Jareen reclined at the table, chewing on dried apple slices.

"I still don't like it when he wanders."

"He'll be fine," Vireel said. "He has given my quthli many bruises, but they will not allow him to pass beyond our thickets."

"It is the Mingling. There is no telling what could happen."

"Have I or my quthli ever let anything into the glade?" Vireel asked.

It was true. In all the years, the glade had remained a sanctum, a tiny enclave unto itself. Compared to the High Liele whom Jareen had known, the Change crept slowly over Vireel, almost imperceptible in its advance.

"He is growing restless."

"It is no wonder," Vireel answered. "He has never set foot beyond. You had lived much of life by his age."

That was true as well. At Faro's age, Jareen was toiling through a plague in Nosh and watching her friends die. But she did not want that for Faro. By Vien standards, he was merely a youth, and he wasn't like her. He was not an Insensitive.

"I wish there were some other way," Jareen said, barely above a whisper.

"Let me teach him. He may grow strong enough to evade the Synod—or at least to walk freely in the enclaves. Or between his power and mine, we could expand this embrace and rule the northern Mingling."

"What good is ruling? You would bring both the Synod and the enclaves down on you."

"At least give him a chance at a life outside."

"The only reason he has a life is because he is inside. We have argued this all before." Jareen took a drink of her cider. It was cool, smooth, and light as silk. She had never loved anything or anyone like she loved Faro. She had never known such a love was possible until she held him in her arms. There was nothing that could have prepared her for it.

"The fighting grows fierce again, and this time it is here in the north. There is Malady among the fighters. If the Synod burns it again and centers their fires here, I could not stop it."

Jareen frowned. The mention of the Malady made her even more uneasy. She might be Insensitive, but Faro was not.

"The Malady is all the more reason to remain within the glade."

"And what happens when you die?" Vireel asked. "And you will die. You have what, another seventy-five years? A hundred if blessed?"

Jareen knew that Vireel was looking at her face, eyes wandering over Jareen's features. Her skin was sagging along her jawline, and hairline wrinkles had marked her forehead and cheeks. She did not meet Vireel's gaze.

"You will have to honor my wishes when I am gone."

"So you say," Vireel replied, her mouth turned at the corner. "And let's imagine I did. I might maintain my embrace here for another. . . three hundred years, if not pressed? Four hundred? But the Change will overtake me in the end. And what then for Faro? What sort of vien will he be after four hundred years in this place?"

"He is still young, and these are questions we can face decades from now, when times are not so uncertain."

"There are no certain times!" Vireel lay both hands on the table. Her violet-flecked eyes bored into Jareen. "War is nearing. I may be able to keep us hidden, or I might not. Every day that passes where Faro is not prepared, he is at greater risk. Do you not see that to love him is to make him strong? Do you love him?"

"Do not question my love for my son! It is not love but this foul world that calls for your kind of strength."

"It is the world in which we dwell. Your bitterness will change nothing. He already trains himself in arms. Was not his father a warrior?"

"His father was a harper who loved beauty. It was the Synod that betrayed him and made him something else."

Vireel sighed and shook her head.

"Lovniele, you have become my friend, young as you are. But sometimes you are a stubborn and foolish child."

"I may be Insensitive to the Current, but I am a mother. That much, you do not understand."

Vireel's mouth twitched, but she held her tongue, keeping her gaze steady.

"I'm sorry," Jareen said after a few moments.

"Have you asked. . ." Vireel motioned with her head toward the outside. "Him?"

"Faro? Of course not."

"No. Coil—the human." Vireel could not pronounce the Noshian "r."

It had taken nearly ten years for Vireel to come to grudging acceptance of Coir's presence, but one day she returned from a visit to the enclaves with a vaela laden with paper, ink, and pens, and once in a great while Jareen had even witnessed the two speaking together.

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"You want me to talk to Coir about it?"

"Have you?" Vireel asked. "Have you asked for his opinion on the matter?"

"No," Jareen said. She was shocked that Vireel would suggest it. Jareen spoke with Coir frequently, even sat with him in his house and discussed his work. It hurt to watch him age. He had grown stooped, feeble of gait, and he took frequent naps. She could not bear to think of what must soon come. Without ever making a decision to do so, she had stopped talking to Coir about anything pertaining to the future. It was just too hard, knowing he would not be there to share it. Losing him was a much harder truth to face than for Jareen to think about her own Departure.

She drank down the last of her cider and set the cup aside.

"I am tired," she said, using the worn old words that had ended many another conversation. Since her return from Nosh, she might have said those words more than any others—or at least thought them. Rising, she left the table, seeking refuge in her own little room and closing the door behind her. Night had fallen. There was a glass pane in her small window, a special request she had made of Vireel. Jareen had never acclimated to sleeping in the Mingling with open windows and doors as Vireel did. Even though the many beasts did not approach the house, Jareen could not get used to the constant din of their calls at night.

Lighting her lamp, she sat down at her little table and slid the the tenae from its cubby. Opening the top and tilting the tube, she let the worn, tattered letter slide out onto the tabletop. She had to be gentle with it—so gentle. She hoped the paper would survive her lifetime, but she intended to destroy it before her Departure if she could. She did not want Faro to find it.

***

The next morning, Jareen rose early and left the house. Coir was always at his busiest in the early morning hours. He called the morning his "clear time," and he was most his old cogent and sometimes irritating self then. She knew that Vireel was serious, for it was rare to have such a conversation with her. They had shared the house for decades, but Vien tended to grow less talkative as they aged, and Vireel was no exception. Years might pass—and had—before such a topic was broached.

The birds were loud that morning. She had come to know many of the Mingling species by name after so long. She knocked on Coir's door.

"Enter," he called.

All four walls were covered in cubbies and shelves rough-hewn by quthli. Vireel was mistress of the quthli, but somehow Coir had become their friend, if the beasts could have friends. He understood much of their language, and they often assisted him and brought him the flesh of animals. Sometimes, they would take Coir into the jungle surrounding the glade, to their own huts and cookfires where they feasted together. Coir had told her that the quth called Vien the "naked," but him they called "good speak."

Coir sat at his table pen in hand, scratching at a paper. His handwriting had not improved over the years.

"Jareen," Coir said, not looking up. "A fair morning."

"It is," she answered, slowly walking across the creaking floor while looking at the cubbies stuffed with papers and tenae.

"How fares your labor?"

"You may as well ask what you truly came here for," he said.

"How do you know I wish to ask something?"

"I have known you a long time, Jareen. I know when you have something on your mind, and it isn't my work."

"Vireel did not prepare you?"

Coir chuckled.

"I think we exchanged pleasantries six months ago." Coir laid his pen down and swiveled to face her, his ridiculously long eyebrows raised expectantly.

Jareen had lived enough among the humans to understand the expression.

"Vireel wants to teach Faro how to grasp the Current. To prepare him. . ."

"And?" Coir asked.

"Well. . . Do you think it is a good idea?"

"Without a doubt. I know you Vien feel differently about time, but his teaching should have begun years ago."

Jareen frowned.

"But why should he be cursed with the Change. Why should he carry that burden? There are Canaen who do not grasp the Current, though they be free."

"They are not Faro. No matter where he goes, or stays, he will be in danger."

"I do not wish him to be a warrior. It is better to heal. To be gentle."

"Has the world been gentle with you, Jareen?"

"I am still here."

That was more than she could say for the countless multitudes she had watched Depart over the years, or all those they had left in Nosh. She knew the world was not gentle. Yet there had been moments. . . Fleeting moments.

"Can I not hope for more for my babe?" she asked.

"He is no babe," Coir said. "The weak cannot be gentle. Only one capable of violence can show restraint, just as only the powerful can show mercy. There is no virtue in impotence."

"What care I for virtue?" she asked. "I do not want him to die a boy in some meaningless battle, slain by Nethec riders or lost to the Change before he reaches a century!"

"First you wanted gentleness, now you don't care about virtue. How quickly your song changes, Jareen."

"Don't make this a game. You know what I mean."

"Regardless, it doesn't matter what you want or mean."

"I'm his mother!"

"Yes, I am sure he will petition you for permission as you did your own mother. You are his personal Synod."

Jareen froze at the accusation, trying to make sense of the comparison. Coir didn't let her stew on it: "Whether Vireel teaches him or not," he continued, "Faro will grasp the Current soon enough. He feels it, and only his deference and affection has prevented it thus far. Yet it grows harder. I see it. It is not up to you."

Jareen looked away, feeling the danger of tears. She slowed her breathing and brought her body in check. Once, she had considered herself master of her own emotions, able to watch death day by day and not show herself. She was out of practice.

"You do not know the grief of a mother," she whispered.

"You are not alone in love for the boy," Coir answered. She looked back at him. His expression was placid, his hands resting on his thighs. His pale eyes met hers.

"Why did you never seek Vah'tane?" she asked. "Wasn't it what you always wanted? I expected each year that you would find some way to leave. I thought you intended to convince the quthli to take you. I was certain that was why you befriended them so."

"Every year I considered it," he said. "But I couldn't."

"It is too dangerous."

"I'm dying, anyway. It wasn't that."

"Then why?"

"Because I could not leave you. Neither you nor Faro."

"Vah'tane was your dream."

"Dreams change, Jareen. Once, nothing else in this world captured me like Vah'tane. Then I saw you with that boy. . . " He shrugged and held up his palms to her. His lips trembled for a moment. "It was always just one more year."

"Coir. . ." she said, searching for words. "You have been a friend."

"Enough." He turned back to his table and picked up his pen, motioning to the cubbies and shelves. "Just promise me you'll keep my work when I'm gone. There may come a day when you wish to seek Vah'tane, yourself."

"I'm sorry," Jareen said. "I'm sorry that you didn't get to find it."

"Well," Coir answered. "Who knows? Perhaps there is hope for humans who dream of a better city than Nosh—or even the High Tir."

Jareen forced a smile.

"Perhaps."

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