"Kador, honey, let's get you to bed." It was his mother, Ave Emeny Ogyina Hutz Ryabatsev, coming to get him off to bed down in the wagon. He was eight years old, and sitting on a log around the fire.

Elijah sat in the chair, struggling to not mind that it was uncomfortable. It was the strange sort of chair hospitals presumably had specially made - it had padding yet it was terribly uncomfortable. The proportions were all wrong, it was an ergonomic nightmare. His legs were too high. The seatback cut across his massive trapezius at an exactly wrong spot unless he slouched in a spine doubling position Clippit himself would avoid. The fabric was undoubtedly easy to clean, but aside from that it had the feel and yielding comfort of burlap stretched over a few reams of paper.

It was easy to see that she returned his affections and did not know what to make of any of it. Her fingers drifted from his lips reluctantly, lingering on his chin briefly before coming to rest upon his chest. "If the journey to Freehold is needful... I would very much like it if you would come with me."

Tob had been wandering through forests with doorways where rivers have legs and the nonsense of it all was neither alarming nor significant. He was running from a black bear with a honeyed pasty he had stolen from it, applauded by the kingdom of bees that made it. He was finding safety in a crevasse between boulders in a vast glacial moraine. He ate the pasty with relish, closing his eyes to enjoy the sweet flavor of the honey and the thick solidity of the sticky dough.

Tob stood in the whitewashed hallway outside of Yasminna's room, what she had called her "sleep camp." He self consciously smoothed the front of the bright green linen tabard that the order had given him to wear. As linen always does, it had wrinkled impressively over the course of dinner, and it bore a few red drops where wine had missed its intended target. The red wine in his stomach, warm and sweet and pleasant so recently, was now burning a little acidly.

Earl's had closed over an hour ago. The honky-tonk's gravel parking lot was empty except for an old Ford stake-bed truck. The Ford's windows had been closed to stave off the cold of the desert night. Those windows were covered in steam, dripping with condensation. Everything in the cab of that truck was sweating, and inside the faint smells of cow, hay, dirty oil and rawhide leather provided an imperfect background to the smell of bathtub gin and dime-store perfume.

"That was ... amazing," J.B. Stewart panted.

The three sisters of Darkness, Cold, and Anxiety were added guests in the cave that Tob had found to shelter the pilgrims from the storm. Tomiak would have to wait until the storm passed. If the storm lasted too long, Tomiak would wait forever, and the cave would be a tomb. There was Darkness, because wasted fuel for light might be precious in a few days time, and there was nothing to look at now except each other and the cold cave. There was Cold, because there was no firewood to be spared, and only blankets and close company to keep folks warm. Anxiety never stayed far from her sisters. She was always happy to sneak into any party where they were invited.

It had been a difficult conversation. Tob had, of course, been surprised by the salient facts he had missed, as usual. Yahim was not Yahim, but Yasminna, and now they were shipboard together on their way towards lands where Dolfanc were gathering. It was too late to send her back, and given her explanation, she would not go back even if sent. Tob mulled it over as he climbed through the hatch and into the open night air on the deck of The Northern Star, and walked to the forecastle at the front of the ship.

Forworded is forarmed: This gets a little rough, but Tob has been at war for some years.

Tob waited for the mayor, a low noble of little regard, of a town called Lud on the front of the Race War to permit his people to evacuate. At that point in his military career he had been commanded by the King's former Field Marshall, now declared a general by a Baron, to muster the remaining populations on the front into functioning militias.

Aaronymous and I cranked this out over the past few days. I'm happy as a clam with it. I expect we'll move it to a child page or what have you as that gets sorted out.