?” The bird hopped forward, wings half-spread, punctuating its question.

I tilted my head. “Would that be… a third of a radian? I guess it depends on the time of day. But you’d be measuring something else if it were actually day or night. So I say somewhere between a third and fourth of a degree radian. You said a left year?”

The bird looked off the side, only one eye facing me. A beat passed before it said, “Come in,” in an exact copy of Ushra’s earlier words.

I waited for the bird to flutter back to Ushra before stepping inside.

The door opened into a short corridor, and Ushra’s voice came from further along it, asking “Are you a navigator?” He glanced back at me. “Or just a stargazer?”

“A stargazer, mostly,” I said, but Ushra had already disappeared into a doorway.

----------------------------------------

Through the first doorway of the corridor, in a room with a knee-high slab orbited by mats, sat another forest-dweller, with jade scales darker than Hinte’s, on the mat just below a window. Through the other doorway, lay a room with some tall, barrel-shaped plant by the window and very comfortable-looking fluffy mats arranged in a triangle. One mat was big enough to hold two dragons, the other two only one.

In that room, high on the wall, there hung a painting. A small Hinte bounced in the middle, while Ushra and that dark-jade dragon stood on either side. The painted Ushra wore dark fullrobes dotted with the spiraling, cursive script of the forests, and a dark-jade dragon wore a uniform looking almost militaristic. Hinte wore blue and pink clothes.

The little hatchling in the painting looked cute; but I could never tell her older self that. Well, maybe unless I wanted to dare her to find some way to administer poison with a glare

Before turning away, I took a cheating glance at the eyes in the painting⁠ ⁠— the younger Hinte looked out from a gaze cloudy and rust-orange, while Ushra peered forth from a deeper orange, completely clear. The jade dragon regarded you with plain green eyes.

I lingered on the jade dragon for a moment, and glanced back at the forest-dweller sitting in the other room. It was them. Looking closer, I could see an age difference between the likeness and its source. Other than that, the military garb was gone, and they now wore a gleaming locket I couldn’t find in the painting.

Below the painting rose a dark brown door, ajar. More alchemical smells wafted from inside. Almost soon as I glanced at it, it opened and from it stepped a dark-green wiver, door hanging open behind her. My breath caught in my throat.

The last thing she’d said to me last night had grounded all of my fears that we weren’t really friends⁠ ⁠—⁠ or maybe it’d been an admission that our night in the lake had changed things. My next words would feel like a response, and I didn’t know what to say.

The dark-green wiver was sill peering at me. I hadn’t said anything.

“Hi Hinte.” I may have squeaked.

A shadow of a smile touched her lips. “Hello, Kinri-gyfar.”

I looked up. How was this supposed to go? In the Constellation, in House Specter, we had formal patterns of interaction, words to greet every flavor of interlocutor from highest friend to unspoken enemy. Systems of analyzing every deviation, from untasted or ignorant slip-ups to deliberate, significant variations.

I’d tossed all of that aside. And it wouldn’t have helped me here; The formalities didn’t translate. And… if they did, it didn’t matter because I wanted to be authentic, be Kinri instead of the once-heir of House Specter.

But what was the authentic thing to say here? What did I want to say?

The door snapped to a shut on its own, and I jostled. “So, um. I’m not late, am I?” I licked an eye, watching Hinte through the other.

Hinte laughed, a small hiss. “If Gronte were cooking, you would be. Gronte had Opa cook breakfast today. Opa always tends to his workshop before anything else.”

I sighed, easing a hitch in my breath cycle I wouldn’t admit was there. Another hitch didn’t ease, though; that still hadn’t been what I wanted to say.

I tried, “About last night,” — at that her brilles cleared, and I faltered. I found another prickling anxiety instead. “Something I didn’t mention. Someone talked to me in the town hall. Bariaeth⁠ ⁠—⁠ ac Dwylla. The treasurer. They were… weird. Do you know anything about them?”

“Other than his having half the town thinking he should be faer instead of Mlaen?” Hinte tossed her head. “Ushra is a little uneasy when he comes by the house, and he tends to send me out of the room when they talk. And Gronte, she gives him⁠ ⁠—⁠ strange looks.”

“Strange how?”

“As she were seeing a lacuna⁠ ⁠—⁠ a ghost from her past.”

Looking up, I said, “Thanks.” Bariaeth had some mysteries to him. I — didn’t know if I’d be taking his offer.

But I swallowed, and admitted, “That um, that’s not what I really wanted to ask. Last night…” Hinte flicked her tongue “…it⁠ ⁠—⁠ I had nightmares about it, when I went to sleep.”

Hinte’s smile melted into a blank expression that betrayed nothing. “About what?”

“About all the times I almost died — I almost died seven times!” I looked down, cringing at the pathetic fraying in my voice. “And about other things, too.”

“Such as?”

“Um. I dreamed of the humans dewing. And Cynfe ripping off my wings. And–and about losing you.”

A alula brushed across my cheek. I looked up. Hinte didn’t smile, but the intensity in her eyes wasn’t analyzing or judging. A flame that would cauterize, not scorch.

“Kinri. We won.” With that, Hinte stepped away, into the opposite room.

Before I moved, I asked, “Will you walk away again?”

Hinte lifted her head, but her back was turned. “No.”

* * *