Ngani's chest was a ruin of blood and torn muscle. Jenova stumbled over to him and tried to stop the bleeding.

He tilted his head to keep staring at her, his eyes wide and glassy. Laumae stood frozen a moment longer before snapping into action. He thudded his staff into the ground with a pained groan. A weak healing spell rolled over him. It barely slowed the rush of blood.

"You have so many arms!" Ngani choked out.

She propped his head up but didn't know what else to do. Her clothes were covered in the same yellow monster acid that was bubbling in his injuries, she couldn't wrap the wound in that. The strain of having shifted her shape so recently was tingling through her arm and down her spine.

"Only when idiots are trying to get themselves eaten," she replied, trying to keep it light. It came out like a snarl.

His reply was a choked gurgle. He passed out.

Another weak spell rolled out from Laumae. The muscle repaired itself some, but not near enough. There was so much blood.

"Why can't you heal him?" she demanded.

"I'm drained," he said, fumbling his staff through another spell. His eyes switched frantically between her and his dying friend. He dropped the staff and knelt opposite her, pulling out a corked bottle of glowing liquid. "Hold his head up."

They got about half of it down his throat, the rest spilling out over her hands. The wound glowed and slowly shrank. The monster's saliva and dirt and grit burned away.

Laumae pulled out a second potion and they did it again. Ngani's skin pulled itself back over his chest, new blood vessels growing back into existence. Laumae snatched back his hand when it brushed hers the first time and she ground her teeth. By about the fifth time he had gotten over it. He pulled out rolls of bandages and handed her one.

Ngani's breathing evened out. They worked together in tense silence.

"There's a frog in the south that can turn its enemies into frogs," Laumae said into the dark.

She barely looked up from holding Ngani up off the ground so they could wrap the bandages around his torso. It had been immediately obvious she was the only one strong enough to do it.

"What's a frog?" she asked.

"It's a small, green animal that jumps. They live around waterways."

She paused only a moment, trying to comprehend out his line of thought. She huffed a breath when she figured it out. "I'm not going to turn you into a frog. I couldn't, even if I wanted to."

"But you are a changeling," he said quietly. His eyes were dark shadows under his brow in the weak moonlight, foreboding and inscrutable.

She clenched her jaw. "Please don't call me that."

They focused on Ngani again. They secured the bandages and she laid him back down again, dragging him away from the bloody earth. She stood and looked around. There was nothing more she knew how to do.

Laumae stayed kneeling at his side. "I need to meditate to heal him more. He's nursing a wounded spirit, I can help from the other side." He looked up at her, the moonlight catching his face and making him look pale and younger than before. He hesitated.

"Will you please guard us?"

She nodded stiffly. Of course she would, he didn't need to ask. She had already saved Ngani's life once.

"I'm in your debt, Jenova."

She pursed her lips. "Bring him back and we're even."

He crossed his legs and closed his eyes. She looked to the camp.

The two Cetra sat motionless and she disposed of the monster remains. Small scavengers approached as she worked but she scared them off. They would need to move camp before they could sleep, there was too much spilt blood. She tried to find them something to eat for when they woke but regrettably Laumae had been right. She didn't know how to forage.

She sat and waited, her eyes roaming the trees. What exactly was their meditation? She thought back to how they had fought together, synchronised and silent. They only spoke to her, not each other, and that too had been synchronised. Until the fight got more intense: their focus broke and they had scrambled, their fighting haphazard and uncoordinated.

She had wondered how it was that Laumae already knew so much of what happened when he appeared from the forest without warning. She looked at the two motionless figures. Were the Cetra a hivemind?

Hours later, Laumae opened his eyes. His gaze immediately found her. She stood.

Ngani woke with a gasp and a groan a moment later. He looked up at her.

"Good thing we brought you along with us," he rasped, smiling.

Ngani spent the next day recuperating and embarrassed about it. He'd never been much of a fighter, he preferred to avoid conflict. His energy was all jumpy which made casting hard, and Laumae wasn't much of a magical healer. He simply had to recover the old fashioned way.

He could see that Jenova wanted to keep moving, to find her people, but she didn't complain about the delay. She helped him around and only looked nervously to the north when she thought he wasn't looking.

He was looking now as she sat and tried to draw a map of the region as he'd explained it to her with a stick in the dirt. Her thick brown hair was piled up on her head, stray strands falling out here and there. She furrowed her brow as she worked and tapped her long grey fingers against the log she was sitting on. The borrowed poncho made her look tall and generally shapeless. The hole on the back where the extra arm had sprouted was fraying.

"If I could shapeshift," he began, crossing his legs at the ankle. "I'd have a different eye colour every day, but only slightly, until I'd gone through the entire rainbow. And if anyone called it out I'd pretend I had no idea what they were talking about."

She snorted. "That only works if nobody knows you're a shapeshifter. It's not really done, changing just for the sake of it."

He leaned back against the tree trunk and scrapped his knife along the roots he was stripping to make into more health potions. "You're telling me you don't make yourself taller when you're trying to win an argument? Or your hair more luscious when you're making eyes at someone? Come on."

"I really don't." She leaned her chin on her palm and gave up on her mapmaking. "It's uncomfortable to change yourself beyond what you are."

He frowned. "Your body isn't who you are, though."

"No, but our bodies follow our mind's lead. By the time we're adults our subconscious have generally settled on what we look like." She shrugged and looked away. "We all had a wings or tentacles stage when we were young, but we tend to settle on a form that looks much the same as the people around us."

His eyebrows rose. "Tentacles?"

"And I'm sure you never did anything silly as a fourteen year old."

He lifted his arm to show the mesh of scars on his forearm. "Only a couple of things."

"At least mine weren't permanent. Tentacles are useful, they're just not instinctual for someone surrounded by mammalian bipeds." She scrawled swirling patterns in the dirt with her stick. "Without something major that changes your sense of self, or you take on new material, it's a physical strain to change your shape for no reason."

He thought he understood but it was disappointingly mundane. Laumae had been so panicked when he reached for him in meditation, like she had two heads or something. What was an extra arm in a pinch?

"New material?" he asked.

She sighed. "I had wondered when the interrogation over this would come up."

He smiled bashfully. He had waited until Laumae was out hunting before he said anything.

She went back to her drawing, carving deep furrows through the earth.

He finished peeling the roots then started crushing them down into a paste in his mortar and pestle. She sat in quiet contemplation while he worked. Birds sang in the trees and the morning breeze was gentle. She made for pleasant company.

"There are… spiritual connotations to it," she offered after some time.

"Really? How's that?"

"It's called Remembering." She studied the mess she'd carved into the dirt intently, hugging herself. "It's a burial rite. We take on the essence of the fallen and let it change us. It passes on their memories and a little piece of who they were."

He came to a slow stop, the roots only half pulverised. "You… merge with their spirit?"

"Some of it. It's how we mourn," she said, not noticing his reaction, "putting the dead to rest."

He put his tools down, not really seeing them. "What does that have to do with shape shifting?" his voice came out thin.

She looked up. "It's nothing untoward, don't worry." She reached into the depths of her poncho and pulled out a little flat book. "Here, look." On the inside cover she showed him a picture, clearer than any painting, of Jenova and two other women.

He studied it without taking it in for a moment while the implications of what she'd said still rolled around his brain. He shook himself and looked properly. They were all wearing the clothes he had found Jenova in the previous day. One of the women was noticeably younger with golden skin and a bald head and the other was about Jenova's age, with pale skin like one of the northern clans and bright red hair. Between them Jenova smiled like someone had just told a terrible joke. The other two were laughing. They weren't noticeably foreign. No sign that they consumed the spirits of the fallen.

"This is Greanne," she said fondly, pointing at the older looking woman. "She's my sister-in-law and the ship medic. Do you see her eyes?"

"Mm-hm," he said, too stunned for anything but going along with it. "Mossy green. Split pupils, like yours."

"When I met her they were pastel pink with black sclera. She took those eyes in Remembrance of her husband."

"Your brother?"

She nodded.

"That's…" he swallowed. The eyes of the woman's dead husband were bright and laughing, edged by crow's feet. "That's beautiful," he said, and shocked himself by much he meant it. "All green eyes in your family then?"

"Mine were blue from birth," she said, ducking her head and putting the picture away. "The slit pupils run in the family. I took the bright green to Remember my mother, as she did hers." She let out a quiet stuttering breath. "My shoulders were my brother's, I used to be slimmer. Shorter too."

He put a hand on her shoulder. He brother's shoulder. It felt surreal, but it was obvious now that she was still in mourning. She offered him a subdued smile.

"I carry them all with me, and everyone they once carried with them. No one is ever lost or forgotten. I am their legacy."

"What about your father?"

She expression turned hard and unreadable. "I do not Remember my father."

"Oh. Does it… hurt? Becoming part someone else?"

She shook her head. "It's not someone else, I can only ever be myself. Technically they become me."

"Huh," he said. "I think that's why your spirit is so bright. It's like a mosaic."

She shrugged. "It feels a little like being one too, the first couple of times. It can be overwhelming if you're not ready for it." She lowered her voice. "And it changes you, even if you are."

He studied her for long enough that she started to squirm and went back to hugging herself. He knew what his Matriarch would say, what the Blessed would call her. He didn't care.

"You are a remarkable woman, Jenova."

Her strange grey skin flushed. "Thank you for listening to me. It's…" She hunted around for a word, her shoulders hunching slightly. "We don't speak of the rite of Remembrance very much. It is a silent thing, done alone in the dark. I've never said it out loud before."

"Thank you for trusting me with it."

She looked up, and he saw the shadow of Laumae walking back through the woods, some animal over his shoulder.

"Let's go for a walk," he said.

She raised an eyebrow at him. "You can barely stand."

"You'll have to carry me then," he said, entirely serious. He was easily twice her size yet he had seen her crush armoured carapaces with her bare hands that his strongest blows didn't even dent. She looked unimpressed. He raised his arms. "Come on, pull your weight. I'm making potions, what are you doing?"

She scoffed, then leaned down and scooped him up like he weighed as much an a baby sparrow. He laughed at the absurdity of it. She only sighed and started walking. They left Laumae behind and trekked over easy ground towards the ocean cliffs.

"Are all Renja this strong?" he asked.

"I think Cetra are just very weak."

"The Planet is our strength, thank you very much."

"Sure."

She put him down when they reached the end of the treeline at the top of the bluffs. The sky was a vibrant blue, uninterrupted all the way down to the horizon. The sea was some thirty meters below, a smooth deep green with no beach, still league deeps where it met the foot of the cliff. He stood upright, leaning heavily against a tree. Just the jostling had hurt his lungs. He breathed slowly and carefully, siphoning a steady trickle of healing magic into himself. He would have to go into a healing trance that night. Hopefully he would wake fully recovered.

Jenova stood on the edge of the bluff and looked out. A black seabird stood next to her, unbothered at the proximity, looking down into the distant water for fish.

"Don't tell Laumae what you told me before," he said. "About the 'Remembering'. He won't understand."

She looked back. "But you do?"

He smiled tightly. "We don't put any emphasis on the past. We entrust it all to the Mother."

He lifted a stick from the ground and used it as crutch to stand at her side.

"Cetra means 'Her Children'," he said. She reached out to support him but he brushed her off. "You don't trust children with legacies. Or burdens. Or anything, really."

Her brow furrowed and she looked at the distance between him and the cliff's edge with a frown. "There is honour in letting another carry you when you need it."

"It's not an honour when it's the only choice. Not a choice at all, then, is it? But the Planet doesn't want dead people's little spirits sticking around in the Lifestream, collecting like rocks and damning it up."

The seabird angled its head, then shot straight down from the edge. It disappeared into the water without so much as a splash.

Jenova was quiet for a moment. "The Planet's alive."

"Of course. The Blessed, those are our spiritual leaders, they tend to Her by… 'helping' those who don't want to let go of themselves. Spirit energy dissolves into the big ol' bubbling cauldron of the Lifestream so it can come back as something else. All our lives are the Planet's, they're just loaned out to us for a little while." He studied the beautiful, smooth ocean below.

Jenova nodded, looking uncertain. "That's nice."

"Yeah. Real nice." The seabird resurfaced, something dead hanging from its beak.

"You don't like it?" she asked.

"It's the Planet, doesn't matter if I like it or not." He leaned heavily on the stick. "One of few things us wanderers and the city dwellers agree on is to keep the stream clear. Keep the Planet turning and the life cycle cycling. I'm… you could call me a radical, I suppose." A crooked smile tugged at his lips. "Laumae calls me 'Unblessed.'"

"You don't think the Planet should remember you?" She looked taken aback. "It's a terrible thing to be forgotten, Ngani."

He barked a hard laugh. "But the planet doesn't remember us, it breaks us and uses us. Those are your mother's eyes you're looking through?"

She nodded.

"Where did she get them from?"

"Her mother, who got them from hers, going back eight generations. But surely you inherited your face too?"

"But not her spirit. My mother's spirit will be in a million different animals and plants by now, dissolved by the ever-so-helpful Blessed Coerla who didn't think she had a right to her own energy any more. There's no trace of her anywhere, not in the new creatures that live because of her, not in the Planet, not in me. She's gone. Unremembered." He felt his face crumbling and turned away. "This is what the Planet keeps us around for, and we help it. Why do we help it?"

She didn't say anything. They stood in silence for a moment. He sniffed and wiped at his cheeks. He hadn't meant to get into it, but Planet, it still hurt. He had thought he was healing, he'd even convinced himself he had forgiven Coerla.

Jenova's eyes stayed rooted to the horizon, giving him some privacy as he pulled himself back together.

"I'm sorry about your mother."

"Thank you. I've been keeping my distance from the clan ever since." He pushed a couple of loose silver braid back from his face. "I shouldn't telling you all this. I shouldn't even be saying it. Planet, Laumae will want to dissolve me if he hears me badmouthing the Planet."

Jenova's head snapped to him and her spine straightened. "Would he?"

"Of course not, I'm joking." He smiled weakly. She was a jumpy one. He let out a breathy sigh and looked out to the skyline. His lungs were getting sore again. "I just wish we didn't live to be forgotten. That we mattered."

The seabird alighted on the top of the cliff, peering down into the water for its next target.

"You do matter," Jenova said, with more conviction than he had heard her say anything. She put a hand on his shoulder and he was struck by just how much strength there was in her slender muscles. It matched the strength glowing in her bright green eyes.

It made sense. She had to be strong to survive an existence as her own planet, alone in the heavens.

"If the worst should happen…" she began, with quiet intensity, "it will be my honour to Remember you, Ngani. You will not be forgotten." Then she faltered. "Um. But only if you want me to."

It should have horrified him. He opened his mouth but couldn't speak through the lump in his throat. He reached out and wrapped her in a bear hug.

"Thank you," he whispered.

A/N: Thanks for reading! Reviews and concrit are welcome.

Next time: The Forgotten Capital.