The next few days only intensified that impression.

Dubious vegetable hand-pies became one of the basic memories Denziu thought zie would have for the rest of zir life, or at least the next couple of centuries, about Keltia-Aneya. Lorma had an annual contract with the local bakery and came back with a packed crate of pies. They were a convenient food and she loved them dearly. The vashael in the caravan could eat them on the walk. The vrash needed stop only for a moment. They fueled their walking by snacking on those pies.

As improbably massive trees blocked the sky over the roadway, they were constantly making random turns and even doubling back. That was the other memorable thing about mystic Keltia-Aneya. To step from the road was to be lost. A tree or two could be shouldered aside, and several times they unhooked from their wagons to collectively shove aside trees, but a road that suddenly ceased to be was nothing they could safely walk on. Going off-road was strictly forbidden. Keltia-Aneya was a theome where nobody could safely explore.

They posted no watches, but in the nights stayed up singing songs. There were no bandits in the woods, and the land god was the only monster in Keltia-Aneya. Choave sang again, and the most memorable of his songs was "Kairjel the Light-Bringer," about an exploring kalla - one of the strong-shanked thunderbirds - who learned to summon light without the thundering noise of kalla lightning calling and became a symbol of liberation in some far theome whose name Denziu had never heard before.

Kishka the Runepainted stood to sing as well, and proved a worthy balladeer singing of a travellers' longing to return to civilization, though the content was three days bleak. Denziu liked the song, but it lost the wilder dragons Omrezen and Mosdrao. They were shoving their shoulders at each other in the middle of it, grunting with the contest, and Kishka almost lost the tune when Mosdrao eventually slipped and crashed to the ground with an ‘oof’. There were some rumbling laughs and a dirty look from Kishka, and he waveringly picked up again where he’d left off to finish the last two verses.

When Kishka’s song stopped, Omrezen and Mosdrao stood, but quite abruptly so did Sharisen. The white vashael glared at them and said, “Oh, you two are going to sing a duet?”

They glanced at each other uneasily.

Sharisen’s glare did not relent. “Go on. Right in front of all of us, then. You know that’s what’s safe here.”

Omrezen and Mosdrao sat back down again.

Sharisen showed her teeth. “Good. Now I’ll give you something rare.”

Sharisen the Sociable took Kishka’s place in the centre of the circle, and there was a great excited bustle from the group as they all wondered what their ‘most sociable’ caravanner might possibly be about to perform for them. After a long period in which she took deep breaths and repeatedly gestured for silence, culminating in her clawing sharply at the air in Kishka’s direction when he said, “Well go on already,” , she finally started reciting a poem.

It turned out to be a long, bitter poem about the ill wisdom of eternal social lives and the inevitability of hatred, punctuated by claw-slashing gestures and horrid, grinning reminders that they were all mortal-after-all whenever the dragons in the poem fought each other. Sharisen seemed to enjoy the bloody parts of the poem.

When the performance was done and everyone had politely applauded, Denziu asked, “How old are you really?”

Sharisen raised her head proudly. “I am a first generation primordial. I was made when Theoma was made. Want to know exactly how many years old our world is?”

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“Yes!” Denziu leaned in avidly.

“Too bad. Ask someone else. But so far, I’m not mortal. Learn from me.” Chuckling, Sharisen went back to a place around the campfire and let someone else be the entertainment again.

Mosdrao of Jiasote and Omrezen the Hunter had both sung for the group before, but they did not sing that night. Nobody glared at them on the other two nights, but they still seemed in moods too sour to sing. Mosdrao largely would not talk, but struck bitterly at a few of the trees. "I believe exploring should be possible," he said when Denziu had twice caught him at this, "But the land god of Keltia-Aneya kills almost everyone who tries!"

For her part, Omrezen asked on the second night, "What use is a forest where no hunters may ply their trade at all?" and this at least sparked a bit of a debate around the campfire after Lorma suggested, "Maybe the land is better to the animals than it is to the hunters."

Although Omrezen's response was a bitter, "Who cares about the animals!" there was enough interest around the campfire that Lorma went on to say that Keltia-Aneya was a different forest every time they visited, and the land god of Keltia-Aneya seemed to govern whole worlds of forests. It was perhaps an excellent place for animals to have animal Fates in, untouched by road-walkers such as they. At length Lorvaza, fingering a fate-charm, said, "I wonder if we are not all animals to the land gods."

That second night, when everyone else had gone to sleep, Denziu found zirself unable to follow them. After a while, zie sat up, and noticed at once that there was someone else sitting up as well. Kishka! He had his gaze up to the sky.

Denziu stepped across the camp to zir fellow beige-scaled vashael. “Can’t sleep?” zie asked in a whisper.

Kishka silently pointed upwards, and Denziu realised there was a break in the massive canopy over the road. They could see stars from where they were.

Denziu whispered, “Something about them?”

“Different stars,” Kishka whispered back. “Not our stars.”

Denziu stared at the stars with Kishka for a while, and then went back to try and sleep again, disquieted.

That third day of travel in Keltia-Aneya, Kishka took the place next to Denziu in the column of the caravan. Ekis travelled in Kishka’s usual place up front next to Choave. “Want to talk about stars?” asked Denziu.

Kishka said, “Yes, and I realised we haven’t talked much on this trip.”

Denziu asked, “How have you memorised enough of the sky to know from that little glimpse through the trees that the stars of Keltia-Aneya aren’t the stars of Theoma?”

“I’m a traveller by trade,” said Kishka. “Like Mosdrao, but he loves the wild. I seek civilization. Either way, when one flies far enough, celestial navigation comes in handy.”

“You’ve been all over Theoma, then?”

Kishka shook his head. “No, not all over it. I’ve been all over Tachamund, Kelkaith, and Western Ormeri though, as well as the civilized parts of Kanjamund.”

Denziu asked, “What do you seek in your travels?”

Kishka smiled. “Some of it has just been for my own joy, but for most of it… I am always a merchantgon. I work with multiple caravans, flying ahead of them and negotiating terms. I start work on this caravan well before we set out.”

“Do you join the other caravans like you join this one?”

“No. Choave is a great friend of mine; I am not otherwise a haulergon. I spend the rest of the year on the wing, negotiating so that haulergons keep busy.”

They walked on in silence for a while, until Denziu asked, “What do you think is going on with Keltia-Aneya’s stars?”

“I am not suicidal enough to test my thoughts with exploration,” said Kishka, “but I think that this theome connects to other worlds entirely! Worlds of forests, with nothing but a few roadways carved through them.”

Denziu said dubiously, “Surely there would be more dangerous wild animals.”

Kishka took a deep breath, and huffed a roiling fireball into the air over the road. The unexpected flame drew cries of surprise from the caravan, and then everyone was listening in. Kishka said, “More dangerous than dragons? The land gods create such challenges sometimes, as in Ayadaro, but in most forests on Theoma there are no animals that would challenge a dragon. I think Keltia-Aneya is an exit from Theoma. Dragons who grow sick of ‘civilization’ may come here to live in an endless, bounteous wild, but then they may never return.”