There were a lot of things that sucked about the morning of Hikanome’s event.

First and foremost was the pain. I could feel what I had done to my body last night as a low-level burning, scratchy sensation, not unlike a rash. Every place where a hair follicle had been removed and backfilled by new flesh was its own pixel of discomfort which together formed a high-resolution screen of itching and irritation, lighting up wherever my clothes pressed against my body.

That brought me to the second thing that sucked: Ebi had rinsed my bloody afterbirth off of me and taken me back to my room after I’d passed out, for which I was grateful, but overnight, my new skin had oozed more fluids, disgusting side-effects of the adjustment process as the polyps of replacement flesh made themselves at home in my meat-suit. I’d woken to find my sheets thoroughly soiled by bio-gunk of all sorts, sticky all over from a mixture of sweat and pus. The smell had been the worst part, so rank and oily that despite my inflamed skin’s sensitivity I had beelined for the shower to rinse all the horrible slime off my body, still only half-awake.

It was only when I stepped under the shower’s water that I remembered what my Flame had given me in exchange for my body hair. My wig was fused with my head and had changed color to a truly bizarre shade, a color between yellow blond and bright-orange ginger but somehow distinctly unnatural, too bright to appear on a regular human head. I’d had to reach out of the shower and fumble for the light switch to verify that it was merely a very bright color and not literally aglow. My scalp was actually one of the few places of my body that didn’t hurt from the aftermath of the blood magic.

Clothes sucked as well. No hoodie for me, not today—Alice had forced me into a button-down and slacks, plus a long coat that insulated from the cold well enough but still left me feeling overly exposed. A silver lining of our hurry to get me dressed and out the door was that I was spared the full lecture from Alice about the stupidity of what I’d done; she seemed relieved that my skin was merely red and inflamed rather than one giant burn scar, and I was subjected to only small mutterings about the shock of orange hair. She’d warned me that we had to talk about it later, but she needn’t have; I was already mulling it over by myself, silently gnawing on the ramifications as I was ushered into the waiting limo separately from the other two attending Radiances.

What exactly had happened, physiologically and magically speaking? Had my old hair under the wig gone poof, annihilated entirely? Had the Flame that had manifested the LM been permanently integrated into my body? The texture felt like real hair, as far as I could tell. Was it alive and growing? Was it magical in some way, other than the color?

We didn’t have time to test those things, but at least these weren’t entirely uncharted waters. Alice, too, had hair changed by her Flame. Then again, her shimmering, opalescent off-white was comparatively natural, some ways removed from how my body had incorporated a piece of magitech hardware. By some estimates, including Amane’s, that made me a cyborg. Ai, the resident authority on cybernetics, couldn’t be reached for comment, and her absence was another thing that sucked. She was still fast asleep by the time we were out the door, forbidden from being roused on Ebi’s orders. I was a little peeved that she got to sleep in and I still had to attend despite the fact that I was the one recovering from a full-body application of sanguimancy.

Amane: Think about it this way: you have little confidence in your appearance, but nobody will pay attention to your appearance other than the hair.

Ezzen: I guess, yeah.

Ezzen: Changes the first impression somewhat

Amane: For the better, I think.

Ezzen: I’m still nervous.

Amane: That’s normal!

I cringed a little at the non-sequitur detour into talking about my own feelings, but far less than I would have if this conversation were happening face to face. I hoped she wouldn’t mind.

Amane: What are you nervous about?

There was a lot—general social anxiety, the specific fear of screwing up etiquette, getting lost in the more benign cases or outright attacked or kidnapped in the more extreme ways things could go, fretting over my appearance. But vis-a-vis Amane…

Ezzen: It seems crazy that we’re splitting up.

Amane: We’re right in front of you.

Amane: And the bodyguards are good.

We were traveling in a little three-car motorcade, with Yuuka and Amane in the first, me—and Clipboard, who looked as nervous as I felt—in the second, and two more senior Todai staff in the rear, plus a driver and bodyguard in each car. The latter made me especially uncomfortable.

Ezzen: As meatshields?

That was a bit of a blunt way to say it, but accurately grim. If hostile flamebearers decided to attack our convoy, regular humans might as well be ants, and the cars around us effectively made of tissue paper.

Amane: They’re not that delicate. They have the same ward devices you do.

I was wearing a compression sleeve on my right arm, which manifested strong enough repulsion fields to turn away a blade or keep me from getting crushed if the car were to be rammed. More importantly, it also projected a sort of stability matrix across my body so that somebody couldn’t just pulp my insides remotely with magic. The armband itched incessantly against my still-raw skin. I couldn’t even scratch it properly, hidden under my shirt’s long sleeves, and it just made me feel more uncomfortable rather than safer. The Radiances had proper wards, high-power burst shields that made them near-invulnerable long enough to transition into their mantles. I had no such safety; most of my protection came in their assurances that there was nobody out to get us today.

This was supposed to be safe, diplomatic—even fun, from how I’d heard it described. Before the debacle with my hair, Alice had called it a mix of a traditional Japanese matsuri festival and a cookout. Yuuka had corroborated by calling it a “barbie;” I still didn’t know why her lingo was so Australian and had been dissuaded from asking by her demeanor—on that note, I also didn’t understand the sudden shift in her behavior at dinner yesterday. It had continued into this morning; she’d given me a begrudging compliment on the way down to the garage, when it had just been us three flamebearers in the elevator:

“You lost the stubble.”

“Huh? Yeah.”

“Was the right call. Tell me you didn’t choose that dye job, though.”

“I didn’t.”

“Good.”

I hadn’t known how to respond to that. It was an improvement from her outright hostility, but being in the dark about whatever had passed between the team was doing my anxiety no favors. Maybe it had something to do with Hina’s prolonged absence, but that itself sucked too. I could have used her confidence and energy today, and her sheer physicality would have gone a long way to settle my unease and feeling of nakedness. Also, some shameful part of me hoped she’d like the new hair—though it occurred to me that she might be disappointed that we’d not have another session of zapping away body hair.

I made an effort to steer my thoughts away from my girlfriend. Alice had assured me she was fine, and that was good enough. Regardless of the state of our relationship, I had bigger fish to fry today.

—

We felt Hikanome’s influence well before Yoyogi Park came into view. I’d been avoiding looking out the window, instead mulling over what little I knew of the cult and internally rehearsing the greetings we’d drilled, but a chance glance to the side of the road contained something amiss. The sidewalk was crowded with people walking the same direction we were driving; that wasn’t surprising given that the estimated attendance was to be at least three hundred thousand over the course of the day, but the attire seemed off. Some people were dressed in what I could identify as traditional Japanese garb, robes with thick belts and awkward-looking sandals, but many others seemed underdressed for the weather. T-shirts and crop tops abounded, and the longer I examined the crowd as we drove past, I began to pick out people who were entirely shirtless in the February cold, men and women alike. I averted my eyes before they could wander nippleward.

Ezzen: People are naked on the sidewalk.

Amane: They are!

Ezzen: A little cold for that, isn’t it?

Amane: In about thirty seconds, you’ll feel the air change.

Amane: Don’t panic and don’t worry about me.

As I read those messages, there was a burst of radio chatter between the drivers, and then I felt it. A sunny, suffusing warmth blossomed in my chest and spread outward, like the first rays of dawn on a summer morning except felt all the way through my body. What residual chill had crept into my limbs was chased away, melted and evaporated. Some of the pain across my skin lessened, too, the inflammation soothed by the warmth.

We’d just entered a field of red ripple the size of an entire neighborhood. At least, I assumed it was red; a magical effect stimulating the body’s thermoreceptive nerves to trick us into feeling warm seemed far more magically efficient than a blue-based effect that could actually warm the air at such a scale. More culty, too, a parlor trick to demonstrate their power while also dosing you with something that naturally felt good. I was naturally suspicious, and furthermore, if it was red ripple—

Ezzen: You okay?

Amane: 大丈夫

Amane: I told you not to worry.

Ezzen: …You did, didn’t you.

Ezzen: This is “good weather?”

Amane: It’s not red, so yes.

Ezzen: ??

Amane: Check the temperature on the dashboard.

I leaned sideways, trying to get around the driver’s seat in front of me, squinting.

“20 degrees,” Clipboard said, intuiting what I was trying to do.

“Thanks.”

The outdoor air temperature had gone from a proper wintry chill to a balmy, comfortable spring day in moments.

Ezzen: That’s impossible.

Amane: That’s Hikanome’s magic.

Ezzen: But it’s absurd.

I’d switched from the weather app to a calculator, trying to guess at some numbers in my head. Google said the park was 133 acres—538,000 square meters—and if the effect extended from ground level to, say, three meters in the air, that was far too high of a volume of air to heat by over ten degrees Celsius. It wasn’t just a matter of simple energy requirements; the blue ripple would compound into other physical effects, little ruptures and slips, bursts of kinematic irregularities that could rupture organs if they happened inside a person. And that was to say nothing of the challenge of keeping the intended effect equally distributed and not accidentally heating small sections to dangerous temperatures.

I relayed these findings to Amane.

Ezzen: They literally cannot be that powerful. The numbers don’t track.

Ezzen: There are only three flamebearers attending, right?

Amane: Yes. But your math is making a faulty assumption.

Amane: It’s white ripple, not blue.

I’m ashamed to say how badly that threw me for a loop. It presented an entirely different class of impossibility.

White ripple, like silver ripple, is special in that there are no glyphs that affect it; it is not a color that threads of Flame can be tuned to. It still occurs in nature, of course, and has always been closely associated with the Vaetna. That association led to a misconception that white ripple’s effect was “reality manipulation”, or “imposing one’s will on the world”, but I’d always considered that an unhelpful description. All colors of ripple did those things, defied what had formerly been understood about reality and replaced it with volition made manifest.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

In reality, white ripple was better described as “multiplicative” ripple, an X factor that boosted the influence of the other colors of ripple further than they ought to go in the quantities detected. This explanation made sense mathematically and was consistent with its detection around especially great happenings of magic, like infernos, flamefall, and some of the Vaetna’s most extreme acts.

All this was to say that:

Ezzen: An effect can’t solely be white ripple.

Amane: “And Yuuka can’t see silver,” I think you said.

Amane: Have an open mind. Don’t be like Ai.

Ezzen: Working on it.

Really, what unsettled me wasn’t that this flew in the face of my understanding of how magical effects were categorized. No, what bothered me was the idea that this cult was performing magic that I considered the Vaetna’s domain, something above the rest of our station, forces we shouldn’t meddle in. Whatever Hikanome were doing to create this effect flew in the face of the natural order, challenged the Spire’s supremacy in magic.

I didn’t like it at all.

—

I liked it even less when our convoy split. The Radiances had an actual entrance planned, one that I was sure I’d see Star posting about later. It involved them descending from the sky in full mantle, followed by a meet-and-greet. I wondered how Yuuka participated in such things. I could see Amane pulling it off, being smiley and personable, but if there was one thing I had in common with Yuuka, it was that we weren’t extroverts. Granted, for me, it was less about misanthropy and more about how imagining myself as the focus of attention in front of that many people made my stomach do acrobatics.

The point was that Todai had stipulated in the terms of my attendance that I did not have to engage in those celebrity theatrics, and that meant that I was going to enter the park separately from the Radiances. I and the important Todai people in the car behind me were going through the VIP entrance via a closed-off road, barriers and armed guards blocking passage behind us. Once the girls made their flashy entrance, they’d rejoin me, but seeing their car turn away from ours left me feeling very alone.

As the park came into view, my anxiety redoubled. I was entering the belly of the beast.

Yoyogi Park did not feel inviting. For all Hikanome’s impossible aura of pleasant temperatures could mimic the warmth of spring, the mostly barren trees weren’t so easily fooled. They stood dark against the hazy blue of the sky, a reminder of the chilly reality beyond the illusion. That should have been grounding and comforting, but there was a spindly quality to their branches overhead that felt like I was peeking out of a net.

The barriers and guards continued on our right as our reduced group drove further inward. On the other side of the dividing line, the veritable sea of people came back into view. They clustered around canopied tents. Pillars of smoke or steam wafted upward from every other tent, billowing past signs advertising flame-grilled skewers, fish, and even less stereotypically Japanese dishes like kebab and pizza. Food cooked with open flame was the traditional fare for special occasions for Hikanome and many cults like it. If it hadn’t been for the rain of the past few days, the entire event must have constituted a massive fire hazard, given the park’s wintry lack of lush greenery.

Tall braziers burning with magically colored flames designated different areas of the event and imposed some order on the chaotic press of underdressed people. These nearby tents with food were the green section; further away, near the larger pavilions and tents hosting the event’s main attractions and gathering spaces, I could see pink and blue. I had a map of the layout on my phone that explained the color coding, but I doubted I’d use it. As a VIP, there was no need for me to wriggle through sardine-packed crowds just for a few slices of overpriced kebab—we would get a proper reception lunch, possibly the only upside of the entire event.

I had high expectations. My childhood meals had often been the leftovers from truly lavish galas and balls, whatever remained of the thirteen-course meals Dad orchestrated for the rich and famous the previous weekend. It depended on the kind of event, of course. Sometimes, if he was serving art critics or gourmands or particularly picky tech moguls, it would be all jellies and purees, molecular gastronomy advertised not as food but as an experience; those didn’t usually make it to our fridge, either because they were hilariously small portions or became basically inedible ten minutes after serving. But when Dad catered larger events with more conventional fare, he’d bring home things that had made kid-Ezzen’s eyes shine: pieces of a whole spit-roasted pig, rich and creamy vegetable soups, five-cheese mac and cheese with crispy breadcrumbs on top—gourmet versions of kid food, essentially, and in such quantities that I could eat them all week long.

Of such things was childhood made. Pulling open the fridge to discover what delicious secrets it would hold this week was magical every time. Sometimes, on days when he was in the kitchen on the weekend, he’d show me the fancy ways to reheat everything for service—so it had been crushing to realize I’d never eat like that again. It had been a slow kind of grief, waking up in my grandparents’ house and checking the fridge to see shitty Tesco ready meals in place of portioned-out bins of roasted meats and vegetables and grandpa’s beers rather than soup. So, too, after I’d left that horrible, tiny house and moved into my apartment. Leftovers didn’t just make themselves, and I’d had neither the money nor the emotional strength to pick up where Dad had left off.

All this to say that even in the worst-case scenario for today, where we would be treated to some truly bizarre molecular gastronomy—unlikely given Hikanome’s propensity for flame-grilled food—I found myself excited to revisit some small, nostalgic fragment of my childhood, especially since I was dining on the dime of the same type of cult that had stolen my inheritance. There was a nice symmetry to it.

It was this tentative hope that gave me the courage to sit up straight and internally rehearse my greetings one last time as the car rolled to a stop. I’d been lost in thought for the final few minutes of our journey, but now we were here, parked on the grass under the spindly trees. All I had to do was respond when greeted and then shut up; Todai’s higher-ups in the other car were going to do the vast majority of the talking. After that, I could busy myself with eating. Hell, talking about the food was maybe the one line of conversation I felt prepared for. Easy enough. I turned from where I’d been idly staring out the window, looking at my pants and trying to get my unfamiliar cascade of red-gold hair to behave, wincing at the state of my skin. I rolled my right ankle experimentally, making sure the field of white ripple surrounding me wasn’t disrupting the stabilizer module’s function. Everything seemed in order.

“Um, are we getting out first?”

Clipboard didn’t respond. I looked over at him—

He was gone. My heart thudded in my chest as I realized that the driver and bodyguard in the front seat were also absent, and there was no second car behind mine. How had I not noticed them all vanish? Had it just happened moments ago or minutes? My tattoo itched, joined in chorus by the rest of my crawling skin as I realized I was alone in hostile territory. For once, I didn’t reject the impulse, summoning my spear onto my lap, the tip resting in the opposite corner of the footwell. I checked my phone—no signal. I was alone. I undid my seatbelt and scooted into the middle of the car, further from the doors, and looked out the windshield.

That answered one question—wherever I was, it wasn’t Yoyogi Park. Or rather, it still looked like the park, with the same trees in the same places, but it seemed as though it were the middle of summer; the trees were covered in vibrant leaves, and no skyscrapers rose above them in the distance. No throngs of people, either—indeed, nobody at all, except the three sitting on a simple plastic tarp in front of me. I was still awful at names and faces, but I’d bothered to commit these ones to memory. All three wore long, flowing white robes with fire-red trim. Hikanome’s flamebearers, the three I’d been expecting to meet.

A single empty pillow sat in front of them. An invitation.

This glade must have been the epicenter of the air-warming effect. Perhaps this was the true effect, and the warm air beyond was merely a byproduct, leakage from this bubble of contained reality where Hikanome’s leaders had spirited me away for a private audience. Or worse. They weren’t armed, but they didn’t need to be.

Leftmost was Kimura. He bore little resemblance to the picture the Radiances had shown me. There, he’d been a businessman with a receding hairline and a creased face, easily confused for millions of others in Japan. Before me, he looked more like a retired samurai, lounging in stately repose. He was a co-founder of the cult and complicit in what had happened to Amane. His robe was tightly closed.

Rightmost was Hongo. He was older than me by a few years, perhaps in his early thirties. He sat cross-legged, with his back straight, and had a big grin on his face that instantly reminded me of Hina. He was Hikanome’s diplomat and supposedly had a massive crush on Alice—or maybe specifically her tail. His robe was partially undone, slipping down below his shoulders.

Between them, a woman the same age as the Radiances sat with her legs folded below her. Miyoko, the cult’s high priestess. She wore a knowing smile, and her eyes were too piercing. Her robe was entirely undone, leaving her front bare—

I averted my eyes. Seriously, what was it with the toplessness? That hadn’t been in the notes on etiquette they’d given me.

That aside, I was now in a predicament. The three were talking, but all watching me, and I had no doubt they could see me as well as I could see them. Stay in the car? That hadn’t gone so well last time. And I was better prepared, this time. I took a deep breath and reached for my Flame, trying to find the strength it had given me when I’d struck Hina. But no dice—my Flame didn’t respond to the tug. As stressed as I was, I wasn’t angry as I’d been then, and besides, now was not the time to experiment with magical amping effects.

Nothing else to do. I swung open the left door and disembarked spear-first, wincing at how the motion chafed my raw skin, and watched the three warily. They watched me back. Hongo snorted.

“There’s no need for panic.”

I raised my spear. “I’m getting pretty tired of abductions.”

Kimura shook his head at that as though disappointed.

“Abducted?” Hongo scoffed. He spoke English fluently; I’d been told the others were also conversational. “This is a grand welcome! Who do you take us for? The PCTF? Todai’s rabid fox? We’re giving you a greeting worthy of your status, and you draw a blade. Put that away and let us speak together.” He spread his arms.

I didn’t move. “What happened to the people I was traveling with?”

“They’re meeting with their equals,” Kimura replied. He had the voice of a smoker, gravelly, but also softer than I had expected, as though speaking to a frightened animal. “So are you.”

“My equals.” Flamebearers above humans, a near-universal belief among these cults. “I’m free to leave?”

“Yes.”

Hongo rolled his eyes. “Or you could come over here so we can get a good look at you. We don’t bite.”

They had a point; if they wanted to hurt me, it would have already happened. I begrudgingly banished my spear and took a hesitant step toward them, then found my gait and closed the distance, still trying not to look at Miyoko’s chest. I sat awkwardly on the empty pillow, calling up the greetings I’d learned. I bowed my head.

“Um—hajimemashite. Watashi wa—”

All three of them sighed. “Don’t bother.”

“Er. Alright?”

“English is fine. Give us your name,” Hongo urged.

I squinted at him, remembering Ebi’s joke toward Hina about cold iron. They’d already demonstrated that their magic operated outside the rules I knew; it was possible they operated on fae logic and could steal my name if I gave it. This isolated glade was adding to that impression, and I glanced around, wondering if perhaps we were encircled by mushrooms. Why hadn’t I been briefed on this? As for my name, just to be safe—

“Ezzen. Ezzen Colliot. An honor to meet you all.” I bowed my head again, surprised at my own comfort with the courtly affect. “I apologize for drawing my weapon. I had not been informed of this exclusive reception.” I raised my head, attempting to shift my eye contact between the three. “I greet you, priests of the Light.”

Hongo nodded approvingly. “Greetings.”

Kimura nodded more carefully. “Welcome.”

At last, Miyoko spoke as well. Her voice was soft and delicate. “Hello, Ezzen of the Spire.”

That made me stumble. “Huh?”

Hongo nodded again. “I didn’t take you for a believer.”

“Wait, no, go back to the other thing.” I pointed at Miyoko, momentarily emboldened to ignore the nipples. “Of the Spire?”

“That was a Vaetna’s greeting you gave.”

I frowned, then reddened as realization dawned. I had felt comfortable saying it like that because I had been quoting—specifically Heung’s first appearance before the UN.

“And you carry a black-tipped spear,” Hongo continued. “Well met, little Heron.”

“I—no, I’m just a fan—” I felt like I was going to implode, yet I couldn’t help but glow at the comparison. “Thanks, but I’m not the real thing.”

“You’re blessed,” Kimura said surprisingly softly. “The real thing is the real thing. Your hair is beautiful.”

“…Thanks?” The use of the word blessed reminded me that I was dealing with a Flame cult. “It was an accident, not a blessing, and I’m not a believer.”

“Ah, the skeptic engineer type,” Hongo sighed, shifting where he sat. “Like Miss Matsumoto, putting divinity in boxes. What do you think of her? Brainy, isn’t she?”

“Ai is one of the kindest people I’ve ever met,” I shot back, a little wrong-footed by the question.

“Ah.” Kimura’s voice was still soft. “He doesn’t know. You are a he, yes?”

I blinked, even more off-kilter now. “I…yes. What do I not know, exactly?”

“If the lovely dragon didn’t see fit to tell you,” Hongo said, “then neither will we. Has she been good to you?”

I couldn’t see an angle behind this line of questioning, so I hedged. “They did what anybody with the means should have done. I’m grateful.”

“And yet it was them, not the Vaetna. We’ve been wondering why. Haven’t you?”

Ah. I saw the angle. “Whatever their reasoning, I’m sure it was—and is—sound.”

“Of course, of course.” He dismissed the topic with a wave of his hand. “The Spireborn are always justified. But I’d still like to know the reason they abandoned you.”

I gritted my teeth.

“They didn’t abandon me.”

“Don’t torment him,” Miyoko breathed. She leaned forward, spreading her hands slowly on the tarp, watching the plastic crinkle under her palms. The sound made me realize how silent and still this place was; no animals, not even the wind. Against the silence, her quiet voice suddenly seemed loud. “Hongo-san is being uncivil, but there is truth in his words. Strangeness surrounds your Flame, things that do not fit. Twice-touched, being left for the fox instead of taken, the yari kara no kaminari. I did not call you of the Spire for your weapon—you glow like the Vaetna do. Do you not feel it?”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you were chosen,” Kimura said. “We are all chosen by the Light, but you were chosen by the Vaetna.”

That was exciting to hear, but something about this felt off. I reminded myself to be suspicious of any kind of ‘chosen one’ narrative when it came from a trio of fey cult leaders. Alice had told me it was in their interest to make me feel special so they could search for information.

But there were things I couldn’t explain, questions I had no way of answering. Maybe this was connected to why my Flame had a voice—not that I’d tell them that part, if I could avoid it.

“Why would they choose me and then actively avoid me?”

“Maybe you were meant to be taken by the PCTF, as a trojan horse, and the fox’s interference was unforeseen,” Hongo pointed out. “But, as we established, the Vaetna don’t make mistakes.” He grinned.

“They might have,” I admitted. It felt wrong to be the one searching for fault in the Vaetna’s actions. “If that were true.”

“Enough speculation,” Miyoko interrupted, still looking down at her hands. “What is true is that your father was the first to ever join with the Flame.”

“I don’t know about first ever,” I hedged.

“But he was among the first. In an…inferno. What a terrible word.”

“He died. Horribly,” I added, my good humor evaporating. “My grandparents were convinced to give up my inheritance by people like you saying it was a good thing that he burned to death. I’ve long since run out of patience for it.” I bristled, reaching for the formal patterns of speech again. “Respectfully, I find these questions invasive and insensitive.”

Miyoko’s head jerked upward. Her eyes pierced me. Now that I was closer, I saw what was wrong about them; as her head moved, the hazel of her eyes stayed fixed, as though I were peeking through her irises at something behind. I shuddered.

“I do not bring it up lightly, Ezzen of the Spire. We are no pretenders.” She spat the word, straining her voice with disdain. “My Light can reach even the dead.”

“Bullshit. Every supposed ‘necromancer’ in the past seven years has been proven to be a fraud,” I countered. “Even your Blue Spark person.”

Both of the men bristled, but were spoken over by Miyoko’s quiet tones.

“Not necromancy. I cannot bring them back. I cannot even give them a voice. But I can show you.” She leaned further forward, bowing to me. “You are twice-touched, alone of your kind. The first may inform the second. I would ask your father’s spirit to show us what happened to him.”