Nidrio was a marvel of forested mountains. Endlessly verdant, the landscape had been worked by Praoziu as though with the intention of pressing everything near the snowline and then cutting short the mountains so that they did not crest the snowline. Nidrio's mountains did not get tall enough to kill the trees. Thus its rolling hills and valleys were forests upon forests, broken only by the canyon of a river and the great lake into which it fed.

There was a drama to the escarpments of Nidrio and to its high narrow paths which called out for a paintergon to immortalise them, but never to Aleicree's knowledge had it been done. Before she met Taisach, the land god Praoziu had protected the beauty of her land in a dark way. What a redemption story it was! Perhaps an as-yet incomplete redemption, seeing as the population of Nidrio was still so small. A century later, Praoziu's reputation as a killer had only begun to fade.

Here where tree roots broke the stone, zir sibling Denziu 'the Clayseller' had learned the secrets of perfect growing soil, a fruit of Praoziu's garden that would keep fed the region, while Aleicree had become 'the Windlost' and marvelled at the weather. Zie had felt secrets of the weather known to few, such as how the many trees of Nidrio raised up the water to the sky, exhaling their invisible harvest of moisture from the soil.

Zie sought Praoziu’s home, one of the few artificial structures in the theome. The only other was Denziu's.

There! High up where the forest grew sparse, a white spire rose three stories tall. The spire bloomed into a broad platform with an entire house built up over it. At its base was more house underneath the platform. Just out of the shade of the platform grew two strips of garden. Praoziu's home could expand without limit if she willed it to, but this was its shape for years now. It was not so large for a land god. Aleicree had been born here, though as this home was too isolated to be healthy for young minds, much of zir upbringing had been in neighbouring Denxalue.

The three siblings born of Praoziu and Taisach were all celebrated in their mother's home, and Aleicree looked forward to getting there as a form of homecoming. Zie expected to have a far better meal than the pottage of the night before. Praoziu did not cook, but served strange meals from other worlds, featuring such things as strangely flavoured pastes, meats with overpowering sauces that they could try nowhere else, and sweet dense food bars whose varied textures defied description. She assured her children that these were all perfectly nutritious in moderation. She had even once implored Taltios to visit and eat with her more often, for a diet of staple farm produce could be missing nutrients that Praoziu's odd, summoned foods amply supplied.

Zie wondered if Taisach would have visitors. He seemed almost a recruiter for Nidrio, so tireless was he in reaching out to dragons in the nearby theomes and encourage them to come to Praoziu's house. She appreciated those who were not trying to wheedle geomantic advantages from her, and so often a visit home was an event of meeting someone unusual who Taisach had drawn in to admire Nidrio.

Aleicree alighted upon the upper platform and spared a moment to turn and admire the view from it zirself. Zie had seen it many times yet always appreciated, for this was an ancient rolling forest in the mountains that had been tended to a hidden 'natural' perfection. It was too perfect to disturb. So much so that, as Aleicree turned to walk to the door and step inside, zie wondered if this was part of what scared away visitors. Who could disturb this place of beauty by something so crass as to build in it?

There was a tile path through the entryway, but the first room of the house sprawled to the side of the door. It was a lounge room with a unmarrable wooden floor that cleaned and repaired itself from any insult. It had once been a playroom for Taltios, Denziu, and Aleicree. Now it was a comfortable place next to the balcony where dragons could gather and rest on either the two chaise lounges or the piles of pillows that littered the floor here.

The furnishings like the floor were undirtiable; everything in this household was under Praoziu's tight control. It looked a little strange to Aleicree's trained geomantic senses. Zir amicus breeze orbited in a regularised parody of its usual friendly drifting. The very air zie breathed was locked in its patterns by Fate bindings. Aleicree could not become this air. Zie had childhood memories of trying, and exploring Praoziu's Fateweaving rather than the weather.

There was no question of, "Where is Praoziu?" For in this house, she was everywhere. Aleicree had met zir mother in spirit even while zie flew over the mountains of Nidrio, and would find Praoziu incarnate in due time.

A better, more interesting question: "Where is Taisach?" Aleicree wasn't strictly sure that Taisach would be 'in'. He had no business anymore other than to represent Praoziu in other theomes and so was technically a henotheistic geomancer now. Henotheism was unusual among geomancers. It meant being dedicated to one land god. Part of recruiting others to Nidrio was to travel to meet them, so that at any given time the house might be empty. Zir father wasn't currently entertaining a guest in the lounge, yet Aleicree had a sense that Taisach's Fate was presently near to zir own, and so continued searching the house intending to greet him.

After peeking into many rooms and climbing down the stairs of the spire, Aleicree peered into the door to the workshop in the lower house, where Praoziu and Taisach often tinkered with a scale model of a populated future Nidrio, struggling to create a city plan so gorgeous that it would draw dragons in to fulfil it. Praoziu was not as talented with this as some of the other land gods, and in any case was fickle and uncertain for that she loathed to start giving up the verdant perfection outside. The model proceeded occasionally by commissioned art from sculptors willing to provide urban designs.

The shelves were full of sculptures made for proposed or abandoned plans. A grand central table housed a display of the hills of Nidrio with the current design built up atop it.

It was by this that Aleicree found Taisach. He was a great orange vashael with large fins who wore a humble brown vest. Upon the tails of the vest was an abstract symbol like red petals on two red lines, the higher of which curled around to form a spiral of one revolution. He had golden eyes, as had most of the family; Praoziu had that trait as well and had given it to Denziu and Taltios, though Aleicree's eyes were inexplicably green.

Zie would have rushed forward to hug Taisach at once, but zie saw that he was presently in discussion with another dragon, a vashael with deep green stripes on a light green back and a beige underbelly. By scent and voice, Aleicree knew the other dragon to be female. The two stood reviewing the scale model of the current theoretical future of Nidrio.

"I get a lot of praise for these designs, but I can't get anyone to commit," said Taisach.

"It's difficult to justify uprooting one's life to move to a strange new place. Especially one where someone might be moving alone," said the unknown dragon.

Rather than interrupt their meeting by sudden affection, Aleicree stepped forward to the table and tried to enter Taisach's field of view demurely.

Taisach startled on seeing zir. "Aleicree!" he said, his surprise turning to a smile. Then with a gesture to the other dragon in the room, who was presently turning to look at Aleicree, Taisach added, "This is Qianjek, an architect I've recently met. Qianjek, meet my daughter Aleicree."

Qianjek moved towards Aleicree and held a hand out which zie clasped momentarily. Qianjek said, "Pleased to make your acquaintance." With that, they stepped back from each other. "Your father has been telling me about Nidrio's bright future as a planned community."

"Of course," said Aleicree. "This theome will always be beautiful."

Yet Aleicree thought, somewhat guiltily, does Nidrio really have a bright future? For it had been decades in which Taisach had tended his garden and his network of friends in the region (mostly Denxalue, which was the theome of his birth), and nobody had moved in to Nidrio. It remained a beautiful verdant theome with a moist clime, unnaturally fertile soil, and only one family enjoying it.

Taisach's voice interrupted Aleicree's thoughts as he said, "How’ve been the voyages of the Serene Chordalite?"

Aleicree reached into zir pouch then and withdrew two letters. These zie offered to Taisach, one addressed to him and the other addressed to Denziu. He took them from zir hand. "I have kept you up to date I think," zie said, "But the short of it is that I am still blessed to have a job where I can use my talents every day."

"So you still won't think of moving back here?" asked Taisach. He asked every time. "You'd have so much support from Praoziu, you know. As a geomancer, your position could hardly be better." That went a little farther.

'I'm not really a geomancer', Aleicree was tempted to say, but it was too sad a sentiment. Zie couldn't finish putting the words together, but raised zir brow in slack sorrow and looked towards the model on the table to hide the severity of zir response.

"I think Captain Kagnir needs me," zie said, but it was an excuse. Zie was so accustomed to zir duties that zie needed take no orders, but merely followed wordlessly behind the navigator's till, and so hardly thought of the captain on an ordinary day.

It worked though, and Aleicree wondered if Taisach assumed that there was some private matter, for he said nothing else on the subject, but said instead to Qianjek, "I can't even get my own children to move back to Nidrio. Only Denziu chose to build a house here."

"Strange. You don't seem like such bad company," said Qianjek with a jesting tone and a smile.

"Glad you think so!" said Taisach. Qianjek and Taisach resumed their discussion then, and Aleicree listened in quietly as they discussed this hilltop or that hilltop, this valley or that valley, the riverside or the coast of the large, nameless lake. They seemed to be talking about which bit should be used first if there were only to be a few dragons taking an interest at the start, and Aleicree got the sense that Taisach must have had some success, for they kept returning again and again to the number of twenty-one settlers. Did Taisach have twenty-one dragons agreeing to move here if twenty other dragons did it? Zie did not ask, but wondered quietly while the conversation moved on without zir.

The model city on the table was made of skillfully carved bits of stonework set into mountains of faux-earth from which rose also an illusory forest that swayed in the amicus breezes of the three vashael in the room. 'There is so much artwork in our society', thought Aleicree, losing the thread of the conversation in distraction of seeing Taisach's own favourite artwork on the table. 'Dragons have such time in lives unending, and they master their skills in that excess. Yet what art can I produce? None at all. For I was born of Denxalue, a muddy place where dragons spend their free time studying mud pits, and only Denziu has ever made a career of that,' Aleicree thought. 'I'm too much like my homeland. That's why I have to stay a seagon.'

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That zie spent zir days bound to the deck weighed on zir then, for it was so similar to laying in a mudpit in Denxalue... with more bodily aches from being in an uncomfortable position. For a brief, weird moment the fantasies collided and Aleicree imagined laying in a tub of mud upon the deck of the Serene Chordalite, but zie soon sighed and abandoned the thought with a rub at zir head.

Praoziu arrived then, and Aleicree was a little disappointed that she did not manifest from the very air around them, but came in through the door of the room like anyone else would. Praoziu was a silver-scaled, wingless individual with cloven hooves, a thin build, and a shaggy white mane that stretched from between her horns to the tip of her tail. Her helical horns were thickly covered in flowering vines, and a knotted string bracer held a tripartite swirl on her right foreleg.

Where zie had been politely reserved towards Taisach, this time Aleicree did bound forward to nuzzle affectionately at Praoziu, a brief gesture that would have been outright hugging if not for Qianjek's presence in the room. "Mom!" zie said

Praoziu was even less restrained, embracing Aleicree openly. "Welcome home," she said, and after a moment longer of holding on she let go of Aleicree to look at Qianjek and Taisach. "I've readied a meal in the downstairs dining room. You're welcome to join," she said with a nod to Qianjek.

The downstairs dining room was a nearly adjoining room, down only a short length of hallway, for this was where zir mother and father took their meals when they were working on the model room together.

It turned out to be a fairly prosaic meal, with the entree of it formed of a cheesy broccoli and fried onion dish, and there was enough meat served sliced and fried upon the table for each of them to claim a side of it. The dishes spoke of relatively easy preparation, but there was no kitchen attached to the downstairs dining room; being a land god, Praoziu simply summoned dishes when she was entertaining guests. Yet she rarely summoned anything truly exotic for visitors, saving the stranger dishes for her family. That rule held this day as well. After previously summoning to mind memories of stranger foods, Aleicree was disappointed to not try anything more otherworldly than cheese melted onto broccoli and onions.

Zir parents sat at adjacent places at the table, so close that Taisach put a wing over Praoziu as they ate.

Qianjek ate heartily, but took an interest in Praoziu, who was using levitating implements to eat. "I have never shared a meal with a land god," said Qianjek. "Do you gain anything from eating?"

"Sensation alone," said Praoziu. "The meal is of my substance already."

Taisach saluted her with a strip of fried meat. "Your substance is delicious, my love," he said.

She giggled and shoved at him. "Praise it as meat, not as me!"

"This meat is delicious," said Aleicree dutifully. Zie did mean it. The meat was delicious. It was chewy and flavourful, and could not have been fried better nor could it have come from a fresher source. As a summoned food, it had never been part of any animal, but had come into existence just for their meal.

Qianjek must have still been thinking of the question she asked, for she said, "Sensation is a kind of gain, though I think some land gods must forgo it. I am from Tulneras in the north of here, you know. It is rather impossible to imagine Dessor joining a meal like this."

Praoziu nodded along to this, and Taisach responded with a mild 'aye'.

These reactions made sense, for Dessor was... Aleicree's thoughts halted. Which land god was that? There were so many, and zie felt even worse as a geomancer to not know one in zir own region, but zie did not.

"What is Dessor like?" zie asked.

Qianjek set down her fork and lifted her hands, then spread them and said, "Whoosh! A blazing column of burning letters!" Laughing, she sat down again. "That's Dessor. Nobody sees him except in emergencies."

"He does live without sensation," said Praoziu. "I have eyes as you have eyes, but Dessor has no eyes at all."

Aleicree perked up at that. "Mom, I'm not sure it should be characterised as without sensation. Dessor sees the way I see when I'm doing wind meditation, right? There's a lot of sensation there. It's like 'being' everything and everywhere."

"You have a gift, Aleicree," said Praoziu. "There are many windmages who can 'be' the wind and sense nothing but a great mass of air."

Aleicree looked down at the table. "They're the ones with a gift. Those windmages can 'be' the wind without closing their eyes."

"But they are not 'being' everywhere and everything," said Praoziu.

"Oh my shrines," blurted out Qianjek, and Praoziu's gaze lifted sharply towards her. "If any of my relatives take up geomancy, I am going to tell them to come here and ask for nothing."

"For nothing?" asked Taisach in bright confusion.

"Ah hah hah hah haaa!" The green dragon Qianjek threw her head back in laughter, and when she came down from the momentary giddiness she said, "The conversation alone is golden insight!"

"I admit, I am charmed by dragons who come here asking for nothing," said Praoziu.

"That's how I did it!" Taisach said.

"You underrate your other charms, my love," said Praoziu.

'You stole him from other futures,' thought Aleicree, but zie didn't say it aloud. Something about who Taisach would have been without Praoziu was likely what endeared him to her. Aleicree could not see as a land god, zie knew, for zie saw only one present moment shifting forward a second per second, like everyone else. Dessor and Praoziu and almost all of the land gods saw a splintering vast future of many possibilities. Somewhere in those possibilities Taisach had proven himself to Praoziu so completely that she forgave him his trespass in her sacred forest.

It was a good meal, and good conversation, and despite feeling self-conscious of zir poor skill at geomancy Aleicree was glad to be home. When the food Praoziu had summoned was gone, she bent her rule of summoning only prosaic things in honour of good company, and passed around the table four cylindrical cookies wrapped in an unknown material that evaporated as they sliced it with their claws. Qianjek tried to extract the cookie from the wrapping without damaging it, and could not find a way to do it, so that even the fourth cookie's wrapping evaporated when Qianjek cut it. The cookies themselves were minty and bittersweet, formed of a dark brown substance pocked with craters of light green; Praoziu said they were 'chocolate with mint chips'.

After the meal, Qianjek departed. Aleicree didn't know what part Qianjek played in Taisach's future plans, and quietly suspected zie would never see her again. Many of their visitors were rare returnees, or at least zie thought. Zir father didn't talk of his friends much in his letters, and was a brief writer in general. Aleicree's visits home occurred every time the Serene Chordalite docked in Griolor, and often overlapped with someone-or-other visiting but rarely with the visit of anyone who had visited before.

Unless the matter of "21 settlers" meant Taisach had achieved a breakthrough, Aleicree still had the impression that zir mother and father were facing no success in their attempts to recruit settlers to Nidrio. Zie suspected Praoziu was being very picky as only a land god can: by manipulating the threads of Fate that filled the future of Nidrio.

With such little rest the night before, Aleicree was planning to head back so zie could sleep at the ship at Griolor when Taisach pulled up after her in a corridor.

"Hey," he said. "I worry about your ship, you know." He had also said as much in their correspondence. His letters were to-the-point and occasionally repetitive.

"We're not going to sink, Dad." Aleicree turned to face Taisach. "We run a regular route around Tachamund. We're in home waters. We have three shift coverage of windmages."

"There are always rogue waves," pressed Taisach.

Aleicree shook zir head. "Only if you upset the land gods of the sea," zie asserted.

"What if your captain learns of some exotic treasure and decides to go for new cargo? I've met Captain Kagnir." Taisach held his arms wide. "He wasn't always content to run a supply route."

"Do you want me to pledge to desert if the ship goes anywhere new?" Aleicree's voice flattened with a heavy strangeness. Am I offering that sincerely? zie asked zirself.

Taisach gave zir a thousand yard stare. After a moment, he sighed. "Sailing is... very dangerous. Often nobody knows what happens when ships are lost. It's such a threat to immortality. You could even be attacked by pirates."

Aleicree resisted the urge to snort at that, but held zir expression politely steady. Yes, it was a real concern. There were corsairs who hadn't run out their Fate and corsairs who had broken from Fate with necromancy. Neither were common and the Serene Chordalite had fought none, but both existed. He was worried about unknown threats, too. It was frustrating to face him on this.

"You're dissatisfied with the reassurances in my letters," Aleicree said.

"I am." Taisach nodded, then looked at Aleicree with a grave expression on his snout. "Nidrio is here for you, you know. If you ever move back to land, we could build you a palace. Remember that."

Aleicree sighed and shook zir head. "A palace yes, but where would I work? Would I then tend my palace gardens and sell produce in Denxalue?" Scepticism was laved in heavily to zir tone, for zie wasn't willing to be a farmergon. The contrast of fine lodgings and menial labour held no appeal. It was just silly to have a palace as a poor farmergon.

Taisach didn't have an answer. He lived in a beautiful house, and tended a garden at its base as his only formal employ. Aleicree had struck right at zir dad's lifestyle with disdain. The challenge weighed on him so much that he touched the floor with his hands, falling into a lower stance than most vashael ever travelled in. For some moments the two stood facing each other still, but then Taisach shook his head and walked away.

They parted on that note, mutually discouraged, and Aleicree went away thinking about the possibility that Nidrio represented.

If zie wanted only a palace to make the move, Praoziu's determination to keep the landscape sublime would see one built to ensure their mutual happiness. Praoziu would be miserable if zie asked for a hut! Yet the happiness of the palace dweller was an arrogant one, and zie was not interested in it.

How strange it would be, for zie would certainly still have some menial position. There was nothing to do in Nidrio, which had only Denziu and Taisach living in it. Was Taisach’s offer meant to place zir as the first member of a community of humble farmergons, every one of them dwelling in a grand palace? Could it be imagined? It was surely ridiculous. To move to Nidrio risked being given every ridiculous thing, and Aleicree thought it intolerable.

As for professions other than farmergon... Well, who would ever cut stone in Nidrio, if Praoziu would summon stone in bulk? There was meaning to the toils of the labourers in Theoma, a pleasure in tackling great jobs in great health and accomplishing much. If Taisach was offering a palace, then Praoziu had not yet learned to create the kind of paradise of diligence that Fate could uphold. She was... inexperienced, thought Aleicree. My mother is an inexperienced land god, zie thought again, stunned to have had it occur to zir mind.

Zie was in the air by then, and flapped to adjust zir course, for every minor upset was magnified greatly by the flowing wind even with a vashael's amicus breeze. It was an hour's flight back to Griolor, and zie spent that flight wondering if there was some way zie could help zir mother. Instead of building palaces from the air, what could they create as a kind of paradise for a single stonecutter, then thereafter build with labour, at the pace of their stoneworkers?

These thoughts occupied Aleicree for the entire flight back to Griolor, but zie made no headway in them.