My gaze fell from the sky to the dark lake shore, roaming a bit before lighting on the green wiver beside me. Peering at her, I replied, late and disconnected, “Well, does my red gem thingy count as a cryst?” I tried to smirk a bit.

“I told you, no.” Hinte had a page of fernpaper in a claw, held so that I couldn’t see, and with her other claw she traced something across the page.

“How do you know? It looks like a sweet raisin, maybe it’s a new type of those weird fragments.” I brought the gem to my mouth and bit. The hard gem resisted and slipped and scraped against my gums. “Ow.”

Hinte muttered something. I didn’t hear it, but it was two syllables and I could guess the sounds.

“Fine, maybe it isn’t a cryst. I’ll bribe you, then.” I affected my voice, bringing it closer to what I might use selling something in the Llygaid Crwydro, but exaggerated. “Listen up! One priceless, legendary gemstone, right here, yours today for an escort out of this awful, horrible lake. What do you say?”

Hinte lowered her page and looked at me. I only saw her lips, and they couldn’t decide what expression to take. The lines of her eyes hinted at behind the goggles a blank stare, and in the end the blankness infected her lips, forcing them into a line.

I smiled at her anyway⁠ ⁠—⁠ maybe my smile could infect her too. “Fine. What if I told you it held the secret to eternal life, then? You’re an alchemist, you can’t resist.”

“I could,” she said, her tone seeming to walk away from me, “I have enough gyras in front of me to rediscover it if you had, and you haven’t.” After that she looked away, and after that she said something that started with, “And it doesn’t matter regardless, as I…” but trailed into a mutter fast enough to hide the ending.

“What was that?”

Hinte kept her head turned. It was ten breaths before she said, “I’m in the cliffs. Immortality doesn’t matter anymore.”

My head tilted. “But… Chwithach-sofran said the reason forest-dwellers came to the cliffs in the first place was the hunt for eternal life.”

She said silence for a beat, then turned back around, snapping her tongue. “If I wanted your immortality raisin, I could have kept it.” She spat at the gem I still held up, but I whipped it out of the way before the venom could land.

“No way⁠ ⁠—⁠ I dug this one up for sure. You aren’t taking credit for this too.”

Hinte tossed her head, looking back at her paper. “Check the bottle,” she said.

Blowing my tongue at her, I checked the bottle⁠ ⁠—⁠ the blue liquid had grown opaque. A thick cloud of vapors whirled at the top. I uncorked it again.

The vapors erupted from the bottle! I pushed my snout toward them and breathed them in. It smelled like chemical mint, and it felt like my nose and throat froze and quivered. I inhaled as much as I could manage. But I overdid it, and I choked a little… yet the raw melting evil biting cough didn’t rise in my throat. I breathed again, and sighed a nice, relieved sigh.

After a few seconds to gather my breath, I inhaled the remainder of those merciful fumes. When the liquid didn’t look to be emitting any more vapor, I took a final, deep breath of it.

“Drink it.” Hinte’s voice came from beside me.

“What? You said it wouldn’t do anything if I drank it.”

“No, it will not heal your lungs if you drink it. Respira is two sibling mixtures. One to heal the lungs. The other to alleviate sinus headaches. One evaporates to fumes. The other remains a liquid. Drink the liquid,” she said, making chopping motions with her wing like she explained it for the fifth time to a hatchling. …This was my first time hearing it.

“Okay, okay.” I drank the solution. The freezing feeling came again, as the liquid slid down my throat. I choked in surprise! Where the last had felt a breath of freezing, shuddering surprise, this one felt a deep, dancing relief washing down my throat. Where it flowed, my throat felt twice as big, and every last trace of raw numbness melted, in a good way.

After a few more swallows the bottle emptied and I sucked down breath in deep pants. The relieving sensation followed the liquid’s path, flowing down to my stomach and settling. The feeling lingered, slow to leave, but when it did, my throat was electric and amazing.

I looked to Hinte’s dark-green frowning face with a smile. “Thank you, Hinte!” I said, drawing my wings together and curling their alulae into each other. Her frown only flattened, but between her relaxing brow and expanding frills, in her face lurked a smile held just below the surface.

I worked the bottle into my left bag. Though smaller than Hinte’s, it didn’t hold as much, only the three crysts from earlier and the jagged, uncut red gemstone we dug up. While I had thought it looked high pretty, Hinte said it was a dud. In the other bag, I had the three glasscrabs.

“Hey, Hinte,” I said. She turned to me, head tilting. “Do you have any empty glasses?”

She nodded, and dipped into her bag. Now I had a glass I could almost fit my claw into. I reached my tail into my bag, and clenched it around nothing.

“…And a knife?” I whispered.

Inscrutable yellow lenses stared at me. I could imagine the withering look hidden there. I cringed, turning away. In a moment, a knife slid over the dusty ground. It was in my feet.

The blade of the knife cooled my toes. It was night black and streaked with white⁠ ⁠—⁠ was it obsidian? But the streaks weren’t pure white; they seemed almost glassy. The knife’s hilt was leather, instead of the schizon that made up the rest of her things, and the hilt’s base was very concave in a way that looked like it would fit perfectly on a ball. Looking closer, there was an odd hole in the center of the base. What for? I flicked my tongue, and peered at it.

This knife had glowed when Hinte’d wielded it, but it seemed just like an ordinary knife, now. Was it the same one? I turned it over. Near the hilt black oleaginous blood gelled, and it smelled like the silvery white things. More black blood was streaked up the blade⁠ ⁠—⁠ had Hinte tried to wipe it clean?

“What were those things, Hinte?” I said, rubbing my leg where the creature had scraped glass away. “The silvery ones. Were they rockwraiths?”

“I told you no,” she said, squeezing her frills as if the notion were ridiculous. She whisked a wing, and finished, “Those were glazed olms, and they shouldn’t have been awake this late in the day.” She said it staring at me, frills narrowed. It sounded like an accusation. What had I done?

Clicking my tongue, laughing it off, I searched and said, “Glazed olms? Really? I thought you were joking. It–it sounded like some kind of exotic cuisine. Or maybe a perfume.” I said it, and looked down. My feet were turning the knife over and picking at the blood. Hardened and sticky, when I poked the blood with a claw, it scraped off.

She was folding the wrapper of her roast and placing it in her bag. “Olms taste awful. Their meat is gamey and breeds rot and disease. Only fit for alchemy.”

“What sort of mixtures are they used for?” I stopped picking the knife. It was clean, or the closest to clean I could manage, so I looked up at my companion, licking my eyes and fanning my frills.

Hinte’s own frills flexed in thought. “Their slime is used in glazeward. Their blood is a coolant,” she paused, looking up. An alula found her cheek, scratching. “Their integument is pretty. Some use them for trinkets or shoes or something. You would.” The wrinkle in her frills said what she thought of that.

“Yeah!” I said. “I like silver, it’s a good color.” My eyes were silver, and what else could they be but the best color? I put an alulae on both of my cheeks, and mimed Hinte’s thoughtful scratching. “And glazeward, hmm… That’s the salve?” I asked.

The dark-green wiver took a drink from her canteen and ignored my question, continuing where she left off. “The rest of their anatomy is obscure and poorly studied,” she said, making a vague gesture with her wing.

“Well, do you know why’s that?” I scooted closer.

“Glazed olms are vicious and secretive. They live in the molten glass, so one sees them only when they emerge from the lake. Luring them out fails half the time, and their internals are unlike other creatures, and that confuses anatomists,” she said.

I lowered my head, humming, then said, “Why do they have to be so dangerous, though?”

Hinte curled her lip. “They are no danger if you stay away from their territory. If you had not tromped to the center of the lake, nothing would have happened. No danger.”

“Will you let up about that already! I wouldn’t have tried to go to the center if you had told me anything at all. Why do you keep bringing it up?”

Her tail lashed. “You asked.” Lowering her head, staring at me, she asked, “Do you have any other questions?” The words were growled, her fangs visible.

“No–no.” I looked away, frills folding back and tail coiling over my leg. Unstrapping my bag, I took out the crabs and lay them out beside the knife. I had everything I needed this time.

I gave one last, half-glaring glance to the bright-white figure. She drank from her blue and pink canteen, clutching it tight, and stared out over the lake. If I stared at the foot clutching the canteen, I could see the crystalline droplets, still clinging from when she punched the olm.

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The smallest glasscrab was the first we’d found⁠ ⁠—⁠ first I’d found. I grounded it with my own claws. My foot opened and closed, miming the piercing and ripping that had punctuated the first glasscrab.

I scratched my headband. In the sky, you couldn’t hunt on your own. On the surface, it was normal. I liked it. The Houses regulated hunting with heavy fines and constant guard patrols, because reckless hunting endangered populations.

After the hatchy, House-less precursors to the Constellation had driven entire species extinct, the Houses declared poaching one of the lowest crimes, and made three great dances of ecology tutoring a prerequisite for any hunting.

And so, our lessons went, we had the foresight of the Houses to thank whenever we had more to eat than skyrats or thornroots.

I snatched up the crab, turning it over in my claws. The bodies of these ‘crabs’ didn’t look anything like what we had in the skylakes. Even apart from the glassy shells, they had those flickering eyestalks, those twelve spindly legs that moved when I touched them, and a skeletal underbelly that didn’t look crab-like at all, at all.

They looked more like walking rocks than anything else. Vicious, relentless walking rocks. I flicked the crab’s eyestalk. This one hadn’t given me such an annoying fight, but it still shared blood⁠ ⁠—⁠ precious blood⁠ ⁠—⁠ with that obnoxious little insect! Ripping out its own eyestalks? Summoning a bunch of ghostly avengers? Maybe they grew squalled in this miserable lake. I wouldn’t stay sane either.

The last drops of water smacked against the glass as I shook my last canteen. It had emptied, and now I lacked water.

I steadied the knife for a few beats, worried about stabbing myself in the dark of the shore. Holding the knife steady, I pierced the heart. Blood oozed out from the long dead crab with lifeless lethargy. I pressed the dead crab over the glass.

The blood of these crabs allowed one to brew the Munditi Sieve, or ‘the Sieve of Purity.’ One of Chwithach’s scrolls, titled ‘A New Reaction of Crescent Crab Blood and Recipes Thereof,’ had called the Sieve the second most powerful detector of disease and impurity; but still the most powerful non-magical technique. According to ‘On the Ecology and Distribution of Extant Crescent Crabs,’ glasscrab blood is weaker than the blood of crescent crabs, the rainbow-shelled crabs that infested the rocky shores in the west.

Those shores lay a few long rings’ flight west, but I couldn’t fly out there and bag any unless I bought a new glider to handle the added weight. I’d already sold the one I had flown down to the cliffs on, because I would stay in Gwymr/Frina. So I wouldn’t need it.

I’d’ve needed to acquire a writ to leave town, anyway. The extra inconvenience of finding and bleeding crescent crabs overwhelmed the slight extra effectiveness of their blood.

And with the way Hinte treated me, would I even want to?

The blood dripped like sand through a ringglass, so the underbelly was stabbed once again.

I twisted the knife. Would it ground her to just tell me even half of why all this mattered?

I wrenched the knife and bled the crab into the jar again. Why even bring me out here if I was nothing more than a drag?

I squeezed the crab, my claws digging in and wasted blood dribbling out over my forefeet. Why, if we weren’t even friends?

I made my claws loosen their bleeding grip. Was I of any use at all?

I breathed.

A steady glow appeared, white like the glair around an egg yolk. I whisked my wings in front of my face, shadowing my eyes as they adjusted to the new light. In response, the glow waned, now a third as bright. My wing lowered, and the source, a glowing glairy liquid trapped behind glass, settled onto the ground a few strides away.

Was this my ornery companion being considerate?

“Hinte?”

The bright-white figure standing above the light hitched her wings. “It is too dark to work with a knife. Unless you plan to bleed yourself.”

I laughed, faltering and anxious as I stabbed the next crab and placed it over its jar. “Um. Do you still think⁠ ⁠—” Do you still think bringing me here was a mistake? “Do you think I was any help at all today?”

“Aside from almost killing yourself twice?”

I slammed my wings on the ground. “I wasn’t killing myself!” I looked down. “It was the olm thingies.”

“You shouldn’t have wandered off on your own. What were you thinking would happen?” She waved her foreleg away.

I looked back at Hinte, frills flattened. “If it was so dangerous, why didn’t you stop me?”

Lowering her wings, she said, “Do you want to ride on my back like a little hatchling too?”

“No! I just wanted to help.”

“You would have helped me more by staying with me.”

I looked away. “I’m sorry. But I was at least some help, wasn’t I?”

Hinte, on the other side of the light, looked away. When her face was cast in shadows, she spoke. “Sure. We found more crysts today than I have on my own. But if I have to answer one more of your questions, I will toss you in the lake myself.”

“Really?” The words had already left my mouth when I ducked. Lapilli crunched under Hinte’s landing. “Sorry. Rhetorical question? Nevermind!” I scooted back from the bright-white figure.

She tossed her head. “No, not really. I would not save you just to throw it away. No matter how annoying you are.”

Annoying?

Huffing and leaping again, Hinte flipped back to her side of the lantern.

The drip of the crab’s blood slowed. I poked into the next crab, widened the hole, and let it flow into the next jar.

I gazed, cloudy-eyed, at the filling jar. By this point my canteen had been sipped down to a fifth. After a hundred heartbeats, or thirty breath cycles, or twenty tongue flicks, maybe even a short ring, the blood filled a jar within a scratch of the top.

Another glass. Another crab. Another crab. Another glass. I kept up like this, almost meditative, filling the last of the glasses to their brims. As second dusk fell, the shore darkened around our bubble of glairy light, the last rays of Enyswm smoldering on the horizon and stars arriving statelily in the sky above. My gaze lifted at the thought, frills fluttering; and they fell still and folded back when I saw the lake’s cloud obscuring the starry sky.

My wings found the empty canteen tied to my forelegs. I shook it again, acting from pure habit, and heard droplets of water hitting the sides of the glass. I had come to rely on the steady drain of my canteen to tell time. Nothing else to measured long periods like thirst.

The last crab bled into the last jar as I sighed. When that jar had filled, yet more blood still flowed out of the largest crab. But I didn’t want to bother Hinte about it, and three jars would work well enough.

I sealed the last glass, and looked at its contents. Skeletal white filaments reached throughout the baby blue blood. I sloshed it around. It didn’t look perfect. Not at all how it looked in the waxy alchemy scrolls I’d pored over to impress Hinte with my skill and knowledge.

It looked… okay. I didn’t have any of the special equipment needed to do a fancy bleeding. No ice-coolers, of course, and no needles to take blood or any of the esoteric alchemical agents to stabilize it. Though it helped that I didn’t care about farming or keeping it alive, and I didn’t need to deal with a writhing, struggling, alive crab.

A growl slipped out at the memory of those scrolls. Sifting through them for actionable information was almost a preparation for sifting through this lake. They had been so full of obscure and technical terminology, pedantry and indirection⁠ ⁠—⁠ and none of it was fun! I had enough half-remembered trivia from my patchy tutoring, and a little help from Chwithach-sofran, to work through it.

When next my brilles cleared, and I saw the glairy light had left. I found Hinte and the light, already several strides away and slinking back into the lake’s clouds.

She might have a dewed a drop of consideration, but not for her pacing. I sighed.

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When we entered the lake again, the lake seemed intent on demonstrating, by contrast, how clear and breathable was the shore’s hazy air. The fumes made threatening gestures as they drew down my throat, but even as we walked right into the burning sulfur, the electricity warded coughs.

So we walked, me taunting the lake with soft clicky laughs. The vog began to thicken, and the heat began to build. Ashy clouds drifted as we walked, gusted by some unseen wind. Strides later, there was no doubting that we were once again over the Berwem.

My head tilted as I looked around in the darkness. Murky glass glowed and molten cracks shimmered, illuminating the lake from underneath, enough that I could now see more than I had by the cliff.

I threw slack-tongued glances around. Then it dawned on me that second dusk had fallen. So night engulfed the world outside of the cloudy lake. But inside the lake? There was scarce difference.

Hinte waved the shining glass lantern as she walked, but the darkness wouldn’t release its coil on the lake just so. When the light hit out-jutting crags, it cut long shadowy fangs on the skin. The clouds still swirled and had taken on a cryptic, half-shadowed appearance, seeming to hide something.

I shivered. We should have finished in the lake by now! Why was Hinte still out here?

Three more crysts. When we found three more of those blasted stones and left, I would not miss anything about this lake. My feet curled into the dusty ground beneath me.

Volcanic cobble paved the roads of Gwymr/Frina. Red and amber lamps lined the roads. And chiming, insistent bells rang again and again throughout the day.

So much better than cracking, unstable dust. Better than painfully bright glaze radiating out of distorting, murky glass. Better than sizzling breaks and rumbling plates.

Had that backwater little town begun to feel like a home?

“The Berwem could make a tornado feel like home,” I murmured. Hinte glanced at me, tilting. “Just missing town.”

Why had I convinced Hinte to bring me here, again? I had wanted to know to where she disappeared every cycle and what she did there. Both questions had their answers long coming.

Staring up into the sky, gaze sifting for a glimpse of the endless stars or a moon, I dug through my memories and sighed.

I had grown more and more dubious with Hinte after we set off. We had left from the west gate, yet the Berwem lay east of town. Our path through the cliffs and badlands wound and doubled back on itself. We walked. When we flew, it was low to the ground, shielded by overhangs or through a canyon. It worried me.

But, with a long ring echoing in our frills, we reached the Berwem. Hinte answered any questions with growls or terse non-answers. When the vog appeared and the lake’s heat crept upon us, I decided to voice my second question, albeit without hope of an answer. “What are we doing here?” I had asked.

“Sifting,” was all of her answer.

I had learned just what sifting entailed, and that left both my questions answered. But those answers had only raised two more questions in their end. Why was Hinte so drafty about entering the lake? “Avoiding monsters,” she had said. Which was something, I thought, but I wasn’t sure what. But she fledged no attempt to answer the second new question. What was so appealing about these crysts?

But despite my frustration, and her almost deliberate abrasiveness, we still played around, still smiled and had fun. She shared her lunch with me. She saved me from that glazed olm!

Maybe we were friends?

And maybe if she didn’t want to tell me what this was all about, she might have a reason that went beyond being mean or difficult.

I had been prying. I had been maybe a little annoying. I should respect her privacy.

* * *