Kankri was, against all expectations, an ordinary looking troll. His horns were a little underdeveloped — short and rounded and easily hidden in his mass of dark curly hair — but otherwise, he looked to be utterly normal. Dark gray skin, orange eyes with silver irises, two gangly legs and two newly formed arms, all ten fingers and toes accounted for.

After he fell out of his cocoon, Kankri crawled to the corner to shiver. Porrim knelt down next to him and pulled off her cloak, then swept it around him to keep him warm. It was the damp season, first spring; it was wet and cold, with shorter nights and longer days. Without his thick carapace, he was susceptible to the cold; with his hot running blood, he was more susceptible than she.

He would need warmer clothes than her ragged cloak. And for that, she would need fabric, she would need a needle snd thread, she would need things that she did not have the knowledge or skill to make herself. She pulled her mutant into her lap and held him, fearful, feeling inadequate and unable to raise him properly. His little hands pressed against her bodice, and she felt something stir in herself.

They couldn't live in this temple forever, she realized. They would have to go into a town at some point, for food and clothing, and perhaps, if there's money, just a cupful of sopor so she could put a little under her tongue each day to sleep with. Her mouth ached and her head throbbed as she thought of sopor, and her skin crawled still with the ghost of withdrawal.

She spent some nights gathering their meager possessions that had scattered in the temple, bringing Kankri with her. At first Kankri crawled on his hands and knees like a wriggler still, but he soon learned to imitate Porrim and struggled to stand upright. She was surprised at this. Most trolls don't learn to walk for some perigees after their pupation. However, his legs were weak, and though he tried he couldn't take a step.

Porrim would sometimes take a break from gathering, and sit before Kankri, holding up him by his armpits. He would chirp, and take shaky steps towards her. Whenever he got close he would smile this great smile of satisfaction, and it made her laugh. She had never seen a troll this young before. She found it fascinating and oddly delightful.

As delightful as he was, however, he was impractical to forage with. She knew of a few plants that grew in the desert, and she'd hoped to gather as much as she could before they left. Her first night out gathering seeds from the goldflowers that grew with abundance, he crawled behind her, her cloak haphazardly draped over his shoulders. The ground was wet and cold, and he was soon crying when his hands and knees chapped. She stopped and picked him up, rubbing his fingers and toes until they'd warmed, and set him back down. He grabbed her skirt and tried to stand up, the cloak finally falling off him. He lost his balance, and fell on the ground beside it, ripping a piece of her dress. After a moment of bewildered silence, he cried out again. She picked him up, now despairing of getting any work done.

She noticed where he ripped her dress, and had an idea. She set him back down and swaddled him in her cloak, then sat down beside him. She ripped strips off the outer layers of her skirt, and used some to secure him in her cloak, and the rest to tie him to her back. She felt his chin come to rest on her shoulder as she stood.

After that, gathering food was easy, though she tired faster with his weight on her back. Over the next few nights, she worked on this makeshift carrier until it was ideal. All of his extremities were covered and warm when he sat in it, and she fashioned straps so she could remove and replace it at will. She found increasingly that she drew comfort from her quiet companion, that the warmth of his body against hers and the delicate weight of his chin on her shoulder staved off the sharper edge of fear and sleep deprivation. She soon sought the feel of him against her even when it wasn't wholly necessary.

She'd fretted for the some nights on how to carry the drink from the cans in the ruins, for the cans were too bulky and she did not know how to weave anything watertight. One night, however, by sheer luck she came across a desertbeast and killed it. She dragged it back to the cave, and together she and Kankri reveled in their spoils. She cut out its bladder and rinsed it in blood and set it aside to carry their drink. The stomach might have also sufficed, but the creature had eaten something sharp that punctured its stomach. She counted her blessing though, for the sickness caused by the punctured stomach led it to be easy prey for the likes of Porrim.

She didn't have salt to dry out the meat, so she lit a fire and she and Kankri had fresh meat for the first time since leaving the cavern — him, for the first time ever. He watched with cautious eyes as she drank its heavenly blood from its side before skinning it and cutting out its flesh. She had hidden her genetic defect for so long that she had forgotten the heady taste of blood, and that night when she slept, she slept heavy and long without dreams.

They were ready within a few weeks of Kankri's pupation. Porrim had gathered all the food she could carry, and she had a vague plan to head to the coast and seek one of the shantytowns that grew in abundance there. Kankri felt the palpable change that evening when they got up, and was uncharacteristically quiet. Instead of fussing when he woke, he followed Porrim's busy movements with silent, wary eyes.

She carefully placed him in his carrier and pulled it on her back. She tied a bag with the last of their dried meat to her waist along with another bag full of goldflower seeds and prickleplant nuts. She filled the desertbeast's bladder with the drink from the ruins and sowed it clumsily shut with a string she tore from the seam in the bodice of her dress. This she handed to Kankri to hold in his carrier. He took the responsibility with pride, his eyes bright and expression serious.

They left the ruins early in the evening, when the green moon had just began to rise large and dark on the horizon. She sought the constellation of the Furthest Ring, a cluster of bright stars to the east, and followed their direction to the sea.

The drink from the ruins was sugary and thick, so one small swallow could last Porrim the night. Kankri was still leery of the bladder holding their drink, so in the evenings before they set out, Porrim would sit with Kankri in her lap and let him drink from her cupped hand. It rained frequently, and Porrim would collect the rainwater in the same container, so the sugary drink became less and less so, until they only had water, which went faster. This was a worry, but Porrim tried not to let it consume her.

They would stop for food once at midnight, when the pink moon began to rise, and Porrim would talk at Kankri to hear him babble back in a nonsense language. Sometimes he would cry in hunger before then, so Porrim would hand him a seed to suck on, for he could not crack them open with his tiny teeth yet.

He could soon sit on his own. Whenever she sat him down, he would fuss mightily until she propped him up, so that he could assert his skill. He was endlessly fascinated with the changing environment as they drew closer to the coast; he would sit, staring intently at the sky, waiting for a seabird to fly by. When one did, he would crow and clap, then yank on Porrim's dress to make sure she saw it too.

Each passing day grew hotter, and this was another worry, for Kankri had fragile eyes that squinted under the light of the pink moon. Before she allowed herself to even think of sleep, she would dutifully ensure he was properly covered by her cloak and shielded from the sun. In the beginning of their journey, he would wake in the middle of the day and get scared when he couldn't see Porrim, so she began sleeping under her cloak with him.

Her more practical worries were drowned out by an overwhelming fear of discovery; but they never ran into another troll in their entire journey. She figured that her hunters had given up, assuming her dead under the blistering Alternian sun.

After several perigees of travel during which Kankri learned to walk and to say a few words, they saw the ocean on the horizon. The moons glittered blindingly off the waves, and the smell of brine infiltrated everything, clinging to their food, their clothes, their hair and skin. It took two nights to reach the shore.

Neither Kankri nor Porrim had ever seen the sea before, so they both took one night to explore the waves and the sand. Kankri would toddle resolutely to the water whether Porrim was watching or not, so she had to pick him up and put him down farther back a few different times, fearing he would drown. She collected small crabs and hesitantly, after watching birds do the same, cracked them open and picked out the meat inside to eat. The water was too cold to swim in, but Porrim pulled up her skirts to put her feet in the water, and at Kankri's insistence, she held him with his feet in the water too. The two of them searched for shells in the sand and tried to impress each other with the most colorful finds.

The next perigee they walked along the coast, and the damp season ended. The pale season came with first summer, which was dry and full of hot winds coming off the sea. They were running out of water. Porrim desperately rationed the little that was left, but without the rain there was nothing to replace it with. She figured they had perhaps a week, maybe a week and a half if she went without — but the heat coming off the sea sucked the water from her skin, so she sweat out half of what she drank and was always thirsty.

They lasted two weeks. Porrim at last simply let Kankri lick the container to get the last few drops of water, but it wasn't enough. He cried at first, but when that did nothing, he quieted and hung morosely on her back. She was desperate. They were forced to stop several times each night for her to squat and gather her breath again. Her vision blurred and her throat burned with every breath. Kankri seemed to be regressing — he no longer sat up by himself, and he no longer walked. He would just lay heavily wherever she set him. The little he spoke was gone, and instead he was mute and unresponsive to her words.

She at least knew not to drink the seawater. She cursed it, she screamed at it once, but she never let herself dip a hand in even just to feel it on her fingertips. The little Porrim could think through the pounding of her temples, she felt dimly of horror. They were going to die. She saw the Handmaid waiting for them every morning when the last moon set.

The third evening after the last of their water, she woke and couldn't stand up. The sky kept spinning and she couldn't figure out which way was up. She took a stab at it and slipped, and she fell back down, winded, confused. Her heart was pounding in her chest. She couldn't focus enough to tell what that meant, but she knew her time was up. She reached out a hand to Kankri, but he was too far away. She felt like a failure.

She rolled her head to the side to look at him. His eyes were sunken, and his lips were cracked. Maybe she should give him a cupful of ocean water, just to make dying easier with something wet in his mouth.

Behind him was some sort of sparkling fern. She wondered at it for a while, until slowly a realization came to her. Dew. It was covered in dew.

She forced herself up and dragged herself closer. With a shaking hand, she pressed a nail against a dewdrop, watching the water give and cling to her finger. Rain, there had been rain. Almost crying with relief, she thrust her head to the leaf and licked the dew off. She grabbed Kankri and pushed his head against the dewdrops, which he took without asking.

She next worked finding the biggest leaves she could, letting Kankri drink the puddles that had collected in them and gathering them for the morning. She then sat and began setting up the leaves to collect the rain for the next time it came. Kankri felt her excitement and seemed reinvigorated. He crawled to each of the leaves she sat down and touched them curiously.

Porrim covered Kankri for day as usual, but stayed awake, waiting dizzily for the rain to come and save them. She waited the long hours as the sun climbed the horizon, growing large and hot and close. She waited even as it began to set, feeling like a coal had dropped into her stomach when the rain still didn't come. She refused to accept the dew as a singular occurrence, she refused to accept that Kankri might wake up and still not have enough to drink.

Or if not, she thought listlessly, he might at least die in his sleep dreaming that there will still be a tomorrow.

When the sun hovered low and angry on the horizon, the clouds in the sky an inflamed red, Porrim finally gave up. She pulled her knees to her chest and rested her chin on them, exhausted in too many ways. She thought belatedly that maybe she should have tried praying, or sacrificing something, to the gods of the Furthest Ring. Or to the Gl'Bgolyb. Or even maybe to the Empress — they say she had the power to extend a life with her touch alone.

Just as her despair peaked, something wet touched her cheek. It was warm, so at first she thought it was a tear — but another drop hit her hand, and she looked up. The red clouds were heavy with rain, and beginning to empty. The leaves around her were already collecting water, small puddles forming in their depths.

When Kankri woke, he woke to the sound Porrim tipping water into their container. There were tears streaming from her eyes in relief, but as he didn't know the difference between joy and sadness, he began to cry.

"No, no no, don't cry — " Porrim crooned, scooping him up and showing him their water. "We're saved! Look, drink some!" She pressed the container to his lip and he drank, hesitantly, then thirstily, reviving himself.

That night the two of them simply sat and drank and rejoiced in living again. Kankri bounced back from the threshold of death, beginning to sit and stand on his own again, repeating Porrim's words and inventing his own. Porrim began teaching him what she knew of Old Alternian, the language of the highbloods, finding it ironic.

"Sea," she'd say.

"See!" He'd reply enthusiastically.

"Haf," she'd say again, in the Old language.

"Hav!"

"Bird."

"Birt!"

"Svanr."

"Svaner!"

Not even a perigee passed yet, when Porrim saw the shape on the horizon.

Kankri was walking alongside her when she saw it. She grabbed him and pulled him into the shade of marshweeds, and hissed at him to sit and be silent. She crouched low, squinting against the moon, to make sense of the shape. If she was unlucky, a hulking coalition of cerulean bounty hunters would be waiting just a mile away to kill Kankri and put her in irons. If she was lucky, infinitely lucky, then three miles away would lie a little town.

She pulled her cloak from where it was tied to her back, and drew it around herself. She picked up Kankri, who was trembling with surprise and fear, and pulled him against her chest. She stroked his cheek and tried to murmur something soothing. Holding him protectively beneath her cloak, she crept forward, straining to make sense of the shadow against the horizon. She struggled to make out shapes of trolls.

She inched closer. The shape loomed higher and sprawled out. She recognized the form of hivestems stacked up to the sky, and she breathed out with relief.

She sat, and loosened her hold on Kankri, who still clung to her. "My little one, we've done it, we've made it," she said to him, breathless with release.

He twisted in her arms to look at the shape. At once he let out a bubbly laugh. "Town!" he said.

"Yes, town!" She jumped up still holding him, so that he laughed again. "There will be all sorts of exotic food, not just crabs and weeds anymore — there'll be candies and fish and sweet drinks!"

"Down!" he instructed, and once she put him down, he began toddling determinedly to the town. She laughed and followed his lead, and the two of them headed to the town with more hope than they'd left with.

It was a small port town, with only a thin fence marking the northern limit. Ragged hives piled four or five wobbly stories high were clustered around a small but bustling town square, and on the eastern edge of the town was a rickety trading port where several ancient ships were moored and several ornery captains argued with their pilots.

Before getting too close to the town, Porrim took Kankri to the side. "Once we see other trolls, you are not to make a sound, you are to hide in my cloak. Do you understand?"

He looked at her dolefully. She picked him up and held him on her hip, then drew her cloak around them, ensuring he was entirely hidden. His head came to rest on her chest.

She entered the town with a great deal of anxiety, not just for the illegal child she held under her cloak, but also for the ordeal of interacting with other trolls. Her own small world for the past sweep had been just Kankri, and for the fifteen sweeps before that her world had been the even smaller society of scathing jadeblood politics. The only trolls she had seen outside her caste were grubs.

Rustbloods congregated around the outer edge of the city, jabbering to each other with heavy accents Porrim couldn't decipher. Brownbloods had set up makeshift carts and were selling wares of dubious value, amulets, good-luck tokens, broken bits of machinery they all swore still worked. Still, the town was mostly comprised of yellowbloods, as most port towns were. They held the monopoly in the main square, advertising everything from ocean fruits to nighttime company. Porrim adjusted her hold on Kankri, and searched for an inn of some kind.

Most of the trolls she attempted to talk to ignored her, dismissing her as a penniless beggar for the way she was dressed in rags.

A toothless brownblood gestured to Porrim from her place between to stalls. She had a threadbare cloth stretched over the ground before her, from where she was selling fabric and thread. Porrim approached her apprehensively.

"You look like you could do with some cloth to fix those holes in your dress, eh?" She said, eyeing the tears Porrim had made at the hem of her dress

After the perigees of travel and after many a trial and error on making rudimentary underclothes for Kankri to last him until she taught him to use a load gaper, the outer layer of her dress was nearly all that remained. Her petticoat had been reduced to scraps, and the inner layers of her dress she'd long since given up to keep Kankri warm when he slept. Porrim eyed the woman's wares, and nodded hesitantly.

The woman waved her closer, so Porrim knelt down, holding carefully onto Kankri, who squirmed a little as she moved. The woman picked up a length of deep green cloth. "Pretty, isn't it? Wouldn't this look nicely with your eyes!" She held out the cloth, and in the light the fabric shimmered slightly.

Kankri saw the fabric through a gap in Porrim's cloak. Mesmerized, he reached out to touch it.

Porrim gasped and pulled away, yanking Kankri back into her cloak. The woman, however, just cackled. "Look at that! Growing your own slave from scratch? It's no wonder you look like you've been to the Furthest Ring and back."

"I'm sorry — I didn't — "

"Save it for the Empress greenie. Here," she said, pulling open Porrim's cloak and handing Kankri the shimmery fabric. He grabbed it delightedly and bit the edge. The woman laughed.

"Thank you," Porrim said, straightening up, as she pulled out her money bag. "Can I give you five caegars?"

The woman's smile slid off her face. "That's all you've got? I'll need fifteen, at least."

Porrim dug through her bag. "I have ten."

The woman sighed. "Fine." She held out her hand expectantly, and Porrim counted out ten coins for her.

Porrim carried Kankri to a quiet alley out of the bustle of the main square. She set him on one of the crates stacked against the side of one of the buildings. The edge of the fabric was now soaked through with his drool. Porrim laughed a little, before tugging it from his mouth.

"We need this, my love!" She stopped. She hadn't intended on calling him that. She had never called another troll her love before. Porrim, you fool, are you pale for an infant? She lectured herself.

Kankri cocked his head curiously. "Pour im?"

She unfolded the fabric and examined it, trying to figure out how much of her dress it could replace. She smiled, seeing how long it was, and she happily bounced Kankri who was grabbing at the fabric.

"Yes, this will do nicely! What do you think? Will I be able to make a new dress, or will my old one suffice until I'm running around naked?"

He laughed. "Naked!"