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Chapter Text

Mira woke up in unfamiliar surroundings. The surface she was lying on was too soft to be the miserable makeshift bed that she had salvaged from one of the local rivers, but too narrow to be the much nicer bed that she eventually built herself. When she cracked open one eye, she discovered that her face was squashed into a couch cushion, and she was covered by a striped throw blanket that looked hand-knit. A brief glimpse around was enough to satisfy her senses that she was still in Palia, not waking up from the world's longest fever dream. She sat up with a groan and rubbed her eyes.

She was sitting on a sofa in a Palian living room, all stone walls and wooden furniture, impossibly cozy, but with no obvious windows. Her friends from before would have probably called it cottagecore, or something. But in Palia, handmade everything was just the default state of things. It could have been the living room of the Daiya farm, except that it definitely wasn't. She'd been there before, after all.

"Good morning. Um. I made breakfast. If, um. If you want any, I mean."

Well, that solved that mystery. "Good morning, Najuma," said Mira, rubbing her eyes. "How long have I been here?"

"Um, since last night," said Najuma, standing hesitantly in the doorway to the kitchen with a tray in her hands. "My dad brought you in. He said you fell into the pond."

Ah, yes. "That's right," said Mira, talking fast to cover up the sound of her own embarrassment, ringing in her ears. "I was chasing one of those blue deer, and it led me right into the pond outside your house. I almost stopped in time, but the bank was so slippery. Then the bastard had the nerve to turn invisible on me."

"They do that," said Najuma, carefully setting down her tray on a coffee table that had been pushed to one side.

"I'll have to ask Hassian for some of those special arrows of his," said Mira, reaching for one of the bowls on the tray.

"This time of day, he's usually hunting chapaa in the fields near the village," said Najuma. "Not that he talks to me much. I just know 'cause my dad goes to the village at around the same time."

"You don't, though?" asked Mira.

Najuma tucked her hair behind her ear. "No, I, um. I mostly stay here and read, or I go down to the pond, or to the workshop to work on my fireworks. The village is too loud, and everyone is always busy."

"I guess there aren't really any other kids there, except for Auni," said Mira. "You and he don't have much in common."

"No," said Najuma.

"Well, there's the library," said Mira, after a few minutes of silent eating. "It's pretty quiet there, and it's not like Caleri will throw you out."

"M-maybe," said Najuma. "Maybe I'll go with my dad, tomorrow, when he goes to the tavern. If I wake up early enough."

Mira smiled. "Maybe I'll meet you there."

"Try not, uh. Not to fall into any ponds. In the meantime," said Najuma, ducking her head.

She couldn't help but burst into laughter. "I'll try."

"S-see you tomorrow?" said Najuma, her voice rising involuntarily into a question.

"Sure thing, kid," replied Mira, getting up and dusting her hands on her thighs. "Now, where's my pack? I have all my stuff in there."

"Uh, it's in the kitchen," said Najuma. "Dad spread everything out to dry, but some of it is still pretty damp."

"Huh," said Mira. "D'you think you could bring it for me tomorrow?"

"Sure!" exclaimed Najuma. "I mean, uh. Sure, yeah. I can do that. No problem. Um."

"Thanks," said Mira, flashing one last, bright grin. "See you around." She cast her a lazy salute and headed for the door.

*

She didn't head to the village, just then, even though she had a million things to do and trade and buy. After all, she didn't have her overstuffed backpack, with all her things in it. All she had was her sapwood bow and an empty quiver. She wasn't even wearing her own clothes. Everything had gotten soaked through when she fell into the water, and the weather was damp enough that she knew from experience how long it would take to dry. Even now, it was starting to drizzle again.

As good an excuse as any to head back to her plot and hole up in front of the fireplace. After she replaced the borrowed clothes with something that fit a little better. Kilima was a tiny village. Wandering around in ill-fitting, borrowed clothes would only open the door to gossip. No, the best move now was to cleave to her own house and her little garden plot. First, she had to figure out how she'd managed to make such a rookie move as to fall into an icy pond and almost freeze to death. Then, she could talk to Hassian about those special arrows.

After all, she was only hunting the dumb, invisible beast to help his mom. That meant he had to help her, surely.

And once she'd sold her produce and bought the arrows, she could drop by the library. Say hi to Caleri, to see how annoyed she gets, then make her feel better by giving her some herbs for tea. And maybe the kid will drop by, too, and she can check in on her. And get her backpack back, of course. She'd paid Zeki way too much for it to give up on it now.

That was the plan that Mira came up with, as she made her slow and damp way through the rain, back to her house. She contemplated it as she built up a fire in her fireplace and watched the flames sulkily crawl up the twigs, towards the larger logs piled above. She managed to forget it as she whipped up a special lunch, fumbled the order of the recipe, burned the whole thing, threw it out, and settled for roasting some meat over an open fire, instead.

She was busy, after all. Keeping house, keeping the garden. Separating out the best produce to sell from the stuff she kept at home to cook with. Looking at her bare front room and thinking about all the furniture she couldn't afford to buy, and whether it would be worth the trouble to try making it from scratch. Wondering whether she could replicate that soft couch from the Pavel house, and very carefully not thinking about how she ended up there.

No, definitely not thinking about that.

*

"I miss them a bit, but they probably don't miss me, that much. If they've noticed that I'm gone, that is."

That was the last thing she said, before she drifted off to sleep.

He had no idea what possessed him to ask about her life before coming to Palia. He'd never been nosy or prone to gossip. He didn't even really know her that well, only in passing, although she would make a point to stop and chat when she saw him in town.

Of course, that didn't signify much. Mira stopped to chat with everyone. Every villager knew her by name. Half of them owed her mysterious favors, from the sulky tailor to Ashura's shifty cook. And now, here she was, running around the Bahari hills with her bow in hand, doing yet another favor, this time for Sifuu. He would have some words for the old smith, when he next dropped by with his ore delivery.

Well, no, he wouldn't. Hodari had never scolded one of his neighbors, even when he had good reason to be mad. Never been much for conversation, could always be counted on to let things go.

Mira groaned and mumbled something unintelligible, shifting as if to roll over on her side. Hodari frowned. He could feel that her skin had grown warm, so she was no longer in danger of freezing, but she might have gotten sick from her brief submersion. He pried his arm free and pressed his hand to her forehead, but he could sense no fever. Still, the fire had done all that it could, he thought, and she was in no immediate danger. That was why he hadn't objected when she started drifting asleep.

Just as he was starting to think about settling her on the couch for the night, he heard the telltale creak of the front door opening.

"Um, dad?" said Najuma from the doorway.

"Najuma, close the door," he replied. "You're letting the cold in."

She dutifully shut the door behind her and leaned against it. "Dad, what's going on?"

"Didn't realize it'd gotten so late," mumbled Hodari.

"Dad!" said Najuma more urgently. "Why is Mira here? And why is she na"–

"It's late, Najuma," he cut in. "Go to sleep. Now."

For a moment, she looked as though she was working up the courage to defy him, but she shook her head and shuffled off towards her room. Hodari waited for her to disappear behind the closed door before he got up, carefully shifting Mira's prone, sleeping body until he could safely carry her to the couch. When he went to get a second blanket from his room, it came to him that Mira would be just as shocked to wake up naked in a strange house as Najuma was to see her.

It couldn't be helped before, not if he wanted to keep her from freezing to death, but there was no reason for her to stay naked. And what if the blankets fell during the night? What if she really was feverish, and she threw them off in her thrashing? No, the momentary indignity of being dressed in her sleep was definitely the lesser evil. She might wonder about it when she woke up, but at least she would be awake to wonder.

Once he'd done all that he could for her, Hodari went to bed. He'd stopped to check, one last time, that there was no sign of fever, but Mira was strong. She would shake off this shock to her body in no time. She was the girl who had fallen out of the sky. If anyone could survive this, she could. And it was silly of him to lie awake worrying about it, when he had his work and his daughter to worry about, too. Clearly, Mira could take care of herself.

But if he didn't worry about her, maybe no one else would.

Maybe Mira really was best friends with half the village, but none of them had been there when she fell into the icy pond. Her human friends from her former life hadn't been there, and, if her sleepy mumbling could be relied on, wouldn't have stood for her if they had. Only Hodari had been there when she needed someone. Who better to worry for her than him? And when that thought had crystallized in his mind, he fell easily into a deep and dreamless sleep.

When he woke up, as usual, the kitchen was empty and quiet. Mira was sound asleep on the couch, and nothing stirred in Najuma's room. She never slept very well. After he'd gone to sleep, she'd probably snuck back out to the workshop to tinker with her designs. Well, she liked the work well enough and she had a talent for it, and Hodari approved of anything that kept his daughter out of the mines. He could take a look at her progress, before he settled down to his own work, although her most ambitious designs were leagues beyond him. More like the sort of work that Leta used to do.

It unsettled him, sometimes, how much like Leta she was growing to be.

Work was the cure, and there was plenty of that to be had. Just him alone, to meet the whole village's needs, with only Sifuu's help in taking on the smelting. He'd have a word with her, after all. If not today, then tomorrow. Sifuu would understand, if he explained himself properly. And Mira, unlike his daughter, would understand that he was only looking out for her.

*

After the pond incident, Mira spent a day and a night mostly indoors, and mostly in bed. A lazy day followed by a solid night's sleep were enough for her spirits to fully recover, luckily for her. The next morning, she was up as usual to tend her little garden patch, and she filled a bag with her best produce before she left for her daily round of the village shops.

Watching the village wake up and come to life around her was reviving, just as healing as the tea and soup that her father would have prescribed. She was finally living in a place where she could put her day on hold to stop and chat with her neighbors. She finally had neighbors who actually wanted to chat, not the private and closed-mouthed strangers that she'd been surrounded by before.

A little frigid submersion, now and then, was a small price to pay.

Once she'd offloaded her produce at Zeki's, she stopped by the smithy to chat with Sifuu, who asked after her Bahari hunting adventures.

"Any luck with that Proudhorned Sernuk?" she asked.

"The teal deer still eludes me," said Mira. "I've had a spot of bad luck, of late, but I'll catch up to him soon."

"Bad luck, is it?" said Sifuu, giving her a knowing look.

"The beast outmaneuvered me," she replied. "Not all of us are blessed with invisibility."

"Ask Hassian to upgrade your bow," suggested Sifuu. "I've seen him bring down muujin with his, and they're fast as a gossip's wagging tongue."

Mira laughed. "That's the plan."

"I'm counting on you, Mira," said Sifuu. "You got the makings of a real hunter, you know. I can always tell."

"Always nice to hear that people believe in me," she replied. "I've gotta check something with Caleri, but I'll see you later, at the inn."

"Count on it," said Sifuu, bringing down her hammer with an almighty clang.

When she entered the library, Caleri didn't lift her nose out of her book, but looked at her over the rim of her glasses.

"I hear I have you to thank for my new library patron," she said, gesturing with her chin toward Najuma, who was sitting at a table stacked high with piles of books. "She's reading every engineering book we have. I promised to set aside some of Leta's favorites for her."

"Her mother?" asked Mira. "She was also an inventor?"

Caleri nodded. "Leta's absence has cast a long shadow on the valley."

"Doesn't it always?" said Mira absently. "How long has she been here?"

"Ask her yourself," retorted Caleri, and promptly buried her nose back in the book.

For about half a minute, Mira stood and watched Najuma read, a thin line of concentration drawn between her brows. She had at least three books open before her, with a fourth suspect buried under two of the others. She followed a line in one book with her fingertip and reached for her pen, but at the last second, she stuck it between her teeth and reached for yet another book. It all looked hideously complicated, and it reminded Mira of her brief and unfortunate stint as a college student. She was sure that if she said something, she would break Najuma's concentration, evaporating whatever vaunted idea she was trying to put to ink.

After all of the theatrics of research had culminated in Najuma jotting a few lines into her notebook, she looked up, her startlement wiping away a brief smile, and said, "Oh!"

"Good morning," said Mira, who couldn't suppress a smile. "Having a good study session?"

"This stuff is amazing!" said Najuma through the pen in her mouth. "I mean, I knew most of it, really, sort of, but it explains it all so clearly. I could never explain why some things made sense and some things didn't."

Mira's smile widened, and she pulled out a chair for herself. "I'm glad you're enjoying yourself. It's nice here, this early, when the library is quiet. Later in the day, there are more people."

Najuma's smile collapsed into a horrified expression.

"It's just Jina and Kenyatta, really," Mira hastened to reassure her. "Jina is nice. You might like her, although she does talk about archaeology a lot."

"I, um. I wouldn't mind that, I think," said Najuma.

"Well, I guess that settles it, then," replied Mira. "I'll have to introduce you two, sometime soon. Not here, though. Maybe up by the Mirror Pond. That's her usual haunt."

"Um," said Najuma. "That sounds, um. Nice?"

"And you can't befriend Jina without getting to know Hekla, too," she mused. "But, you know, there'll be time for that later. First, I need to put in my time clearing out some of those pesky chapaa, but I can only do that if I have my backpack."

"Oh!" Najuma jumped up, tipping her chair into a wobble which she fumbled to stop before it fell over. "I'm so sorry! I forgot I brought your bag with me. It's right– Um, where did I"–

Caleri cleared her throat. "I informed the young lady that large-capacity satchels are prohibited in the library, and she allowed me to store it behind the counter."

"Thank you, Caleri," said Mira. "I'm sure I'd be lost without my backpack."

"You might have considered that before you misplaced the thing to begin with," retorted Caleri, looking at her severely over her glasses. "Carelessness is rarely repaid well."

"I'll keep that in mind," said Mira, ducking her head.

"Oh!" cried Najuma. "Oh, no! Is it that late, already? I promised Dad I would meet him at the inn!"

She started fumbling her notebooks and pens into her own satchel, blowing on one open page to dry it, before sweeping it in, along with the rest. Hefting the full satchel, she rushed out the door with a hasty, apologetic goodbye.

"I fear the child's manners are not what they ought to be," sniffed Caleri, "nor her punctuality. But I daresay she's cleverer than I gave her credit for."

"Well, it's hard for anyone to get to know her well," remarked Mira, looking after the swinging door where Najuma had just been.

"You seem to have accomplished it," said Caleri. "How did you go about this feat?"

"Persistence," answered Mira, as she started drifting toward the door herself. "I'm sorry, Caleri. We'll have to continue this conversation another time. I'm rather busy."

"Of course," said Caleri, handing her her backpack.

Mira hauled the pack on her back by one strap, and paused only to say, "Give my best to Elouisa!"

In a heartbeat, she was out the door and headed down the street, to the inn.

The inn was usually quiet, this early in the day. Reth was behind the counter, as usual, sleepily wiping glasses or stirring yet another pot of soup. Badruu was also there, and Mira stopped to chat with him. He had some new puns for her, real groaners, and a few tips on how to get the most out of her new blueberry bush. Badruu was always supportive of her gardening efforts and almost as glad as she was when her new planting took root. Plus, they just got along so easily. She knew she'd made a good choice in relying on him.

On her way to the counter to get a much-needed hot meal, Mira glanced over to where Najuma was sitting with her father, kicking her feet against a chair leg. The two of them were eating soup in companionable silence, looking just like they did this every day, instead of Najuma's presence in town being a special occasion. Something about their easy familiarity made Mira look away.

"Everything okay?" asked Reth, leaning against the counter.

"Yeah," said Mira. "I think I need something heartier than soup, today."

"Big plans?" asked Reth.

"I'm going hunting," she answered.

Chapter Text

He saw Mira a few times, over the next week, always from a distance. Across the village square from him, she dashed out of the furniture shop with an armful of rolled-up sheets of paper. On his way home to the bay, he looked out over the bridge and saw her casting a fishing line, down by the river. He heard her voice, out in the shed, chatting and laughing with Najuma, and was on the point of inviting her to stay for dinner. Once, he ran into her, on the road to the mines.

"Oh!" she said, just stopping herself from plowing headlong into him. "Um, hi."

"Afternoon," he replied, when he couldn't think of anything better.

"Heading to the mines?" asked Mira.

"Gonna dig up some more ore for Sifuu," he said. "Mayor wants new supports for the bridge by the Falls. Well," he amended, "prob'ly it's the mayor's wife, really."

"Who, Eshe?" said Mira. "Yeah, that sounds like her."

"You?" asked Hodari, nodding his chin at the pickaxe swinging from her hand.

"I'd also like the bridges to be reinforced," said Mira. "I walk over those things, like, all the time."

"You headin' into the mines, too?" he asked patiently.

"Oh, um," said Mira, rubbing the back of her neck. "I was actually heading up the cliffs. Looking for, um, dragonflies."

He looked down at the pickaxe and back up at her. "Gonna climb the cliffs with that thing?"

"Well, I've done it before," she said recklessly.

Hodari regarded her with all his patience. "You tryin' to put me in an early grave?"

Mira had the decency to hang her head. "I promised Grace," she said plaintively, as though he had caught her sneaking pie after bedtime, not practicing deadly climbing stunts for fun.

"Grace can't climb up and get 'em herself?" he asked.

"Well, she's afraid of heights," said Mira, as if this were the most sensible thing in the world.

"An' when you're done breaking your neck," he said slowly, "you gonna go out and hunt that sernuk for Sifuu, I guess. Maybe reel in a swordfin for Chayne."

"Or go digging up chapaa nests," said Mira, "looking for blueprints."

Hodari said nothing.

"So, I'll be going, now," said Mira. "Unless you got a better pickaxe for me. God knows I'm strong enough for it, after all these months."

"It ain't about bein' strong enough," he said, but Mira was already walking away.

*

Mira wasn't looking for a fight, so when she came back down to the bay, she stayed north of the river, well away from the mines. She spent half a day chasing sernuk over the fields, and when she finally put one down, she dragged it up into the pass, near one of the encampments. By the light of a hasty campfire, she dressed the sernuk's carcass and stretched out the skin to cure, just like she was taught. She was halfway through butchering the meat when she heard a familiar yelp, disconcertingly not quite dissimilar from a dog's bark.

"Hello, Tau," she said, reaching out to him with her bloody hand. "Have you been a good boy?"

Tau whined and thumped his tail, tongue lolling.

"Well, you can't have any steak," said Mira, "but I do have all these organs that I don't have any plans for."

Just like a dog's human, Tau's Majiri followed behind him, loping up the hill at a steady clip. When he reached the pair of them, Hassian crouched down to warm his hands by the campfire, eyeing her knife as she worked. Mira knew it must have taken all he had not to critique her butchering technique. Compared to him, she would always be a rank amateur.

"You took down an elder doe yourself," he said, with no preamble.

"Yeah," said Mira. "I've got big plans for the hide, once I get it tanned."

"And the meat?" asked Hassian.

"Steak dinner," she answered without hesitation. "My potatoes are finally fully grown, so I even have a side to go with it."

"A grown doe yields more meat than one human can eat," he observed.

"Most of it will go to Zeki, first thing tomorrow morning," said Mira. "And I know you're not angling for a cut, since you must have plenty of your own meat."

Hassian rubbed the back of his neck. "I saw Hodari wandering the hills, earlier," he said. "He rarely comes this far from the mines."

"Ah," said Mira eloquently. "I see."

"I was wondering whether he and Najuma might enjoy some fresh-caught meat," said Hassian, unnecessarily, picking up a stray twig and poking at the campfire to stir it, his eyes fixed on the flames.

"Well, Hassian," said Mira, "if Hodari comes around here, I'll be sure to save him a couple of ribs."

"That would be thoughtful of you," said Hassian. "But then, generosity has always been your choice of virtue. I'll be leaving now."

He got up, dusted himself off, and whistled to Tau. Without another word of parting, the two of them ambled down the hillside into the early evening gloom. Mira watched them go, briefly, and then turned her attention back to her work. Dismembering the sernuk remains would surely make it easier to carry the animal back to her little plot, where it would keep cold until morning. Her stomach growled, reminding her that it'd been hours since she last ate.

Mira looked at the half-butchered carcass and sighed, before spitting a couple of choice cuts and setting them to roast over the campfire. No sense working on an empty stomach. It would only cause her to make more mistakes, and the whole process would take twice as long. If she'd figured that out ten years ago, maybe she would have lasted longer in college.

She was still engrossed in her work when she heard a rustle in the undergrowth, and some twigs snapped. She reached for her bow, certain that she would need to fight off an ambitious muujin, looking to run off with a piece of her kill. But it was only Hodari, looking sheepishly at the bloody mess around her.

"Hassian passed me on his way to the grove," he said. "Said you might need a hand."

Mira snorted. "I'm almost done here," she replied, "but I'll spot you a good cut of meat if you want to take it home now. Otherwise, you can buy it from Zeki, tomorrow."

Hodari's eyes flicked to the meat roasting over the fire, which was starting to tinge the woodsmoke with a mouthwatering smell. It was getting harder and harder to ignore. He glanced back at her and crouched by the fire, reaching for the same stick that Hassian had used to stir the flames.

"Or you can stay and have some of the roast," said Mira, swallowing a sigh. "I'd been meaning to take a break."

She set down her bloody knife and went to wash her hands in the nearby stream. The stream's water was clean, but it made her wet hands fairly glow with the cold. Mira shook off her excess water and rubbed her hands against her jacket to get the blood flowing. It was an unpleasant reminder of her little tumble the other day, and she rushed back to the campfire, hoping the light and heat would put the memory back in its place. And the meat, of course. By now, she was ravenous.

Hodari had abandoned his twig and was sitting with his back to a tree stump and legs stretched out towards the fire. Mira handed him one of the spits and kept the second for herself, sitting on a mossy rock, as far as possible from the spreading stain of sernuk blood, to enjoy her meal in peace. Although, given she'd spent the day running around the Bahari fields, the measly little spit felt more like a snack than a proper meal. Her dad had been right, it turned out, and there really was nothing like exercise to get your appetite up. She'd been eating more since she arrived in Palia than she ever had before in her life.

"Everything all right?"

Mira started. "What?" she asked stupidly. "I mean, yeah. Of course. Why wouldn't it be?"

She chanced a glance at Hodari and saw that he was chewing his lip.

"You didn't used to avoid me," he said.

"I'm not!" she objected.

He just looked at her until she ducked her head and stared at her gnawed-off spit, twirling it between her fingers.

"I just didn't want things to be weird, y'know," she said slowly. "After...what happened."

"Well, maybe it's been a li'l awkward," he admitted, "but ignorin' it won't help."

Mira squared her shoulders. "As if it's easy to just talk about it," she said. "Nothing like this has ever happened to me before, I'll have you know."

"You talked easy enough the other night," said Hodari, and Mira thought he sounded like he was smiling. "Easier when you can't see my face, huh? Or maybe it was the fear'a death doin' the talkin'."

"Maybe," she conceded grudgingly. "Didn't do much of that, before, either."

"If you wanna," he said, "we can do it the same, now. You can even stare at the fire when you talk."

At that, she looked up, finally. She expected to see Hodari smiling, but he looked completely serious. Enough to make her seriously consider his offer, even though there was really no way for her to justify it. Since he hadn't just fished her out of the pond, and she wasn't on the verge of freezing to death.

Then again, she also wasn't naked. That, at least, should make things less awkward.

Before she had really decided to do so, Mira found herself getting up and joining Hodari by the fire. She sat with her back to him, like she had the other night. Like then, he kept his arms by her sides, not quite around her. Through all the layers of both their clothes, it took a while before she could feel his warmth filtering through to reach her. Even then, it was mostly the growing chill of night that threw the heat of the fire and the warmth of his body into sharp relief. She was reminded of a long-ago childhood camping trip that she'd all but forgotten, and she told him so.

"Camping?" he asked.

"You know, we lived in the city," she said, "in an apartment building. If you wanted to see a bunch of trees and lakes and things, you had to take time off work and make a special trip for it."

"Sounds awful," he opined.

"It had its moments," she replied. "More culture and stuff in the city, and more places to party. Not that I did much of either of those. And it has things like 24/7 markets and laundromats. I used those much more often."

"You miss it?" asked Hodari, sounding like he was hoping she would say no.

"Well, I set my own hours, now," she said. "I don't need to worry as much about when the shops close."

"Maybe you'd like Bahari City," he suggested. "Some folks do."

"I'd like to at least see it before I make up my mind," said Mira. "But really, where else could I show up, out of thin air, and right away be given a house and a plot of land and all? Nowhere in my world, that's for sure."

"You all have definitely thrown Eshe and the others for a loop," said Hodari. "Buncha humans showin' up, suddenly."

"I wonder whether everyone else has been as welcoming as Kilima," she mused. "I can't imagine they have. Most of my neighbors wouldn't dream of leaving, now, though they all have their own reasons."

"Oh?" asked Hodari.

"Grace is obsessed with Jina's research," said Mira. "She won't leave until she's learned every last thing about ancient humans, and Flow, and Galdur, and the rest of it."

"Might take a while," he remarked.

Mira laughed. "Yeah. And Sam, her roommate, I guess he was the first human to show up in Kilima, or one of the first, so he feels responsible towards us. The twins don't want to go back to college, and I can't blame them. Felix won't leave Jel."

"Him an' the tailor, huh?" said Hodari. "Guess it was just a matter of time."

"I guess," she agreed.

"An' you?" he asked.

"I wouldn't leave my garden," said Mira. "I'd never have been able to buy a house on my salary. So yeah, there might be a few things I miss, but it's all trivial. There's nothing waiting for me there."

"No family?" he asked after a moment.

"Dad's dead," she said shortly. "Mom stopped answering my calls, after a while. She might've noticed by now that I stopped calling. Shouldn't you be getting back to Najuma? It's almost dark."

"Come join us for dinner," he said after a moment's hesitation. "Naj always wants to see you."

"I gotta get all this meat home," said Mira. "And the hide. I'd better get going, actually. I'll see you around."

He grabbed her wrist as she got up. "You won't keep avoiding me?"

"Nah," said Mira, her voice lighter than her heart. "Like I said, I'll see you around."

Chapter Text

He waited. Their talk by the fire gave him hope that he had sorted things out with Mira, and he didn't want to spook her. Not that he could say for sure what it was that scared her so much, but she was as skittish as a purebred riffroc. Maybe it really was on account of him pulling her out of the water. For a Majiri girl, being naked with a man who hadn't so much as brought her a flower was mortifying. Well, most of 'em. Leta had been different, but he couldn't assume the same of Mira. 'Specially when he knew almost nothing about human courtship, not that he could think of anyone to ask about it.

Well, anyone he'd be willing to ask about it. Jina might know, or Caleri, but Dragon help him if he ever went to the librarian for love advice. No, it was up to him and her to puzzle it out for themselves. He was downright lucky that Mira'd already shown she was good at puzzles. Maybe there was hope for them yet.

Once he'd puzzled all that out, he walked home from the inn by a different route, one that would take him by Mira's plot. He spent the walk thinking about what he would say to her, but all his plans wilted when he reached the little stucco-walled cottage and saw a human stranger there instead of Mira.

"Hello," said the human with a smile. "Are you looking for someone?"

"Mira not in?" he asked.

The human shook her head. "She's out on some errands, so I stopped by to help with the weeding." She stuck out her hand. "Name's Grace."

"Hodari," he replied, cautiously squeezing her offered hand. "You're the bug lady."

"That's me," said Grace wryly. "Are you from the mining guild? Sam's said nothing but good things about you."

"Yeah," said Hodari, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck. "I remember Sam. I helped him out some, when he was new."

Grace nodded. "Everyone knows Sam. Should I let Mira know you were by? Or if you have something to give her, just leave it in the mailbox. I don't know when she'll be back."

"Yeah, uh," said Hodari, still feeling wrong-footed. "If I don't see her first, just tell her that Najuma's looking forward to seein' her." He nodded at the garden. "Good of you to help."

Grace smiled. "Mira provides half of our fresh produce," she pointed out, "and I owe her for helping me with my collection. I'll pass on your message."

He walked a ways down the path, realized it was rude to leave without saying goodbye, turned around, started to wave, saw that Grace was back to her weeding, and turned the movement into a stretch, before rubbing the back of his neck again. Shaking his head at his own foolishness, Hodari walked the rest of the way home in silence.

*

One day, Mira came home from a grocery run and found Hodari sitting on her stoop.

She saw the exact moment when he caught sight of her coming up the path from the village. He jumped to his feet and rubbed his hands on his trousers, started towards her, but stopped mid-step. Mira picked up her pace, even with the heavy leather satchel full of all her takings, if only to put the man out of his misery. When she reached him, he reached out a hand as if to take the bag from her. She sighed and handed it over, then hip-checked the door open and went straight to the fireplace.

"Come in and close the door, if you're staying," she said. "It's gonna start raining, any minute now."

While she built up wood in the fireplace, Mira could see him from the corner of her eye, pacing the length of the mostly-empty front room, taking everything in. He leaned through the open doorway to peer at the kitchen thoughtfully, before peeking behind the folding screen on the opposite side of the room and recoiling visibly.

"That's my bedroom," said Mira, sitting back on her heels and warming her hands at the growing fire. "I admit it's pretty empty. I keep meaning to add more furniture."

"Is that what you were carrying out of Tish's?" he asked. "Blueprints?"

She glanced at him sidelong. "I visit Tish almost every day," she replied. "She's my best friend. But yeah, I got some furniture designs from her to spruce the place up a bit. Maybe I'll even plant some flowers, like Grace suggested."

"I can help you with that," he offered, "although maybe you wanna wait until spring before planting."

"How about you help me unpack the groceries first?" she suggested. "I think the weather calls for some kind of soup for dinner, don't you?"

"Sure," said Hodari. "That why you went shopping? I thought you grew your own."

"My own carrots and onions, yeah," she answered, launching herself off the floor and towards the kitchen. "I still need to buy things like salt and oil, even for the simplest soups. Which is about all I can make, to be honest."

He followed her into the kitchen as she silently unloaded her groceries into the pantry and piled some bulbs on one knife-scarred counter. She slapped her biggest copper pot onto the stove and filled a pitcher with water from the faucet. No matter how countrified Kilima was, she had running water, something she never stopped being grateful for. Selecting two knives out of a drawer, she handed one to Hodari, handle first.

"Help me chop these up," she said, gesturing at the onions with the tip of her blade.

"Sure," he replied and set to work.

Mira was only halfway through her pile of garlic cloves by the time he was done. She glared narrowly at the heap of perfectly sliced onions, and their concentric rings glared right back at her.

"Into the fire you go," she declared, consigning them to the heating oil, while she returned to reducing the garlic to a fine paste.

"You learn this recipe from Ashura's boy?" asked Hodari, who was leaning back against the counter, watching her chop.

"No," answered Mira. "Felix picked it up somewhere. Didn't ask where. Could you give those a stir? I don't want them to burn."

He took up a wooden spoon and sat vigil on the pot of simmering onions. "You coulda done the chopping before you heated up the oil."

"I'm almost done here," she said testily.

"No, it's just, you're looking kinda tense," he remarked.

Mira took a big breath and dumped the crushed garlic into the oil. "I'm not a very good cook. Never have been."

He stirred the pot thoughtfully. "Sam likes cooking, right?" he said. "Gave me some of his dumplings, once."

"The dumplings are very good," she admitted.

"Do I pour this in now?" he asked, gesturing at the water pitcher.

"Yeah," said Mira.

Once the pot was covered and simmering, surveilling it any further became an exercise in extreme boredom, so Mira washed her hands and returned to the much warmer front room. She sank into one of the chairs by the fire with a sigh. Hodari followed her in and took the seat beside her. The fire crackled cheerfully, providing some light to a room dimmed by the cloudy skies above. Just as she was beginning to think that her prediction of rain had been premature, a distant rumble of thunder signalled the incoming storm.

"Looks like I'm stuck here," said Hodari, looking sanguine at the prospect.

"Stay for dinner?" asked Mira. "You might as well, you earned it."

He looked at her sidelong and smiled crookedly.

"And it's too cold to carry a bowl of soup back to the bay," she reasoned, "even if it wasn't raining."

A second thunder rolled in, nearer than the first. The sound of rain that followed was so heavy, it made Mira jump from her seat and dash to the window. Buckets of rain were pouring over the windows, over the kitchen porch, over her vegetable plot and the bits of her yard that she hadn't cleared the scrub from. The rain came down like the inside of a waterfall. She shivered and returned to the fire.

"Don't think I'll have to water the garden tomorrow," she said idly.

"I hope Naj has the sense to stay indoors," said Hodari. "Sometimes, she goes out to the workshop to doodle her designs at the oddest hours."

"I often see her out there, late at night," said Mira. "Is she also an insomniac?"

"Yeah," answered Hodari, then frowned. "Also, like who?"

"Jel and Felix," said Mira, deciding to leave Reth out of it. "That's how they met, I guess. Felix was fishing the lake, late at night. He doesn't talk about it much, but from what he said, it was very sweet. They kept meeting when there was no one else around." She smiled. "Actually, Felix doesn't talk much, in general. Like someone else I know."

"Don't know what you're talkin' 'bout," he grumbled.

She ducked to hide her smile. "I'm gonna go check on that soup."

When she came back in with two steaming bowls of soup, she found him leafing through a book by the light of the fireplace.

"Your bookshelf is made outta an old rowboat," he remarked. "Why'd you need a Majiri dictionary, anyway?"

"I never knew you were so nosy," said Mira. "I'm learning so many new things."

"I can put it back, if it bothers you," he offered.

Mira set one bowl down and held the other one out to him. "You should dig in before it gets cold."

She took her own advice. The soup reminded her of something that her grandma used to make for special occasions and serve with homemade croutons, a long-neglected memory. It was much less garlicky than she'd anticipated, given how much of the stuff the recipe called for. She'd ask Sam about it later. He always knew the answers to questions like that.

A few quiet minutes later, Hodari said, "Met your friend Grace the other day."

"Yeah," replied Mira, "she told me you stopped by."

"Good of her to help with the garden," he said.

"Yeah, she told me you said that, too," said Mira, tamping down the urge to snort. "We do look out for each other, you know."

He rubbed the back of his neck. "I can see that."

"And I don't mind danger, or staying up late at night," she went on, "but Grace doesn't mind reading a million books to help Jina with her research. I'd be bored stiff if I tried to do that. And"– she gestured with her empty bowl and spoon– "Sam is a way better cook than me."

Hodari was still scratching his neck, head ducked, eyes fixed on the flickering fire. "It's just," he said, "you always seem to be doin' something for someone else. Like me. An' they–I mean, me–never seem to–"

"It's fine," she quickly cut in. "I don't do these things for no reason. I worry about Najuma, too, you know. And it's not like the village hasn't done plenty for me." This time, she allowed herself the snort.

"Oh?" he asked.

Mira gestured at the house around them. "You think in other places, when a stranger shows up out of thin air, they just hand 'em over a house with a yard for free?" she asked. "If I hadn't wound up in Palia, I could work for twenty years and not be able to afford my own place."

"That so," he mumbled, ducking his head again.

"It's fine," she said again. "It's sweet of you to worry, really."

She got up so that she couldn't see his face, took both their bowls to the kitchen, and started washing up. Hodari didn't follow her. Maybe he was still sitting and staring at the fire. Or maybe he was looking at her other books. Why did she buy the dictionary? She couldn't quite remember. Not like she hadn't noticed, even on the first day, that everyone understood her perfectly, even though, as far as she could tell, she was still speaking English. But once she'd gotten used to it, she'd stopped thinking about that, and all the other mysteries that Grace loved to speculate about so much.

She thought about this as she chewed up one of Yancy's homemade toothpaste tablets and peered out the kitchen window. The rain wasn't letting up. Hodari, she saw, was doing the same thing in the next room. Probably, he was thinking about how he needed to get home, somehow, even through the downpour. She'd have offered him a place on her couch for the night–she owed him, after all–but all she had were the two armchairs. She hadn't tried sleeping in one of them, but it could hardly be comfortable.

He turned to her when she reentered the room and grumbled, "Clouds're so heavy I can hardly tell night from day."

"I thought I heard the bell tower over the storm," she replied, "but I can't be sure."

Hodari scratched his head. "Hope Najuma had the good sense to stay inside," he said, and then grimaced. "An' eat somethin' better than cold crab pie for dinner."

Mira laughed as she plopped into a seat by the fire. "You sound like my mom, back when I first went to college," she said. "'Ramen again, Mira?' No, not the good stuff," she clarified at his baffled expression. "Instant ramen, just add water. That stuff's, like, 90% salt."

"What's human college like?" he asked.

"Boring," she said flatly. "I kind of hated it, but it's something you gotta do, or you won't hear the end of it." She sighed. "And I was bad at it. I'd much rather be here, where I can do something that I'm actually pretty good at."

"Helpin' people?" he asked.

She laughed again. "I meant gardening."

Hodari peered out the window at the sheets of rain. "Looks t'me like you're pretty good at both."

"Are you angling for a free jar of pickles?" she teased. "'Cause all you gotta do is ask."

"There you go again," he said, slapping his forehead. "If you give me pickles, I'd hafta at least help you plant those flowers."

"I'll have to collect the seeds first," she replied, "and wait for a pause in the rain."

Hodari sat by the fire, across from her, and leaned his chin on his hand. "What kinda seeds were you thinking of?"

Mira racked her brain. "Grace planted some hydrangea because she said they're easier to take care of. I think she thought Sam might neglect them, if she's away from the plot for too long. And Yolanda planted rose and lavender, but that's for the twins' soap business."

"Soap?" asked Hodari, crooking one eyebrow.

"Scented soap," she confirmed. "And lotion, and tooth powder. They sell it around here. Basically all the humans buy their soap from Yancy and Yolanda. Me, too."

"An' they buy your pickles?" he guessed.

"Some," said Mira. "But mostly I sell them to Zeki. And he's talking about passing them on to a friend of his, in Bahari City. He seems to think they'd sell well, there." She shrugged. "Novelty value, I guess."

He frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I guess they're really interested in humans, there." She shrugged again. "Maybe none of the humans who arrived in Palia showed up in the area. Or maybe they got lost in the crowd. Either way, Zeki seems to think that people'll buy my pickles, just because they were made by a human."

"Guess that makes me lucky," he said, "to have humans right here, in my own town."

Mira smiled feebly.

"That means you," he clarified.

"That's sweet," said Mira, "but I'm nothing special."

"That's–" said Hodari and shook his head. "I dunno how you can say somethin' like that."

"That I'm not special?" she asked, amused. "Easily. I used to think I was, you know, when I was a kid. I was a decent enough student, and my parents were proud of me. I ran track for the school team, all through middle and high school. That's what got me to college, because by then, my grades weren't anything to write home about." She shook her head. "When I joined the college team and saw how much faster and better all the other runners were, well, I guess that's when I realized."

"Realized what?" asked Hodari with an increasingly troubled frown.

"That I'm replaceable," she replied, and shrugged. "When I left school, the coach took someone off the bench to fill the first leg position, and the team went on as usual. No one kept in touch, except they sent some flowers after the funeral. Cheap white chrysanthemums, with a card that only half the team'd signed. Then Mom started talking about selling the house, so I moved out." She shrugged again.

Hodari was staring at his hands.

"It's not a big deal," insisted Mira. "You don't have to make a big deal about it."

"You're not replaceable," he said softly, still looking at his hands. "Najuma'd miss you if you left."

"Najuma would?" she asked, snorting.

"An' I would," he said, even more softly, but he still wasn't looking at her.

"I should make some tea," Mira said, half to herself. "I didn't mean to bring the mood down."

"Look," said Hodari, spreading out his hands, then stopped, and shook his head.

He got up, pushing back the battered log armchair, and hooked his foot through the folding table's legs to kick it aside. With one step, he closed the distance and knelt, with the fire at his back. Taking both of her hands in his, he looked up into her face.

"I would miss you," he said. "Don't go."

"Well, I'm not going anywhere in this storm," said Mira.

"Don't go," he said again, squeezing her hands. "Don't go runnin' off an' hide, every time you're feelin' flustered."

"Who's flustered?" said Mira, looking away, and braced her hands on the chair's armrests to get up.

Hodari cupped her face, stroking her cheek with his thumb. All the light in the room was behind him, and she couldn't see his eyes. They were just hollows in the shadows of his face. It was easier to speak when she had her back to him, but the chair she'd built with her own hands was too narrow for her to turn around in.

"How do I know?" she asked, her voice almost too soft to hear. "How do I know you mean it?"

He kissed her.

*

One kiss was never enough, or so Mira had always thought, and so one became two, which became more. While the storm raged outside, she let herself get drawn into the uncomplicated floodwater of want, without questioning why. That lasted until she found herself sitting naked in bed, Hodari sprawled beside her, already half-asleep.

She slid off the bed and padded across the room to the bathroom, only stopping by the wardrobe long enough to pull on the first shirt that came to hand. It was definitely too cold to wander around the house naked. She was grateful that she'd had the foresight to put in wooden floors, so at least her feet weren't cold.

For Mira, going to the bathroom after sex had been a hard-earned lesson, though that was all far in the past. This time, though, peeing wasn't enough to calm her nerves. She'd gotten carried away. There was too much that she didn't know. Too many uncontrolled variables, as Grace would have said. She splashed some cold water on her face and gripped the sides of the sink, staring her her own face, dimly reflected in the mirror above it.

"That was dumb," she said.

Chapter Text

Hodari woke up to the sound of peki calls and found himself in a strange bed. He stretched and rolled over, and found Mira sleeping beside him. He thought about the thunder and the flickering firelight, and how the fire had reflected in her eyes, and her soft mouth under his. He shifted closer and threw an arm over her waist, drawing her sleeping body against him. Although he'd've liked to forget, he remembered that the mines were waiting for his pick, and Najuma was waiting for him at home. As much as he wanted to stay a little longer, he couldn't spare a lazy morning in bed. It was only a happy imagining, at least until the work week ended.

"Hey," he said, nuzzling her cheek. "G'morning."

Mira mumbled something sleepily indistinct.

"I gotta go," he murmured in her ear. "Wish I could stay, but, y'know. Najuma. An' my work."

She mumbled something question-like.

"Yeah, I'll see you soon," he promised. "Very soon."

He got up and hunted down his clothes, which'd somehow ended up thrown around in a trail, all the way back to Mira's empty front room. Once he'd gotten them on, he built up a fire for her, just so she could have a nice, cozy morning. Right before leaving, he slipped back into the bedroom to smooth back her mussed hair and kiss her cheek.

The walk through the old mine tunnels was as dank and damp as ever, and the abandoned shaft let him out far north of the aqueduct and the mines. But Hodari was in such a good mood that even the long, wet walk home felt refreshing, the air washed clean by the heavy rain, while the sun peeped out to lure the songbirds back out of their nests. At one point, he caught himself whistling along to their song.

At home, Najuma was curled up on the couch, with some scribbled pages untidily stacked on the floor beside her, as though they'd slipped from her hand when she fell asleep. An empty congee bowl sat on the table beside her, so at least she'd eaten something. Hodari picked up the bowl on his way to the kitchen to fix breakfast for them both, though he knew that Najuma could sleep for hours more after he left for the mines.

When he came out of the kitchen, Najuma was sitting up and rubbing her eyes.

"What time is it?" she asked blearily.

"Little after sunrise," he answered. "Go back to bed."

"Where were you?" she asked. "I waited for you for dinner."

"Sorry," he said, ducking to kiss the top of her head. "Got caught in the storm. I gotta head out, now. Get some sleep."

She nodded. "You gonna be home for dinner tonight?"

Hodari smiled. "Sure."

*

"Idiot," Mira said to herself as she plucked carrots out of the muddy ground and piled them in her produce basket.

"Dumb, stupid idiot," she said as she hauled the same basket over her hip.

"You're so dumb," she insisted as she trimmed the tops off the carrots and scrubbed them clean.

"Idiot," she said, one last time, as she plopped them into a barrel loaded with vinegar and herbs.

She repeated the same refrain all the way down to the village, to tell Zeki that the next batch of export pickles was underway and arrange a pickup date. She'd picked up all her groceries before the storm hit, and the ground was still too soft to try any new planting. Since there didn't seem to be any major Flow-related crisis underway, she was pretty much out of work for the day.

Mira stood just outside Zeki's grocery store, looking this way and that. She didn't feel like going to the inn, just then, for no particular reason, and the thought of stopping by the library gave her the shivers. She could always cross the river and head down to the Daiya farm. Badruu and Delaila had told her that she was always welcome, and usually, she took them at their word.

Instead, she climbed the steps up to the town hall.

She leaned her elbows against Kenyatta's receptionist's desk and asked, "Hey, you busy today?"

"Ugh, no," groaned Kenyatta. "I'm so bored, there's never anything to do here."

"Mind if we talk a little?" asked Mira. "In private."

Kenyatta perked up immediately. "Ooh. Juicy."

"I mean it," said Mira. "This isn't gossip material. I don't want to be overheard."

Kenyatta looked left and right, then leaned forward and lowered her voice. "Dad just gave me the key to the records room. I'm not even sure he remembers where it is."

"But I do," replied Mira.

"Right," said Kenyatta. "Dad mentioned something about you helping him out, that time."

From where Mira was sitting, the records room looked more like a seldom-used office. Not that she was complaining, since the armchairs in City Hall were much swankier than anything she could make herself. Rather than look around for a second chair, Kenyatta hoisted herself onto the desk and sat with her legs crossed and her elbows braced against her knees.

"Now," she said, looking to Mira with obvious anticipation, "dish."

Mira drummed her fingers against her leg. "You're close with the twins, right?"

"You know it," she agreed. "They tell me basically everything."

"Remember how Yolanda supposedly had that crush on Hassian?" asked Mira. "Anything ever happen with that?"

Kenyatta made a face. "I thought you were supposed to be the one dishing to me, Mira. And anyway, nothing happened. Yolanda's way too shy to make the first move, and Hassian has no idea she's interested."

"Damn," said Mira. "But, well, they talked to you about it, didn't they? Not just as a friend, but, like, there's things they wouldn't want to ask Chayne about."

"Right," said Kenyatta doubtfully.

"Mechanical things," she clarified.

"Right?" said Kenyatta, looking ever more confused.

"Like how different humans and Majiri really are from each other," she explained.

"Oh," said Kenyatta, and then, a moment later. "Oh!"

"Yeah," said Mira grimly.

Kenyatta tipped her head to one side and hummed thoughtfully. "Well, we talked about it, sure. I told them my stories and they told me a few of theirs. And we went skinny-dipping that one time, in the summer, so there weren't really any big surprises."

"Okay, but, like," said Mira, fumbling with her words, "that's all surface stuff. What about, umm, under the hood?"

"What do you mean?" asked Kenyatta, frowning.

"Is it possible, do you think?" she asked, trying not to wring her hands. "Could we be, y'know, compatible like that?"

"Like, a Majiri-human baby?" asked Kenyatta, raking her fingers through her hair. "I'd have to ask Chayne. No one's tried it, so far as we know. Well, I guess that depends if you're trying to conceive or avoid."

"Avoid," said Mira firmly.

"Really?" asked Kenyatta, leaning forward on the desk, her eyes bright. "With who?"

"That's gossip," replied Mira, "and I told you I wasn't here for gossip."

"Right," said Kenyatta, leaning back again. "Well, avoiding's the easier question, that's for sure. I can fix you up something to take care of that, easy, though I don't know if everything that works for us will work for you."

Mira nodded, running her thumb over a fingernail.

"And for the other thing," Kenyatta went on, "I can ask Chayne about it, next time I see it. Maybe one of the other Sages knows something, from everywhere else where humans showed up."

"Yeah," said Mira absently. "No way someone hasn't tried it, somewhere. If there's one thing you can count on in life, that's it."

"When you put it that way," said Kenyatta, leaning back on her palms, "I'm surprised no one in Kilima has tried it, yet."

"Well, Felix and Jel," said Mira, "but they don't need birth control." She paused. "Do they?"

"Not as far as I know," said Kenyatta, grinning, as she hopped down from the desk. "Anyway, I should get back to pretending to work while reading my herbal under the table. You good?"

"Yeah, I guess," said Mira. "Let me know what Chayne has to say?"

"Sure," she agreed. "Drop by my house around eight or nine, and we can talk some more."

Mira nodded. "I'm gonna... I dunno. Go hunt some chapaa, I guess."

"Smart," snorted Kenyatta. "Vent your feelings on those adorable little pests. Mom'll be thrilled."

"But so will Hassian," she pointed out.

Kenyatta shrugged. "Win some, lose some."

*

When Hodari stopped by the inn for his lunch, Mira wasn't anywhere to be seen. Not in the inn itself, or in any of the shops to either side, or even out on the balcony that overlooked the river. He wanted to go looking for her, but he had to get back to the mines, and taking the long way around would mean breaking his promise to Najuma. He couldn't do that. He'd planned to bump into Mira in the village and invite her to join them for dinner. Najuma liked her, he knew that, but he still needed to see how she felt about having Mira around the house more often.

All the rest of the afternoon, as he walked and worked, he mapped out the bay in his mind. One by one, he laid out all the paths and shortcuts he knew, north to south and back again, trying to find the lie in something that he knew to be true. Mira's plot was inconveniently far from the mines. If he left home after dinner, he'd get to her house at midnight, and neither of them would get any sleep. As badly as he wanted to see her again, as much as he'd promised, Mira would have to wait. He would have to wait.

And he did wait, a day and a night and another day after that. And he would have had to wait even longer, except that luck was on his side, for once. Mira was still tracking the proudhorned sernuk, tricky beast that it was, and her hunt took her all over the Bahari fields. And if there was one thing he did know about the bay's Flow-touched beasts, it was that they were much easier to hunt by night than by day. He could even justify leaving the mines for Pulsewater, since the mayor's wife had written, asking him to prospect a location for sinking a new pit.

Hodari didn't have to look for long before he found her, sitting on a boulder in one of Hassian's abandoned campsites, the orange firelight flickering over her thoughtfully frowning face.

When she didn't stir or look his way, he called her name.

She startled. "Hodari?"

He smiled, offering her a lazy salute. "Still chasing the sernuk?"

Mira groaned. "I'll be chasing that beast until the day Embra's had enough of me and dumps me through another one of her swirling pink portals."

Hodari suppressed a shiver.

"What brings you out here, this late at night?" she asked, changing the subject.

"I was lookin' for you," he admitted.

Mira straightened abruptly.

He met her halfway, slinging his arm around her waist and cupping her cheek. Mira sucked in a hard breath, and a shiver ran down her body. When he leaned in to kiss her, though, she pressed her hand to his mouth and turned her face away from his.

"Mira?" he asked, smoothing his thumb over her cheek. "What's wrong?"

"We can't do this," she said. "I can't do this, right now. I'm sorry."

She tore herself out of his arms and, without another word, turned around and walked away, pack slung over one shoulder.

He watched her leave, feeling even more dumbfounded than usual. The sight of it stayed with him, all the way back home, all the way through a distracted dinner with Najuma, and all the way through the night. When he woke up the next day and he was still thinking about it, he decided straightaway that he had to do something, had to figure out what went wrong and how he could fix it.

Only thing was, he had no idea where to start.

As he trudged his way up to the village, he thought of all the work he had to do and tried to put his troubles out of his mind. Fixing the leaky drain at the house, putting up new supports in the mines, turning in his survey to the mayor's wife, those were all manageable. They were all things he knew how to do. Even dealing with Eshe, his least favorite part of his job, was easy by comparison. The worst she could do was scowl at him, and that had stopped bothering him long ago.

With that in mind, he bypassed the smithy and headed straight to City Hall.

"Got this report for the mayor," he said to Kenyatta. "Or your mother, if she's in."

"Oh, mom's patrolling," drawled Kenyatta. "You can leave that with me, I'll make sure she gets it."

"You're not gonna dump it in the river or pour ink on it?" he asked suspiciously. "If she don't get it, Eshe'll blame me an' call me lazy. Won't have her thinkin' I'm shirkin' my job."

"Someone's grumpy today," said Kenyatta in that same grating drawl. "You get up on the wrong side of the bed?"

"Wrong bed," muttered Hodari, too low to hear, he thought.

But Kenyatta heard him, and she perked up from her slouch. "What do you mean, whose wr– Wait." She stopped and put up her hands, palms front. "You're the one who gave Mira a scare?"

"Scare?" He racked his mind, thinking back to all of their recent interactions. What could he have done that scared her? Mira wasn't easily frightened. She was the sort of girl who scaled sheer cliffs without climbing gear to catch a butterfly.

Kenyatta rolled her eyes and leaned in close, lowering her voice. "A pregnancy scare, you dolt."

"What?" he asked stupidly.

"I know you know where babies come from," said Kenyatta, glaring at him with her fists on her hips.

"A baby," said Hodari, his mind racing with unconsidered possibility. "Didn't think that could–" He spread out his hands helplessly.

"What'd you use?" asked Kenyatta conversationally, leaning against the reception desk. "Sheath? Patch? Neither of them is foolproof."

Hodari ducked his head. "But she's human," he whispered. "Didn't think that was possible, with a human."

"So you didn't–"

He shrugged.

Kenyatta groaned loudly and smacked her forehead. "No wonder she was panicking."

"She still panicking, you think?" he asked, shoving down the sudden imagining of little brown half-human babies.

"No idea," said Kenyatta flatly. "You could always ask her yourself. About that report?"

Hodari left the report with her for safekeeping and wandered away, deep in thought. Mira was upset with him, and no wonder. He was hard-pressed to think of a way to make it up to her, other than promising to be as careful in the future as he should've been, to start with. It made it difficult to concentrate on his work. If he kept being distracted, the mine's yields would fall, and then Eshe would certainly take him to task.

"Um, excuse me?"

He was saved from his own thoughts by an unfamiliar human appearing unexpectedly at the mine's entrance.

"Need somethin'?" he asked.

The human shifted on his feet, sliding a subtle half-step backward. "You're Hodari, right? From the mining guild?"

"That's me," he agreed.

"Sam and Grace said that you're the one who can help me," said the human, making a nervous gesture that drew Hodari's eye to the pickaxe he was carrying.

"You lookin' for ore?" he asked. "That pickaxe'll crack stone, or maybe copper ore, but you'll need somethin' stronger for iron."

"Sort of," said the human, fiddling with the shabby tool's dull head. "I'm looking for a bug. Grace said they live under rocks, in the mines."

"Those shiny centipede critters," he guessed.

"Yeah!" said the human, taking a half-step forward. "That's the one. I need it for, um, reasons."

Hodari waved a hand dismissively. "Don't need t'know why you need one. You got a pickaxe, come with me and I'll get you started clearin' some stone. Start gettin' better at it, then we'll see about findin' you some better tools." He shook his head ruefully and added, "What's your name?"

"Felix," said the human. "Maybe Sam mentioned me?" he added hopefully.

"Mira mentioned you," replied Hodari.

At any rate, now he had some idea why this human, Felix, was suddenly interested in cracking rocks in his mine, or the bugs that lived under them. He was the fisherman who lived next door, the one Mira said was involved with the tailor. Hodari didn't listen to gossip, as a rule, but you couldn't live in a village the size of Kilima without learning a thing or two about your neighbors. Everyone knew that Jel, fancy city lad that he was, often took a liking to strange critters and called it inspiration. Having an artist's Path often made folks a bit odd.

Watching the young human put his back into the work, he knew immediately that a man would only work that hard for one reason. Hodari had used to work that hard for Leta's sake, as she did for him, and now, he did the same for their daughter. As Leta would have done, if she were still with them. He would have done it for Mira, he realized on the second day, if only he knew how.

On the afternoon of the third day, Felix showed up at the mines, proudly toting a shiny new copper-headed pick. He presented it to Hodari, who checked his handiwork with an expert eye. When he was satisfied that the pick could pass muster, he led Felix down one of the mine's tunnels to a rich iron vein he had high hopes for. Unhooking his own pickaxe from his tool belt, he swung it at a likely-looking spot in the tunnel's wall, opening a thin crack in the stone.

"Now you," he said.

Felix furrowed his brow at the vein, adjusted his grip on the pick, and swung. Once, and the crack widened just a tiny bit. Twice, and chips of stone started skittering to the ground.

"Good," said Hodari. "Keep going."

Or he would have done, except that when Felix swung at the vein a third time, something other than stone fragments skittered away in the tunnel's dim lighting. Felix yelped, dropped his pick, and fumbled after something in his pocket. He threw the mystery packet at the skittering critter, chasing it down the tunnel, and came back a moment later with it sitting in the palm of his hand.

"Centipede," said Felix, offering his hand for Hodari to see.

Lamplight bounced off the centipede's shiny outer shell, refracting in Flow-like shades of violet and rose. He nodded thoughtfully at Felix's obvious pride.

"Got a place to keep it?" he asked.

"An empty jam jar," answered Felix. "It's in my pack. I left it at the entrance to the mines."

"Hold on," said Hodari. He turned back to the iron vein and gave it another sound strike or two, sifting through the fragments with the toe of his boot. A few chunks of ore he piled into the nearest minecart, and left the offscour to be cleared out another day. He nodded to himself and gestured to Felix to follow. "Let's go."

Felix let the centipede skitter over his hand all the way to the mouth of the mines, turning his hand over and over, watching its glittering walk with fascination. He must've followed the sound of Hodari's boots, or something, because he never stumbled once. When the sunlit outline of the entrance came into view, he broke into a grin and then a run, dropping his pick and kneeling beside it to rummage in his backpack. Hodari watched him drop the centipede into a glass jar with a couple of twigs in it.

"Is that thing gonna be all right in there?" he asked, frowning.

"Until I get it to the smithy, sure," said Felix, as he slapped a piece of cotton over the open jar and tied it around with twine. "I can't vouch for what Sifuu's gonna do to him."

Hodari blinked as he let this sink in. "Gonna make you a pin, is she?"

Felix smiled brilliantly.

"Best of luck to ya," said Hodari. "I gotta get back to work. You ever need anythin', you know where t'find me."

"Thanks," replied Felix. "I will."

He hesitated only a heartbeat before adding, "Check in on Mira, wouldja? She's not doin' too good."

Felix furrowed his brow and nodded. "I'll look in on her tonight."

Maybe Mira would talk to another human about everything that she couldn't tell him.