"I don't understand," Rian said, sitting cross-legged facing Deet as she nursed Ashona, his forehead nearly touching hers. "She told you that you could just… change the rules?"

Deet shrugged, her eyes fixed on the baby. "I think she was just trying to get me to stop embarrassing her in front of Rauhl."

"Who's Rauhl?"

"A Dousan shaman," she said. "Rek'yr's brother."

"What was he doing there?"

"I guess he had a vision," she said. "He said something about a table."

"A table?"

"I think Brea is bringing in more Gelfling to put things together. For the future."

Rian nodded. Ashona unlatched from Deet's breast and curled up, satiated. Deet held her up to her shoulder and patted her back gently.

"Anyway," Deet said, "I feel like I should do something before Brea changes her mind."

"Don't these things require some kind of -"

Rian was cut off by the sound of a knock on the door.

They looked at each other. "Who could that be?" Deet aked.

Rian shrugged. Without another word, he went to the heavy coral door and pulled it open.

A young dark-haired girl, no more than eight trine, stood before him, her wings still up as if she had just landed. In her hand, she held a large ring that seemed to be made of paper.

"Yes?"

The girl gasped, and looked as if she wanted to run away. She clutched the paper ring to her chest and gave an awkward curtsy, not unlike the woman in the marketplace that first time he'd gone there with Gurjin.

Rian looked back at Deet, who was headed toward the door behind him, Ashona on her shoulder.

"May we help you?" he asked, turning back to her.

The girl saw Deet behind him and gasped again. "Deethra," she whispered, bowing her head and bending her knees.

Deet looked at Rian with confusion. "What is she doing?" she whispered.

"I have no idea," he whispered back. After a moment, he spoke to the girl in a normal volume. "Stand up," he said. "Tell us why you're knocking on our door."

The girl shifted nervously.

"What is your name?" Deet asked.

"Thari," the girl said.

"Well," Deet said. "It's nice to meet you, Thari. I'm Deet."

Thari giggled.

"I think she knows who you are," Rian said, taking the infant from Deet's arms.

Thari nodded. "It's a blessing," she said. Another young girl landed behind Thari, then another, and another, all barely at the age of cognition. She held out the paper ring toward Deet.

"Oh," Deet said, accepting it gingerly. "It's lovely."

"We made it," Thari said.

"How wonderful," Deet said. "What… what is it?" As she examined it, she realized the paper appeared to be scrawled with those accursed ticks, like pages from a ledger.

"It's a crown," said Thari.

Deet blinked and looked at Rian, who looked more amused than concerned. The crown appeared too small to fit her, having clearly been made on a childling's head.

"It's beautiful," Deet said. "But I…"

Rian cut her off. "It's beautiful," she said. He glanced at Deet "leave it at that."

"My father said you were going to be the new Maudra," Thari said. "The Maudra of the Lost,"

"There are no Maudras anymore," Deet said, lowering herself to Thari's eyeline. "We're not divided into clans. We have a High Admiral now."

"But she doesn't care for us down here -"

"Of course she does, Thari!" Deet said.

"Not like you," Thari said. "All the gelfling say so."

Deet stood slowly. She looked at Rian, then at the crown in her hands. "Well," she said. "I may not be your maudra, but I will see to it that there are going to be changes."

The girls looked at Deet in awe. Then, in a fit of giggles, they up and flew away, descending into the below.

"According to Mother Aughra," said Rauhl, sitting across from Onica in her quarters, "Thra itself -"

Onica looked at the blackened shard, then up at him. "You can communicate with Mother Aughra?" she asked. "Why didn't you say?"

"Clearly, you didn't ask," Rauhl said.

Onica clicked her tongue. "Well, if you've spoken to Mother Aughra -"

"I didn't say I spoke to her," Rauhl said flatly. "She sent a message through the shard."

"I didn't see any message," Onica said. "What did it say, exactly?"

Rauhl stood, and pulled out a small satchel. As Onica looked on, he poured its contents - fine sand - onto the table.

She had heard that the Dousan used sand as a form of dreamfasting called shalfasting, but she'd never seen it before.

He closed his eyes and lifted his head as if he was looking up toward the ceiling. The shard in Onica's hand became warm. Then within a few seconds, it became so hot she dropped it on the table and watched as it rolled toward the mound of sand.

With a lift of his finger the sand began to swirl, the tiny grains moving in a tight pattern, then spreading out so wide they nearly filled the room. It felt, to Onica, that she should have been inhaling it and coughing, but the dust was well-controlled, hovering in front of her without getting on her at all.

At once, the grains of sand came together to show images - stars and planets whizzed by in front of them. The three suns of Thra. Lightning. Rain. Cracked, dry land and dead crops. Once vibrant villages, completely destroyed. The Castle, pitch black and seeming to be sucking every last bit of light left in their world. The image circled the Castle, then scattered into swirling randomness. Then, gradually, a new image began to come together.

"Mother Aughra," Onica whispered. She looked at Rauhl. His eyes remained closed, as if in meditation.

Before the image of Mother Aughra, the shalfast had been entirely silent. Now, as if she was hearing it inside her own head, Augra's voice rang out, as clear as day.

"Gelfling… wherever you are," she said. "Don't tell me, I don't want to know. Somewhere far. Space? Beneath the sea? Don't need to know, as long as you're still alive. And I know in my bones, you are alive and listening."

She paused. "The Darkening is with you, wherever you are. That's not a bad thing, no! It's the Darkening that will lead you back home. The shard, like Thra, has gone dormant. Saving its energy. When it's time to return, it will tell you. The Thra you knew is gone. But the gelflings who will heal the Crystal of Truth will spring forth soon. In the scheme of things, soon. It will be done."

Onica's eyes widened. She looked at Rauhl again. He splayed his fingers, releasing the vision, and the sand fell to the table.

"Gelflings?" Onica said, bewildered. "More than one? I thought there was one healer."

"Oh no," Rauhl said. "There are two. A man and a woman." He said it casually, as if he'd known it all along.

"The woman, is she Ashona?"

Rauhl shook his head. "The Wellspring will bring forth the boy. But the healers are not siblings. They are the Second Wellspring, the ones who will help repopulate the gelfling after the Great Conjunction."

Onica considered. "But if the girl isnt Ashona, who is she? If we're the only Gelfling left, her parents must be here somewhere." She thought about the hundreds of Gelfling living down below, some of them in questionable conditions.

Rauhl paused. "She will be the daughter of Tavra."

"Tavra?" Onica sat up straight, shocked to hear him speak her daughter's name.

"Do you know a Tavra? A vapran woman?"

Onica looked at her incredulously. "She's five years old, not a woman" Onica said. "She's the only surviving Vapran other than Brea. She was born from Seladon, but she's my and my wife's daughter."

Her heart was beating fast, her throat tightening. She had spent so much time focused on the Wellspring and the tragic prophesy that their son, the healer, would grow up not knowing them under the tutelage of the Mystics.

"The other healer, will she know her mother?" Onica asked. Will she know her grandmothers? She thought. "How did she get back to Thra?"

"I believe she'll be born there," Rauhl said, calling the sand to return itself into its satchel.

Onica put her hand on her heart. How would she tell Dovra? How would she tell Brea? How did she not see?

Rauhl stood, pocketing the satchel. He looked at her pointedly. "We can only see what we're able to handle," he said.

"Tell me," Onica said, as he turned to go, "is my daughter going to die?"

He stopped, but didn't look back at her. "All Gelfling die," he said. "Your daughter will be remembered as a hero."

Deet and Rian were out on top of the Prodigious, walking, rather leisurely, toward the Citadel, as Ashona napped against Rian's back. They had gone to the marketplace only to find that merchants had already stopped requiring ticks, but were starting to have shortages of food and other necessities.

"Maybe the tick system needs to be flipped," Rian suggested. "Instead of having a limited number of ticks for goods that you can run out of, what if the goods are limited in how many we can take?"

"Well, that's still not fair," Deet said.

"Why not?"

"Remember Dor?"

Rian gave her a puzzled look.

"The woman at the market who struggled to feed her three childlings," Deet said.

"Oh," he said. "Of course."

"Well, if we say a person can have only two alfen, that wouldn't be enough to feed her family."

"Well, you just add up the number of gelfling they have to feed." He looked at her. "There has to be some kind of system."

Deet shook her head, looking frustrated.

"How did you do it in Grot?" Rian asked.

She shrugged. "We just shared."

"So the nurloc rump, you just gave it away?"

"After we kept what we needed, yes," she said.

Rian blinked. "OK, but the other clans, most of them, at least, have trade cultures. And some of them were starving before they came here, you can't expect gelfling not to hoard food when it's unlimited."

Deet sighed. "This is why I don't envy Brea," she said.

"Only because of that?" Rian said, smiling. He glanced at Deet, but she wasn't paying attention to him anymore. Her eyes were wide as she looked off over his shoulder.

"What is that?" she asked.

Rian turned. There was a gathering in the wooded area. "It looks like a party."

They walked toward the gathering. Usually, the wooded area was pure nature, but today it was strewn with glittering orbs hanging from branches, musicians, and revelers. The revelers, appearing to be all Stonewoods, weren't dancing. Instead, they sat on the moss in neat rows facing a tapestry held up on four wooden rods, each held by a gelfling, two women and two men.

"Oh," Rian said, finally. "It's a wedding."

"A wedding?" Deet asked.

"A wedding," he said. "A traditional Stonewood marriage ceremony."

"Oh," she said, blinking.

"They're very long and very boring," he said, starting to walk away.

"Wait, Rian, let's stay," she said.

"Why?"

"I've never seen a marriage ceremony."

He sighed. "We're not invited."

"We're not going to do anything," she said. "We'll just watch from here."

Rian glanced toward the gathering. "I'd rather not." He could tell Deet was fascinated by the idea and loved experiencing new things, but Stonewood weddings were still a sore spot for him.

"Please, Rian," she said. There was an excitement in her eyes he hadn't seen in a while.

"Ok," he said finally. "We'll watch until we get bored."

It would be nearly three hours and the setting of two of the suns before Deet got bored. She marveled at the clothing, the prayers, the rituals. She drank all of it in, asking questions periodically.

"Why did he give her a sword?"

"It's a wedding sword."

"That sounds violent for a marriage ceremony."

"They're not… going to use it, it's a gift."

"It's hers now?"

"Yes, when he goes away to battle, she would use that sword if she needed to fight."

"Oh. Why doesn't she go with him to battle?"

"I don't know, Deet, it's how it is."

"What battles are they fighting here?"

"It's just the tradition."

"Hm."

After such a lengthy detour, and with the light fading, they decided to return home rather than go to the Citadel.

Besides, there was something about a wedding that stirs feelings of affection. They held hands as they walked toward the tunnel.

"So," Deet said, finally, "was that like the wedding you were supposed to have?"

He stopped. "It wasn't supposed to happen," he said.

Deet blinked, aware she had touched a nerve. "I know it wasn't," she said. "I'm sorry, Rian, was it wrong of me to ask?"

He shook his head. "No, it wasn't wrong," he said. It was complicated, though. The wedding didn't make him feel guilty about marrying Deet outside of all Stonewood traditions, but it did unearth some unresolved guilt over not refusing to marry a Stonewood when he was with Mira, and the grief that went along with that.

"Well, you were right," she said. "It was too long. And boring in parts."

"Yeah."

"Why did they do that thing with the water?"

He laughed lightly. "I don't know."

"It was very beautiful, though."

He nodded and looked at her. "You don't feel cheated that we never had a ceremony?"

"Grottans don't have marriage ceremonies," she said.

"Oh? What do you do?"

Deet shrugged. "You just… choose each other. Oh, and exchange something." She paused. "But not a sword."

"That sounds like what we did," he said.

"Yes," she said. "I think it was a perfect wedding." She started walking ahead of him.

"You know," he said, "Sometimes I think you've turned me to the Grottan way."

She looked back at him playfully, "It's called growth, Rian," she said.