Aurelia has been silent for a long while, a faint frown on her all-too-human features as the talk of Arrivals and Fohvorroi ebbs and flows around her.

Her brows furrow more deeply, as if she is listening to some other exchange which only she can hear; and then she is rising to her feet, the small scorpion suddenly scuttling into her hand, and a great locust snaps and fans its wings, droning heavily into the air above, weaving between the banner-leaves, up through a flight of seedwings, and into the high distance towards the causeway-vines and the immense canopies of emerald sky beyond.

Asavati does not follow the great locust’s flight, but rather stares down into the small pond as if chastened, and says nothing for some time, as if fears only distantly glimpsed were now, suddenly, coming to pass.