On the eleventh day, a heavy rain hit the house of Vrekant. There had been light rains throughout the week, but hardly anything worth noticing upon the scales of a dragon. Then suddenly there was a rain that cut visibility with winds that made flight perilous. The whole sky was frightfully dark. Vrekant stayed home that day, and recommended that Limist and Azosta do likewise. They refused, saying they needed to keep their contracts on schedule, since they weren't going to be here long and had to finish everything up on time.

When they had departed, Aleicree looked to Vrekant and asked, "How can weather like this happen if the weather is managed by windmages?"

"I don't know why," said Vrekant, standing near a window and listening to the heavy rain. "I don't know why," he repeated, "But overcontrolled weather occasionally breaks. Too much magic in any theome causes occasional weather breaks, too."

"I've only seen farmergons so far," said Aleicree.

Vrekant said, "Sorjek is famous for its reckless use of magic. The local land god encourages the local magic academies. A lot of magic items are produced here. They're a major export. The necromantic academy is particularly famed, they train ghosts. Ghosts are like living magic."

“I really wonder what Dylori looked like inside of his core,” said Aleicree.

Vrekant shook his head. “There’s nothing to see. Dylori’s true form is invisible and intangible. His core’s interior is just full of oil and levers.”

“Why oil?” asked Aleicree.

“So the levers don’t stick.” Vrekant sighed and pulled over one of the roughspun cushions to sit down on it. “Anyways, I was saying about ghosts, they also cause weather breaks when they congregate. The weather can get worse than this. Sometimes necrotic decay rips through the theome on the wind, undeterred by physical objects."

Aleicree leaned in, staring at Vrekant. "How do dragons survive that?"

"In small doses, necrotic decay only causes aches and pains. A bit of withering. It heals. Idsemper - our land god - is doing his best." Vrekant gave a wan smile. "The worst losses are usually to perishable goods."

"Is that why you only have what's in season?" asked Aleicree.

Vrekant looked up at zir with widened eyes. "Well spotted," he said, smiling. "That's exactly it. There was a necrotic windstorm a few days before your arrival. The wind blew right through the walls without touching them, and everywhere things shrivelled."

Aleicree pulled up another of the cushions and sat next to Vrekant, by the window. "How is your garden intact?"

"I rushed into the storm to meditate in my garden. I went right out into the whirling blackness." Vrekant tipped his head back. "It worked, but my larder perished instead."

"Would it be better to not have weather magic in this theome?"

Vrekant waved a hand as though to bar the way. "Certainly not. The weather would break even more. The real problem is the necromantic academy." He sat up straighter. "You know, Sorjek is just one of at least a dozen theomes in Kanjamund that has this problem."

"Really?" Aleicree asked, taken by the thought.

So Vrekant told zir of the others, and wove a tale of Kanjamund as the necromancer continent. Although separated by great gulfs of water, the three islands of Kanjamund were similar in being covered in forests and mountains. The forests here grew thick by the will of the land gods, and some of them were dangerous sacred forests that ate trespassers, like the legendary Keltia-Aneya on Tachamund, or as Nidrio once was. In this isolation, a small and heavily magical population developed among mages travelling away from civilization.

“There are many geomancers here, though their presence is a mystery. Why necromancers sought privacy is easier, for they are commonly opposed. The three isles of Kanjamund thus became, collectively, the continent of necromancy. You'd think Kanjamund would tend to grow barren with destructive weather," continued Vrekant, "But the land gods in these isles put the forests back together rapidly when anything damages them."

"You mentioned isolation, but Sorjek isn't an isolated place," said Aleicree sceptically. "This place is right on the trade routes. It has a food surplus and it exports magic items everywhere in Theoma."

Vrekant dipped his head. "You're right, of course, but Sorjek also has a large population. There isn't much undeveloped space in this theome. The many dragons here may be even harder on Idsemper than the small, highly magical populations common in Kanjamund."

Aleicree frowned. "It's really peculiar to hear Idsemper treated as less than omnipotent, you know. That's bizarre. Is that just you, or is that common in this theome?"

"I've never canvassed to see if my opinion is common," Vrekant said. He got up again. "How have you been spending the days here? I haven't seen anything out of place while I've been away in the day."

So Aleicree fetched out of zir travelling pouches the fresh copy of the farming manual and the mostly-complete copy of Sea Gods' Laws. Zie flipped to where zir copying of Sea Gods' Laws ended and held the page open there towards Vrekant. "I've been scribing," zie said. "Copying books to sell them on, though I might be copying this one to keep it."

Vrekant read the opened page, then gestured at the book to take it. Aleicree relinquished it, and Vrekant skimmed through several pages. "It's a book about geomancy at sea," he said, handing it back. "I can see how you'd be interested in that."

"I borrowed it from a colleague aboard the Serene Chordalite." Aleicree put the two books away in zir pouches again. "I think I might finish it today, unless you mean to borrow me away."

Vrekant stared out the window at the hard-falling rain. "I... don't know how to spend today," he admitted. "I just knew from the weather that I'd be no use to my customers today unless the rain cleared up on its own."

Aleicree joined Vrekant in staring out the window. The rain was appealing to watch and to listen to. The roof above them rattled with it. Zie smiled as a memory from childhood occurred to zir. "You know, I did weather-magery before I even went to the windmage academy."

"Did you?" Vrekant said, returning his attention to zir. "That isn't usually a skill one uses untrained."

Aleicree held zir smile as zie met Vrekant's gaze. "Oh, I know! It's been so long since I thought about it, but I believe I was even considered 'a prodigy'. I would just slip into deep trances, spreading my awareness through the sky, and the rain would fall on schedule."

"Do you think you could do something about this storm?" Vrekant asked.

"Surely I wouldn't outshine the actual weathermage," Aleicree said, but now zie was on the verge of giggling.

"Did you ever do paired meditation?"

"I did some with Rhaokir - the temporary windmage hired to replace me while I'm out here - just before setting out to come here." Aleicree took zir travelling pouches off entirely and got up from the cushion zie was sitting on. "Want to see if we can break the storm together?"

Aleicree dropped zir pouches in Vrekant's living room, and then shrugged out of zir windmage uniform. There was no need to get it all soaked in the storm.

The two vashael paused a moment at the door to Vrekant's house, and wove of their hesitance to go out into the pouring rain a small wind charm out of their amicus breezes. The wind whirled about them though they still stood indoors, no longer two breezes but one shared. It was a little proof that they could try what they intended.

They stepped out the door, and their shared wind turned aside the rain.

"How far out should we go?" asked Aleicree.

"There's a stone platform in my garden," answered Vrekant.

They walked down the little path to the garden. The stone was not dry underfoot; nor did their scales stay wholly dry under their allied wind. The rain fell heavily about them. The feral wind beyond their little bubble of relative dryness could not challenge them, but they could see its gusting in the trees on neighbouring properties.

A flash of light preceded a crash of thunder, a sound rarely heard in theomes with controlled weather.

They passed through the trellis gate into Vrekant's garden. It was a vegetable garden, all in rows. Leafy greens grew up from the deep brown soil in bunches, half their row harvested already. Green bundles from the leafy crowns of radishes and carrots likewise stood in partially harvested rows. The slick, shiny leaves gleamed jewel-bright with the water falling on them, water that puddled and ran in little rivulets down the rows. All around them there was a pat-pat-pat of rain falling and an earthy, living smell released from the moist soil.

They walked down the path through the centre of the garden to a cleared circle of grey stone, slightly elevated and remarkably level. The stone seemed exactly assembled with each piece fit flawlessly to each piece next to it. Aleicree thought it seemed like vrash-work modified on the smallest scale by the touch of a vrash artisan intent on making the platform level and exact. Stonework was often not complete until it had a vrash meditant-labourer to fix it. Aleicree crouched low, running zir hands along the slick stone.

"I assure you," joked Vrekant, "It will not fall out from under us."

Aleicree looked at Vrekant. Zie did not mind a bit of wet upon zir back and hands, and zir tail where it extended just a bit out of the bubble of diverting wind. "We meditate to change the air. Vrash meditate to change the earth. Is it really different?"

Vrekant looked at the stone circle under their feet a little more thoughtfully. "The land gods gave us this insight into what it is like to have their powers, I think. Just a taste, but in-born."

"Then let's see if we can be like Idsemper over this storm," Aleicree said. Zie settled into place, laying on the stone platform next to Vrekant.

Aleicree became the wind. It was a tumult! Gusting and chaotic, Aleicree's expanding bubble of self was scoured with new airs sweeping through it constantly. Zie gripped at the wind, channelled it, but could not quite stop its momentum. The flow of the wind became zir world.

To this world was added another presence, also gripping at the wind and channelling it. Another bubble of self burgeoned up within the space where Aleicree was being the wind, and it also was the wind. The tumult of the wind increased between them as they pulled in different directions and reacted in different ways to the great flowing gusts that moved through them.

Both presences kept expanding, reaching towards the horizons and the clouds above. Swiftly they raced, grasping everything, struggling for harmony between themselves. Where the two agreed, the effect was greater than where they clashed. They were not pulling separately on purpose.

They first agreed with the flow of the wind, for there was an underlying regularity and direction that the winds were most inclined to take. They sought this regularity and enforced it, quelling gusts and twists in the flow of the air. From there, they started moderating it. Now they were pulling together.

The wind died in the garden.

Across the city of Sorjek the wind started dying too. The rain began to fall straight down. The rain as well was Aleicree and Vrekant, albeit far less so. It was so solid and swift that they could hardly touch it. It moved through them bringing its chill to the air.

They reached the clouds. Here the tumult was greater. Updrafts and downdrafts drove the moisture through the sky to form the raindrops. Again they sought first to make regular the storm, calming chaos in the flow of the wind and water. Vrekant was far superior at this. Aleicree did zir best to follow along, pulling belatedly where Vrekant pulled, reinforcing flows that were already obvious. Zie was once more a student.

They brushed up against and then pressed through dozens of other presences in the sky. By unspoken consensus the weathermages of Sorjek were working together to quell the storm. The sky was a patchwork quilt of vashael spirits extending their utmost to find the patterns of the storm and own them in calm and dissolution.

There was nothing so dramatic as a break in the clouds. The sky was full of water. The land god could have done more than the weathermages could. The weathermages could not affect the water in any greater way without risking backlash on their spell. What happened instead was that the storm became mild. The clouds evened out. The great piling weatherheads started collapsing into a thick sheet of clouds that kept right on drizzling, and which might drizzle for days as the upper level winds blew them onwards into new theomes.

There was then a kind of conclave ethereal. Three dozen weathermages had spread through all the sky to be the wind together, and the air trembled all over Sorjek with little wordless motions of agreement and disagreement between them. Eventually new winds started blowing, a tremulous playing, some near the ground and some higher up.

There were no words to this game, but they could all feel the curves of the upper cloud deck. They whipped it up in frosting patterns and garden furrows, and shapes more abstract as well. The wind became a dozen wild pencils doodling in the cloud deck and for a moment Aleicree thought they would start writing messages to each other, but no such sense emerged. Were those shapes symbols? Was there some hidden meaning to the patterns that were drawn with the wind on the clouds?

All the shapes blew out swiftly from the turbulence of the play. Wherever the playing with the wind created new cyclic patterns in the clouds that might have become new storm development, the consensus of the group stilled them.

After a few minutes of this, individual presences started dropping out of the clouds as first one mage and then another decided the job was done and the playing was over. Aleicree came back to zirself stunned by the game that had transpired when the storm was tamed. Zie had never thought that weathermages could play together that way at all. How often were the shapes in the clouds put there by creative weathermages?

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Aleicree opened zir eyes to a grey, drizzly day with unchurned clouds from horizon to horizon. It was safe, acceptable weather, but rather ugly from the ground. The storm had been more beautiful. This, however, was not going to damage anyone's crops.

Zie looked over to Vrekant. "That was amazing," zie said. "I've never participated in anything like that. Doing this should be on the syllabus in wind magic academies!"

Vrekant smiled to her. He said, "It'd be an advanced course. Every bit of dissonance threatens the trance."

"I didn't notice," said Aleicree.

"Then you're talented," said Vrekant, "But I can tell you've never worked a storm in company, because you put some strain on me at the start."

Aleicree dipped zir head, abashed. "I'm sorry."

Vrekant beamed at her. "Hey, no big deal. Doing this together was amazing."

The two of them nuzzled briefly in shared excitement. It was an impulse. Noses touched, cheeks rubbed. Aleicree wasn't sure who started first. Zie felt a thrilling temptation to dip zir head and nuzzle under Vrekant's chin, but zie felt that would be going too far.

Would he forgive zir if zie kissed him? Zie didn't test it, but withdrew with a flush when the thought occurred. Too much nuzzling, zie thought in embarrassment.

"I suppose you need to go meet with farmergons now," zie said.

Vrekant shook his head, and gave Aleicree an easy smile. "The weather's all the same across Sorjek right now, so there's not a thing for me to do. Some of my colleagues have 'gone to work' for sure, but odds are they'll just be pretending to do work while drawing in the clouds all day. I'm off."

The two of them stood and walked down the garden path again. There was no strong rain to deflect, so they disentangled their amicus breezes from each other.

"What are we going to do today?" asked Aleicree.

The two reached the front door of Vrekant's house. Instead of going inside, Vrekant turned to face Aleicree again. He said, "Why don't I show you around Sorjek? A third of your visit is gone and we haven't had a chance to go into town together. I feel I've been a bad host, working every day while you've been here."

Aleicree glanced upwards. "Were you counting on the land god to give you an excuse to stop?"

"Nothing so disorga..." Vrekant trailed off, and then he shook his head. "I kinda was. The weather needs to be tweaked every day once you start controlling it. Maybe the other weathermages and I should organise a local weather office so it's easier to take a vacation every now and then."

Aleicree nudged Vrekant with a wing and then stepped clear of him again. "Let's just take off. I'll follow you, and you can guide me down wherever there's a landmark you want to show off."

The two dragons leapt into the air. Sorjek spread below them as they flapped for altitude. Violet-scaled Vrekant took the lead. His wings spread wide, Aleicree admired him in flight.

Aleicree flew closer than strictly wise for following after, for zie couldn't resist playing in the air. The two gyred at turns; Aleicree overheard Vrekant laughing as he dipped to get some distance.

It was a brief pursuit. They were over the city already, and Vrekant dipped in a smoother turning descent over another building of notable design. The fore half of the building was angular with a great peaked roof rising like a spike into the sky, while the back half of it was broad and rounded like half a barrel at titanic scale. It was a bit more than three stories high with this peculiar shape and looked to be made of stout timber construction. Rampant lion statues flanked the grand main entrance to the building, and there was a dragon statue seated on its hindquarters by the path to the door of it.

An open stone square stood before it, and Vrekant landed there, so Aleicree did likewise. They were next to a promenade street. There were elegant lantern posts all up and down the street, and the other buildings here were decorated with stone inlays forming colourful abstract patterns on open stretches of wall. There was a trace of horror vacui - the fear of negative space - in the complexity of the architecture. The buildings were a mix of shops and private addresses, and it seemed like every address had its own elaborate lantern hung up by its door. The street must have been ablaze with light in the evenings, though of course on this dreary midday in the grey drizzle falling from above all of these lanterns were currently off.

Although Aleicree got distracted looking down the street, the building with the angular roof and the broad back was clearly Vrekant's destination, and zie hurried to catch up when zie noticed he'd started to walk towards it. "What is this place?" zie asked him.

"This is our theatre," Vrekant said. "They do shows nightly, and four-a-day on the weekends."

"You could've been taking me here." Aleicree butted zir head at Vrekant's shoulder.

"Ticket prices are high, and I'll have to buy them for your friends, too," said Vrekant. "Maybe once this month, I'll bring the three of you to the theatre. I need to mention it to Azosta and Limist as an option."

Vrekant's attentiveness to hosting all three of them was charming, but in this moment disappointing. "So you're not proposing we attend the theatre this evening?" said Aleicree, crestfallen.

"I do live to a schedule," said Vrekant. The three of them walked down the promenade, enjoying the complex designs on the buildings here. Many of the buildings had fancy lintels and coiling plate traceries over their windows, though the shops favoured wide bay windows in which were set products to better advertise their wares. The glass of the shop windows was made of great, clear plates that must have been quite expensive, while the homes often had little pieces of colourful translucent glasses in the spaces between their coiled traceries. The designs were mostly monocolour glass, but the numerous small pieces showed the same construction principle as used in stained glass windows.

"Being directly near the theatre must be to have a desirable address," Aleicree said.

"Quite," said Vrekant, "Though I think it's a waste of money for the private residences. The shops here get quite a lot of foot traffic, but the private residences pay a lot for unusually noisy accommodations."

Aleicree stopped walking and touched a wall. "Look at the architecture here! I doubt these buildings have thin walls."

"That's true," said Vrekant, stopping with Aleicree, "And the inhabitants can probably afford noise reduction. Although I've heard silencing charms are predominantly necromantic."

"Why would they be necromantic?" asked Aleicree. The two continued down the promenade. "It seems like the principle would be not so different from our own wind meditations."

Vrekant shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "It's not my kind of magic, and I've been studying farm lore more than magic lore."

Aleicree leaned on Vrekant playfully, slowing them both for a moment. "Are you becoming a farmergon?"

Vrekant laughed and danced away, leaving Aleicree to stagger as zie regained zir balance. "Not by choice!" he said, "I've nothing to farm save a vegetable garden. It's just that's what all my friends know, and I like them quite a bit."

At the next intersection, Vrekant turned down another street. The shops here still had nice bay windows and metal lanterns hung by their doors, but the walls were made of stout wooden timbers instead of stone. The wealth level was just a little bit lower. The street traffic seemed no lower here. "Where are we going?" asked Aleicree.

"Towards the beach," said Vrekant.

"We're going for a walk on the beach? You are a romantic," said Aleicree happily.

Vrekant laughed, and Aleicree got chills even before he spoke. "It's not like that," he said, and Aleicree's heart fell. "It's just a beautiful beach. If Limist and Azosta hadn't insisted on going out to work today even in that awful storm, we could've all gone to the beach together."

Aleicree had a ready reply, so zie used it. "Well, I think they made the right call. It wasn't an awful storm for very long. You dealt with it." Privately however, the joy was out of the beach walk, and they hadn't even seen the beach yet.

A few dreary blocks later, they arrived by the beach. The yellow sand extended along the waterside for block after block, and the street facing it was heavily developed. It was a very urban sort of beach with all the businesses, but it was still beautiful. There were sea-facing murals on many of the businesses, with clean hues of blue and white, and where there was no mural these were also the colours that the buildings themselves were painted, so that the whole stretch of the beach was a bright place.

There were white stone mushrooms on the beach sprouting from square bases with nozzles on the underside of their caps. They were just at the edge of the street. Aleicree was drawn to one in surprise at seeing it. "Is that a public shower?" zie asked Vrekant.

"It is!" he said.

"How expensive! It's free to use?" Aleicree walked over to one of the shower buildings. There was a turn-handle on the stone. "Do dragons need that? Is there something wrong with coming out of the sea smelling like water?" The water does not smell bad, zie thought. They weren't even getting waterfront stink, for they were far from the piers here.

Vrekant smiled at Aleicree. He said, "I can try to come up with excuses. I think salt is damaging to some materials, so perhaps wealthy visitors want to rinse off before going back to lounging on fine silks. Perhaps having regularly showered locals is healthy for the area. Perhaps there's some stinging fish in the water and washing off heals the wounds it causes. I've never needed the showers, but I've used them before. Would you like to try it?"

"Perhaps after a bit of playing in the tide. Maybe I'll find out why we need showers."

The sand was bright, but it was damp with rain, so it was not too hot underfoot. Aleicree took zir time walking to the water's edge, dropping to all fours and pressing zir feet firmly into the damp sand so that the grainy stuff pressed up between zir toes. The waves for their part crashed in and receded, crashed in and receded, rhythmic as can be.

The beach wasn't quite deserted, but it wasn't populated very heavily. The weather was 'bad' for tourist activities. Aleicree didn't mind having the beach to zirself. The water was still pretty, stretching out to the island only to the southwest. To the south Aleicree could see across the Vendarian Sound to other theomes, and west zie could see across to a very large island. The Sound was saltwater, but the waves of the Sound weren't quite the waves of the ocean; they were sheltered from the full force of the sea.

Unwarmed by the sun that day, the sea was cold about Aleicree's feet, but zie splashed right in certain that zie would get used to it swiftly enough. Zie was not actually a very good swimmer - seagons often weren't, and winged dragons have quite too many limbs for it - so zie stuck to the shallows, but from there zie waved at Vrekant, who hung back and laughed from the near-dryness of the sands.

Aleicree fell to all fours and grasped at the sand in the sea, feeling the waves lift and drop zir body, pushing and pulling, pulling zir from zir grip upon the loose sandy seafloor. Zie got zir wings into it, and stepped along the beach soaking everything but zir head. The waves lifted zir from the sand and deposited zir back again. Finally zie squeezed zir eyes shut and ducked low, immersing zirself entirely in the water. Only for a moment. Zie popped back up again and splashed back towards the shore, laughing.

Abruptly, a great surge in the water rose up next to zir, and as zie jumped back in surprise from the splash there was Vrekant joining zir in the water. Aleicree laughed, then grrrarred and splashed back at him. The two set to scooping up water at each other for a few more rounds of splashing, then Vrekant went out a little deeper into the water, leaving Aleicree behind in the shallows.

He turned around seeming surprised when he realised zie hadn't followed. "Can't you swim?"

"Of course I can swim," said Aleicree, aghast. "I just don't want to. Come on, what if the current drags me out to sea?"

"Haven't you magic for that?" called Vrekant.

"No! Have you?" asked Aleicree, now taken by curiosity.

Vrekant swam back in, and stood again when the water grew shallow enough. "No, admittedly I don't," he said, "Though I'm not used to fearing that, and I rather thought a seagon would have a bit of sea magic."

The two of them played together in the shallows after that. They kicked up clouds of sand underwater with their feet and tails. They immersed themselves and grasped at the sand to pluck up seashells and smooth rocks gleaming with the polishing of sand and sea. Eventually, they went back to the shore.

Trusting in Fate to protect his property, Vrekant had just doffed his pouches on the beach. He went back to them and picked them up again. Aleicree ran up the beach behind him as he was putting them back on. "That won't always work, you know," zie said.

"Even when it fails, it'll serve a greater purpose," said Vrekant. "Come on, geomancy includes divination. We can find stolen pouches and the local government will want to know who went stealing."

"Even that won't always work!" said Aleicree. "There are charms against detection."

"I'll take the risk. I'm not exactly carrying my life's savings here." Vrekant smiled at zir. "You know, I would've brought you here sooner if I'd realised you enjoyed it. I kind of thought you had enough of the sea for a while."

"We don't swim in it!" said Aleicree. "We haul it up in buckets to bathe in it, but we don't go swimming. It isn't safe in the open ocean, and a ship with full wind behind it will leave behind a swimmer frightfully fast. We can't take flight directly from the water."

"Do you think you'll come here more for the rest of your vacation?" asked Vrekant.

"Oh, maybe once I finish copying Sea Gods' Laws," Aleicree said. "I'd planned to buy some third book at a scribegon and copy that as well, but I could spend some part of the month going to the beach."

"If you can copy books, I'm sure you'll have the attention span for a play," Vrekant said with a smile.

The two of them made tracks in the beach, going up along the beach and watching other dragons playing in the sea or sand. Eventually they reached another of the mushroom-shaped buildings with the nozzles under their caps. Aleicree approached it and stood off to the side as zie reached in to turn one of the turn-handles on the stone central column of the thing. One of the nozzles activated and began pouring down a steady rain. What splashed on zir feet was cold, but Aleicree braced zirself, jumped in, and got under it. It wasn't terrible once zie got used to it. When zie was done, zie finished off by making sure zir feet got rinsed as well, then turned the handle the other way to shut off the flow of water.

"I'm surprised we don't have to at least contribute to pumping it," said Aleicree.

Vrekant pointed across the street at the nearest building. It was fairly utilitarian in shape, just a boxy structure of white-painted brick, though it had one of those beach murals in colours of sand and blue to liven it up. "That is a public pump-house," said Vrekant. "Local businesses can hook up to it if they pay a fee to its operation, but the beach showers are free."

"I'm surprised the pipes aren't ever drained by dragons leaving the shower open."

"Idsemper preserves us," said Vrekant with a grin. "This may not be a model theome, but it's still got an urban Fate. Some things are very rare."

Aleicree said, "Cities in Missing theomes can't give away as much. It's a wonder dragons live in them."

"It's a wonder your Azosta doesn't," pointed out Vrekant. "Where the land gods are absentee, cities look however they must to accommodate the unmodified behaviour of the dragons who choose to live in them. Azosta might be very pleased to someday study that. I think he'd be happier in one of those than in Shibanyet."

"Perhaps that was why Shibanyet rejected him," Aleicree mused.

The two walked along the street as long as there was beach beside them. It was a fair walk. Untroubled by natural geography, Idsemper had created however much beach he wanted his city to have, and then guided the city to beautify it to this urban style. They passed empty stretches of beach. Perhaps it wasn’t overcrowded even when the weather was excellent. There was enough of it.

When they ran out of beach, they found piers and fisheries that put up an unappetizing smell, so they turned and flew away in a blast of amicus breeze. Returning to Vrekant's house, they ate a modest lunch. Vrekant broke out the board games again, and they were well-occupied for a few hours trading fictional goods along an abstract trade route on a wooden board. This game was familiar in its theme and mechanics.

"You know, I heard a legend," Vrekant said after a while. "There's a lot of dragons in Kanjamund who claim there were worlds before Theoma, did you know that? Obviously, nobody has ever visited one, but supposedly they existed. The legend I heard is that there was a divine principle known as The Knife on a prior world, and that world was consumed by dragons living and dying in violent conflicts. But on Theoma, The Knife was shattered, so we have more merchants and little violence."

"Mm. I don't know about all that. It seems a bit strange to talk about worlds before Theoma. If nothing remains of them, why does it matter that they existed?" Aleicree asked.

"Didn't you talk before of Praoziu summoning strange foods for family? You promised a feast of them if we recruited visitors for you," Vrekant said, leaning over the table as he pushed a game piece in the far corner of the board.

"That's true," Aleicree mused. "The land gods will have been from other worlds, then. Some of them. All of them? Praoziu seems to be."

"Those worlds are not so gone at all," Vrekant asserted.

Aleicree laughed. "No, I think they still are," zie said.

They played in silence for a while. Eventually, Aleicree asked, "We have spent today on trivial pursuits. Would it really have been less productive to spend the day drawing in the clouds?"

"I think so," Vrekant said. "We could not have talked, you know. I've enjoyed our conversations today."

"I have too," Aleicree said, and zie wished they were sitting next to each other rather than across the table playing a game. Vrekant had denied romance, but zie still wanted to touch him.

They played several rounds before Limist and Azosta got back from a day's labour in the drizzling damp, but Aleicree didn't think the question of who won mattered in the slightest. No farmer visited that day, for which Aleicree was glad, though curious. Was it not a planned thing at all? Did they just visit each other at the least suggestion?