Merry Christmas

I got to do a projection of my family this morning, and catch up on what's happening back home. Jules is getting so tall – it's really disconcerting. I've been gone more than two years now, and I'm very different inside my head and home has become the place I used to live. Kaoren knows enough English now to catch a little bit of my conversation with my Mum, but not to have more than a disjointed idea what we talked about (weddings and babies). It would be nice to introduce the kids, but it takes so much energy I can only do it in the Ena and I'm not very keen on taking them in there.

Kaoren and I have been starting to put together proper ideas for our wedding. Neither of us are particularly traditional, or devoted to a particular image of what the wedding should be like. I want to wear something resembling one of the less over-the-top Earth wedding dresses, and Kaoren is going to wear formal robes in colours complementing the girls' dresses. He's very against me being blindfolded and picking him out from a bunch of other guys, but does want to do the exchange of cakes. We both very strongly want to make our wedding day 'adoption day' as well, though we haven't discussed this with the kids yet. Basically, we have an additional stage of the ceremony where we'll formally adopt them. And I'm going to go off contraception a little before the wedding, trying to time it so I'll start being able to conceive just after we're married.

The having a baby myself thing is pretty scary. Alay let me feel her daughter kicking, and I had to restrain myself from making Chestburster comments, because it just weirded me out having something which wasn't Alay moving beneath her skin. Very normal and all that, I know, but just...weird. Kaoren told me on his birthday that he's a little nervous about having babies too, but more because even with all Tare's technology, it's still one of the most dangerous things women do.

The Inquiry into me and Lira is being wound up, though the recommendations won't be made public for a while. And after that the decision of the various governments about what should become law.

My big amusement of the moment is a new program from the same producers who are behind The Great War. The Great War will wind up after this season – and all the kids except perhaps Sen are extremely pleased about that because they despise the way they're being depicted (they opted to not communicate more than their ages and the scriptwriters (perhaps trying not to offend) came up with these tremendously brave and noble children who are a little too good to be real). But just as we're coming into the final throes of The Great War (next episode is the one where I get sucked into the Cruzatch's trap), this new show has started called Muina Ez (Into Muina) which follows two settler families (one from Tare and one from Kolar) from the acceptance of their settlement applications onwards, showing all the minutiae of what 'average' people are encountering when moving to Muina.

It's interesting and well-produced, and really gets the feel of the process right, I think. But it's truly funny to me because of the way my family is depicted. They don't get actors to portray us – or show images or anything – just long-distance shots of Arcadia and the other islands as this near-mythic goal on the horizon. Both sets of settler kids are shown as completely fascinated by me and Lira and Kaoren (and Setari in general), except for the primary heroine of the story, who is fixated on Ys. Ys, Rye, Sen and Lira's personalities and traits are better known now, and the primary heroine of Muina Ez is this smart, slightly socially awkward Kolaren girl whose head is stuffed full of stories of epic derring-do, and Ys has been her hero since saving me after I projected the dragon. She has a counterpart (and obvious future love interest) in a brainy Taren boy and it looks like they're going to play up Kolaren-Taren-Nuran culture clashes for all it's worth. It's a fun show, and very informative about the settler process.

Ys' reaction to the first couple of episodes has been priceless. She's used to the focus being on Lira or Sen, but Ys is definitely the mythic heroine of this plot so far and she's trying to be infuriated but it's hard for her to withstand such a high compliment. Lira teases her a little about it, but not too much (most of the other kids on the show are severely Lira-worshipful, which she's loving).

I probably shouldn't be enjoying it so much. Being such public figures is a whole extra strain on them, but so far the kids are handling it better than I expected. The last episode had a long discussion about House Kimirenar and just what was going on inside it, and the whole issue with Sen's parents – and even just who Ys and Rye's parents are too (a subject too touchy for them to discuss even with me). All pure speculation – according to Maze they're not going to present anything as fact about us which isn't known as fact, but they're certainly willing to argue through all the rumours. Both families are based in Pandora (with parents with exotic jobs which mean they get to visit other settlements) and the kids' absolute aim is to get canoes and paddle to Arcadia - exactly as two Kolaren teenagers attempted to just recently, except they don't want to be intercepted by greensuits as the teenagers were. The show's entirely produced and created here and Lira's very curious to try and spot the actors whenever we go into town. Muina's gradually accruing more and more personalities and celebrities, and famous people from Tare and Kolar seem to be constantly migrating here. It fortunately takes some of the focus off me and the Setari (although a lot of the famous people are just as much Setari-fans as the next person).

There's whole heaps of rumours going around about my wedding plans now. All wildly wrong except for the ones that guess the obvious about it being held on Arcadia. Kaoren's parents will be coming back to Muina a little beforehand – they've decided to emigrate, but to my relief don't want to be based in Pandora. Arden's going to visit, but not emigrate as yet.

Kiddie-palooza

Siame and Rye's birthday this month. Siame went home to Tare briefly for hers (proving a point, I think, though Kaoren didn't try and stop her).

Rye's twelfth birthday a few days ago (in Earth-time it will be a little later each year, which is very confusing to me), and we had our first party on Arcadia since everything got really snowy. Arcadia's been nicely de-snowed and everything's all over with flowers or buds on trees and it's very nice in the middle of the day, though still nippy at night. Rye wanted a swimming party, much like his first one, except with all his new friends involved, and I'd decided to make it a relatively large party. Lots of kids, First, Second and Fourth – and Third and Twelfth who have finally been rostered here (some of them have moved their families here, but unlike the senior squads they can't choose a permanent Muina assignment just yet).

It was a big guest-list, and I'd decided to do a hangi and was rather anxious about how it would turn out. Nick's Dad had always been keen on hangis and we'd had plenty during family holidays, but I'd never actually done all the technical stuff myself. I'd visualised myself a manual, and Kaoren helped me experiment with finding the right sort of rocks, and we'd prepared a small pit a week beforehand for a mini-test run, and that had worked out quite nicely (Siame stopped looking at me as if I was insane after we'd sampled the small amount of food I'd cooked, anyway, and Zan and Kiste who were my guards for the day were very complimentary about the flavour). Kaoren – pretty much everybody - was fascinated by the idea of burying your food to cook it, though most everyone's initial reaction was total incredulity, which was very funny. After hearing about it, an awful lot of our guests wanted to come over early to see us assemble it, and so Rye ended up having something of a party for breakfast as well as for lunch. Thankfully it all worked very well, with that real 'fall apart' texture for the food, and a delicious smokey touch. Of course it made the news, though not immediately, which suggests that none of the people who attended is a direct news source, and I got quite a few fascinated queries via COTIS from cooks wanting to know how to do this, so I've given them a translation of the manual.

Sourcing the food was something of a challenge – COTIS makes sure that vat-grown food production keeps ahead of immigration, but the population has been increasing far faster than farm output can currently manage (and lots of debate about opening up the platforms to use them for freight and casual day-tripping rather than making people wait for air-ship transport). I managed to get a pile of patta (yam-things that taste a lot like sweet potato but are more purply in colour) and this weird fruit the greysuits had recommended for cultivation which looks a bit like a zucchini the size of a coconut, and is rock-solid inside, but really delicious like a mix between mashed potato and bread when it's baked - and also purple carrots, and some varieties of onion, and also pretty much a whole lamb, and two pigsies (the pint-sized striped brown pigs which are so common everywhere – another of the animals where the name I call them was picked up) and some spicy sausages. And I got quite a few volunteers to make side-dishes and desserts among those dropping by at breakfast.

We'd done most of the preparation beforehand – scooped out the pit and assembled the firewood and soaked the closest approximation I could find to Hessian sacks and had the food all ready to go (raiding Rye's herb terrarium) – and Kaoren had gone down just before dawn with Par and Glade and set the fire so that by the time we were done with breakfast it was about time to bury everything. Maze and Alay were early arrivals, and were enjoying themselves making a fuss of Rye, when Zee, Ketz, Mara and Jeh arrived all in a group, carrying various food offerings. Sen, busy trying to peek under the cover of the dish Maze and Alay had brought, froze at the sight of them and then it was like she lifted herself up on strings – coming totally alive and bouncing on the seat of the chair she'd been kneeling on and inhaling in this incredibly excited way as if working up to an explosion of joy. And then she caught herself, and stood there looking like she'd been found with her hand in the cookie jar, all frozen and guilty and yet still bubbling with excitement. She very abruptly hopped off her chair and dashed to where I was stacking the dishwasher from breakfast, pulled me down and whispered: "Is it a secret?" urgently into my ear.

I managed to resist saying: "Not any more" – all the senior Setari know by now how Sen had announced Alay's pregnancy. I also knew that Ketzaren had been talking about trying for a baby and I wished I could find a way to get Sen to think before she acts when she's excited. She at least had _tried_, though, so I patted her head and said: "I don't know. Maybe you should go somewhere private and ask?"

Sen immediately dashed around to where everyone was putting their dishes down and to my complete surprise grabbed Zee's hand (and the look on Mara's face just then was pretty painful), but Sen wasn't finished and hauled Zee across and told her "Zee talk Cassandra now," and then gleefully insisted that Jeh, Ketz and Mara come look at the canopy we'd put up over her bed. Ketzaren told me later that she'd then hauled each of them separately into her bathroom and demanded: "Is baby a secret?" All three of them were looking pretty stunned when they came back, but so happy – Mara disappeared off to find Lohn, and Jeh and Ketz came to laugh about it with me and Zee. I was a bit surprised about Jeh, since I gather she's 100% only into girls, but I guess maybe Grif found a turkey baster for her or something. They were apparently all only a few days along and didn't know they'd conceived. Zee's reaction had been the best - for a moment there Sen really had her wondering if her contraception had failed. Sen spent the rest of the day pouncing on Alay, Jeh, Ketz and Mara at random intervals, hugging them and going "Happy baby!" Except with Mara she kept going "Happy baby baby baby!" so I eventually asked Kaoren if Mara was having triplets and he nodded. [Mara figured this out and asked Kaoren as well and he told her it's two boys and a girl and after that she and Lohn went pretty quiet. Even happier, though, I think.]

Baby excitements distracted everyone thoroughly while Kaoren and I were assembling the hangi, but that was a good thing in my eyes anyway, and soon we had a faintly-steaming piece of ground and everyone went away to calm down. Kaoren and I had another little talk with Sen, but not a very stern one since she did try not to give away anyone's secrets. I did get a chance to talk to Mara just before they were heading back and gave her a hug and told her that she always does things _so_ thoroughly. She tweaked my nose.

Later that day when all the kids came across for the party, Shar seemed pleased for them both, but Fein fairly subdued and both Ennan and Deal showed signs of being upset and trying to hide it. Deal reverted to clinging to Zar. I'm glad I'll have had my four a good long time before any question of being pregnant myself comes up.

Rye's birthday was also our cautious introduction to two new Setari adoptees. Maze and Alay, now that they've moved into their house, had decided to adopt a boy and a girl, but only after having a few discussions with me, and me having a very careful discussion with Ys and Rye. The problem was mainly Lianzar, who is one of the few other survivors from House Kimirenar - the only one at the talent school. I know enough about Nuran name structure now to know that if he'd been the son of the household head, he'd be called Lianzrenar. People's names on Nuri were taken from their household head's name. Each name would be in two parts – the front bit being personal and the second bit being 'family'. A bit like a surname, except with a progression of status. The house head gets all the syllables of the family name, plus a number of syllables of their own 'first name'. And this mainly applies to people in the Zarath ruling class. So anyone with a lot of syllables is most likely Zarath, from an important house, and important in that house. Lianzar was a kind of minor nephew, so he didn't get the full surname bit. Non-Zarath usually have two-syllable personal names, but no family name. One-syllable names kind of scream out how completely unimportant you are.

The important part was how Ys and Rye felt about Lianz. Maze and Alay like him, and wanted to take care of him, but there were other kids they liked and Ys and Rye are far too important to them for them to adopt someone who had been directly or indirectly involved in traumatising my kids. I think if they'd asked a year ago, back around when the talent school was first established, having anything to do with Lianz on a social basis would have been too distressing for Ys and Rye. But I'm very pleased with how they reacted – a bit of startled discomfort, but then one or two positive comments about Lianz generally. The removal of the scars on their backs made a huge difference to Ys and Rye's attitude toward Nurans. They don't automatically like or trust anyone from Nuri, but they no longer have the weight of a shameful secret to hide. And so the possibility that Lianz might know is no longer is a bogeyman to them. From what I saw of him during the party, he's a shy sort of kid, super-obedient and inclined to blush and be anxious and avoid the spotlight. I'm willing to bet that he didn't have too great a time in House Kimirenar either – no-one in a household run by a sadist would be likely to.

Their other choice, Karasayen, was a challenging prospect for a slightly different reason. She was a first child of a powerful house, one which has numerous survivors, and though she's by no means a nasty kid, she is one very much used to being deferred to, to having her opinion taken into account, and to assuming command. I remember very well meeting her that first day of talent school, and really wishing she wasn't commenting graciously on my kindness in taking on Sen's servants. A real A-type personality, she was also one of the main opponents of interface installation within the school, at least until Rye's attitude changed her mind, and then she strongly influenced people in the opposite direction. She's smart, and strong, and rather fixated on the idea of being a Setari.

And she also hadn't been adopted. Alay told me that at the end of the school day when all the adopted children are collected or head off home Kara very clearly demonstrates how little not being collected bothers her. Indifference underlined and oh, so painful. The fewer unadopted kids remain, the more the fact begins to sting, and there are very few unadopted kids at the talent school now – mainly older ones who are nearly adults. Karasayen and Lianzar are both thirteen, and I suspect Maze and Alay will be good for them in a lot of ways.

I am always very careful to keep an eye on any Nurans who come to Arcadia, to make sure that Ys and Rye don't feel that their territory is being violated, and to ensure that no-one even momentarily considers looking down on them. I'm not very fierce about many things, but no matter what cultural expectations anyone might have, or how traumatised they've been, I won't tolerate people treating my kids as some kind of underclass.

No dramas, though. Rye (who is just the sweetest kid) decided to take Lianz under his wing, and Lianz revealed an interest in Rye's gardens (possibly why Maze was so taken with him). They weren't exactly comfortable with each other, but by the end of the party Lianz didn't seem quite so stressed. Kara was a bit like Shar had been – and spent a fair amount of time talking to him – staying in 'visiting dignitary' mode except when startled. She does seem to be quite close to Alay, though, and went rather pink during a private conversation, and at least briefly happy. Sen didn't act overly concerned by her – no hugs, but no flinching – so I decided to relax.

Sen's nightmares have cooled down a bit, and her main preoccupation at the moment is being a witch. I've subtitled a few Miyasakis for the kids, and Ys repeatedly watches "Spirited Away", while Sen is devoted to "Kiki's Delivery Service", has decided she's a witch, insists on being called Kiki, and keeps trying to ride about on a broom she had Ys make for her. With requisite cat stuffed in a basket and tied on the end. Tick-tock and Mip won't go near her any more, and she likes nothing more than getting anyone with levitation or telekinesis to fly her about on her broom 'delivering' things from one end of the house to the other. It's hugely funny, and makes me miss Ghost rather. Ghost probably would have ridden about on the broom.

Grilled

Just finished being examined at the inquiry. It wasn't fun – they had a Sight talent I've not met before who acted in combination with a medical scanner as a lie detector. They started out by checking whether there were any missions I'd done which hadn't been presented, and then if anyone had ever asked me to use my powers for non-mission things, and then whether I ever used my powers of my own accord for non-mission things. Which of course was yes, and then they wanted to know exactly what and when and why and spent ages trying to get me to admit to doing anything which could be seriously disapproved of. I'm so glad I resisted the temptation to peek on Nils and Zee when they went off camping. They also wanted to know if I thought I had any limits to what I could "make real". I said: "My tendency to collapse after ten seconds, and then for whatever it is to fade away." They wouldn't just leave it at that – particularly when Lira is still non-faded. I still don't know if I made her or not, and they weren't tremendously satisfied at my answer to whether I thought I did: "I could barely think at all at the time. All I knew was that the roof was falling in, and so I tried to stuff us both into a corner. I'd completely forgotten she was projecting herself. I wasn't trying to do anything more than stop bits of rock hitting us."

The questioning wasn't hostile, just a lot of polite, clever questions to go with the lie detector, but I hated it all the same. When they'd run out of new ways to try and trip me up, they asked if I wanted to say anything, and I said: "Just that it's very uncomfortable being treated as a potential criminal all the time."

That comment got a lot of headlines (though for all the protests, people are thoroughly enjoying all the information coming out via the inquiry, and the viewing statistics of me being questioned are pretty much 99% of the population – the other one percent being too young to watch). Kaoren says it's lucky that I live such a blameless life, or at least am too embarrassed at the idea of being found out to spy. We talked about what would have happened if they had hit on the only thing that I _did_ want to hide, which was the Kolan government trying to buy me. I'd spoken very briefly to Raiten to ask him what I should answer if I was asked anything which touched on that, and he told me I should just tell the truth. I'm still glad that the subject didn't come up, though.

There was a lot of discussion about whether Lira should be questioned, but fortunately we won that argument by pulling the too traumatised card. The nightmare worked for us in that respect, and COTIS had mine and Lira's main medic talk for a while about the anxiety attacks the inquiry had caused her and how her loss of conscious control of her powers could be psychosomatic given the extreme trauma associated with them. Lira was very annoyed about any of this being public, but pleased that she didn't have to front the inquiry. It would have been damn interesting if she had – she would have given them all an imperial dressing down, because her response to upset is to attack.

It's the submissions stage next, which should be even more annoying. I'm going to try and ignore it, but I'm not sure I'll succeed in concentrating on other things. I'm going to have to start properly planning for my wedding, which is, gods, only five months away. It's weird – I feel like I'm already married to Kaoren – but the idea of the wedding itself makes me nervous. I wish Mum was here. [No sign of the gate to Earth becoming active again in the near future, which has disappointed me a lot – I want to send more letters.]

Maze and Alay's wedding was glorious. Early Autumn, so that the heat had dropped away, and there were berries on bushes, and birds everywhere and a kind of gauzy haze over everything. And it smelled wonderful. Snow is all very amusing and different for a Sydney girl, but it was so nice to be away from it for a day. Keer's property is all ferns and beams of light spearing down through the canopy, and edges around a narrow bit of tea-coloured lake. Most of it hasn't been cleared at all, except around the house. And the whole place is totally infested with dozens of different varieties of deer – some adults no taller than Ys and some almost moose-sized. Mesiath is a bit more dangerous to live in than Pandora – more snakes and poisonous bugs, and there's already been a couple of incidents of people finding the local hunting cats – daturs – stalking them or sitting uncomfortably close watching them. And there are lots of smaller hunting creatures like the martens (named for the pine martens in Planet Earth) and hordes of little nut-eaters, and too many birds to count. Mesiath totally seethes with wildlife. [It's always great fun watching Tarens deal with 'outside' – they're getting better at it, but the Setari families had some real adjustments coming from Tare to live on the islands. Mesiath is even more overwhelming for them, and there always seems to be someone shrieking about bugs or lizards.]

Part of the pre-wedding preparation had been to sweep the area using combat sight, and relocate a couple of snakes, and Keer and Maze had been having a lot of fun finding and arranging big stones into natural seating areas, and shaping stone benches to cover enough seating for the wedding. Most of the benches they donated to other people once they were done, but before then the lot of them arranged in two rows did make it feel rather like an enormous cathedral. The ceremony was different from Lohn and Mara's – not so strictly traditional. None of the bathing and painting the bride and groom, or the thing with the blindfolds. Still had the cake-making thing, except both the bride and the groom's family made one (gi-normous flat brown cakes) with incredibly intricate patterns on top made of a kind of dusted sugar which were apparently luck-wishes – wealth, joy, fame, family, all that kind of thing – and there's a great deal of interest in which pattern you get on your piece of cake when it's shared out. Alay wore a gorgeous filmy dress in shades of purple and gold instead of the more traditional robe (somewhat Grecian with a kind of laced bodice) and simply looked fantastic. Completely radiant. Maze was so at peace, and didn't seem able to take his eyes off her the entire time.

The after-wedding party was fun – Maze's mother is a musician, and played nice music with a couple of friends (kind of 'Irish' music), and there was some light-hearted dancing – Zee and Nils did an aerial slow dance and then everyone who could manage to get themselves in the air followed suit and that was pretty awesome to watch. Kaoren and I didn't dance because Sen had been playing with Ketzaren's hair – she loves trying to do everyone's hair – and Deal had run up and pushed her over and she'd jammed her elbow. Deal used to get on quite well with Sen, but as he's grown attached to his new parents, he's become very jealous of them. And Sen's tendency to treat all the Senior Setari as adored favourites, clambering all over them, makes him particularly upset.

Sen was mainly just shocked to start with, but then found that her arm really hurt when she moved it and burst into tears. And Ys zoomed down from the top patio – literally: she levitated – and snatched her up and I (a little too far away to have done any snatching) fully expected her to turn a total basilisk glare on Deal, but instead she just said sternly: "They're not going to stop wanting you, no matter what anyone else does. Stop being so afraid," and lifted herself and Sen over to me and Kaoren.

We did some hugging and found a numbing salve to put on Sen's elbow, and then we had an interesting talk with Ys about the fact that her levitation talent isn't strong enough for her to lift herself, let alone herself and Sen. Seems Ys worked out how to expand her connection to the Ena shortly after touching me when I had my senses fully extended, but decided not to mention it in case we expected her to spend more time training her talents – or trying to train other people to expand their connections – which would cut down on her reading time. She'd tried teaching Rye, and since he hadn't managed it, had kept quiet about it. "Rye is too interested in bits and pieces of what's nearby," she said, shrugging. "It stops him from looking at it all at once."

This was a very interesting development from the Setari's point of view, because Ys is the only person without a strong sight talent who has managed to make the expansion, and she can also obviously do it very quickly, which is what the Taren and Kolaren Setari who have achieved it have been working on. We held off on interrogating her too much during the party, but she got to have a long conversation with Kaoren, Tsur Selkie and Maze a few days later. I was actually more interested in what she'd said to Deal and told her quietly, after Ketz had brought Deal to apologise, and Kaoren had taken Sen off to fly up to the very tops of the trees, that she had reminded me of Issen Notra. This is a huge compliment to Ys, so of course she didn't believe me, but I explained that while she'd said it a lot more bluntly than Issen Notra might have, it was the same sort of clear-sighted response. Then I threw her further off-balance by telling her how much I envied her for being able to levitate.

Maze and Alay's house wasn't quite ready in time for the wedding, but they'll be moving in soon. It's on the top of one of the small hills on Siriath, and Maze has endless plans for a kind of rock garden and lawn and all sorts of trees and things made of stone. I showed him some pictures of Mount Tomah, back near Sydney, and he was very pleased and inspired by that, and has stolen some idea from it for The Wedding Garden as well.

It feels strange not working while the inquiry is on. I was used to the routine of it all. I still get physical training, and the kids get to train with me now, instead of at the school, but it's a different kind of routine, and I feel very shut in at times. Fortunately it's warming up, and the drifts are melting, and the early flowers should be poking through soon. I've been burying myself in subtitling the last few days. Ages back now I projected a tv and dvd-player and a bunch of dvds and did my best to make them last a long while, and the technicians have been trying to untangle the dvd coding ever since. We could make the machines run easily enough, but what we wanted was, instead of me spending hours projecting Earth documentaries really slowly, that I just project a dvd and we copy the data off it and then voila! And that meant not just being able to get to the data on the dvd (apparently not too hard – Tarens went through a similar technology stage) but translating the dvd coding. That's taken an age, but they finally did it. I projected and copied "Blue Planet" and "The Life of Mammals" and that sort of thing to start with, and then a whole bunch of dvds for my own entertainment – so _nice_ to watch some of my favourite movies again. I'm slowly going to subtitle these for the kids' benefit, but aren't really planning to turn myself into a film industry, so I'm setting them so they can't be spread about.

I've been working on Spirited Away first, running it in Japanese, with English subtitles, and adding Taren subtitles underneath that. I chose it partly because Ys is still pushing through on learning English (but very annoyed at how illogical it is) and also because the lead character is called Sen. Sen will love it when I'm done, no matter how little she understands.

I've also realised I can project dvds of movies I haven't even seen, which will be pretty cool.

Super-Grumpy Month

Stupid action group decided to put forward a stupid motion in the 'parliaments' of Tare, Kolar and Muina demanding that laws be written up regarding the 'use and control of Touchstones'. They want an oversight committee, complete disclosure of all mission tapes, approval of all tasks performed, and strict monitoring to ensure that nothing is ever done without approval.

I caught the announcement and warned Kaoren while the kids were in the middle of breakfast. The action group (translates as 'Citizens for Responsible Management of Touchstones', more or less) tried as much as possible to make their motions simultaneously on all three worlds, so there was no forward notice from COTIS.

Kaoren's eyes went to slits while he was reading the detail – just because we half-expected something like this eventually doesn't mean any of us liked it – and then he called a family meeting and explained what it was the action group was trying to do, and what was likely to happen in the short and long term. The kids initially reacted with pure outrage, and it was only when the whole thing got underway that they started to get a little afraid. Some of the proposals which came up didn't exactly acknowledge we were people.

Fortunately the talent school was in school holiday mode - no formal lessons, just supervision for those who needed it since quite a few of the kids still don't have homes to go to (they've reached about the halfway point of adoptions, and quite a few of the Setari extended family have chosen to add another child to the mix, which has both good and bad aspects). School holidays were a good thing because I wanted the kids sheltered until the petition was settled one way or another, and so I've kept them home even when the rest of the students started managed lessons again. [The interface does most of the schooling anyway – attendance is really babysitting, sport and socialisation, and the classes themselves very rarely require the kids to be there or even interact.]

This whole thing with the action group also shifted the feel of having Setari guards slightly, because of the demand that touchstones be monitored to prevent inappropriate use of powers. The head honcho bluesuits were ordered to at least temporarily put this into effect. Even though there was no actual change to what was happening – I'm already on second level monitoring, and two Setari are assigned to be my guards every day, swapping over mid-afternoon, spending the night, and leaving the following afternoon – the simple fact that they were not simply there to protect me, but also to stop me from doing Evil, was just so annoying. They were all aware of the shift, of course, and embarrassed by it. Maze has been careful to only schedule people I'm close to for the entire time, because that made it less uncomfortable.

We're thinking of building a second, smaller house a little around the side of the hill for our daily bodyguard detail. Even though most of the Setari assigned to look after us are friends, we're not close to everyone who gets scheduled in, and it's just very weird to have a permanent rotation of houseguests. They only need to be 'within quick reach' of me, not actually in my presence, and if Lira and I really are going to have to have mandatory 'for life' guards (as now seems impossible to escape) then we may as well accommodate them properly.

The first couple of days after the motion was made were pretty quiet for us. We just stayed on Arcadia and read the frenzy of response on the interface and tried to distract the kids. There was an enormous backlash against the action group, up to and including death threats, and a couple of huge public demonstrations on Tare. Lots of petitions and rabid message sites. But also excitement at the hope of having all the mission logs released (and, indeed, some people were keen on the Caszandra version of The Truman Show and making every single thing I do public knowledge). And between it all, growing conversation regarding the extent of a touchstone's powers, and what exactly it was COTIS was getting me to do, and what it might get me to do, and what I might choose to do on my own account, and after all, wasn't a touchstone the reason the spaces had been broken in the first place?

Since the governments of three different planets were involved (which basically means four governments, since Kolar is firmly differentiated between North Continent and South Continent), there was a bit of a delay while they decided how to handle a response. It didn't suit anyone's purposes for four sets of laws to evolve. Since I was a Terran stray living on Muina, and Lira was Muinan, and we had made a permanent home of Arcadia, Pandora was the obvious place for an Inquiry into Touchstones to be conducted. Each planet got to have two members on the board of inquiry, and they would hear evidence from COTIS, and submissions from the petitioners and any other interested parties, and then draft laws. And then I imagine there would be some inter-government negotiation.

They've only just managed to get set up, and start to hear initial evidence (they want complete details of all my assignments and training and test results, and the medical information about Lira). Then they plan to question the people who 'control' me, and then me, and then take submissions from anyone who cares to make one. It's going to drag on for months.

It was tough keeping Lira's spirits up. One of the news articles was about a person questioning why I'd been given 'control' of Lira and whether I was the right person to be in charge of her care and development (being, after all, a traumatised stray prone to nearly dying). This sparked the only uncontrolled projective-dream Lira's had since she's been with us: she dreamed that she'd never escaped, that she was back in a world controlled by people who were using her, and would poke her with spears when they saw her. She made our house look very like a Lantaren house, and conjured a bunch of people with spears who promptly chased her out into the back garden to flounder through the snow. Siame, whose window overlooks the back garden, got it open and zapped them before they'd managed to catch her, and Nils and Zee came boiling out via the kitchen, closely followed by Kaoren.

Lira was absolutely terrified, shaking and sobbing, and half-frozen after ploughing through drifts of snow in her pyjamas. I took her into the shower with me and calmed her down, and we had a 'touchstones-only' conversation in there that I'm hoping doesn't get reviewed since Lira was being very wild and angry in response to having been afraid. We'd already had several conversations with the kids about the gap between what people propose and what's likely to happen, and been all very calm and reassuring, but of course we couldn't say absolutely 100% that Lira wouldn't be taken away from us, or that neither of us would ever be plugged into another machine like the one which had destroyed her life. I did tell her that I wouldn't accept such a thing, though, any more than Kaoren would, and I think my tone made her believe me. [Of course, she's also aware that her claim of no longer being able to project is pretty much busted, and we had to take her for a medical, but she's valiantly pretending she hasn't given herself away.]

Sen had been woken by the fuss, and I settled Lira in the baby's room for the night and took Sen in with us since she was upset by Lira being upset. Since then Ys has been sleeping in with Lira, though not advertising the fact. Nils once said that Ys' character could be judged by Sen's, and I think that's really true. For a really sensitive Sight talent like Sen to be so full of love says a lot about who raised her. The care and protection Ys and Rye lavished on her were enough to overcome even the truly negative environment she was raised in.

We'd all calmed down more by the time it was Lira's birthday, in part because the days had ground on without anything happening. I'd eventually decided on jewellery for Lira's main present – good, expensive stuff that would keep and look nice at any age. That went down well – much like Sen, she likes pretty things, and dressing up, and jewellery is something she recognises as a sign we consider her important. And we all had a fun discussion about getting ears pierced, since my ears are pierced, even if I don't wear anything in them. [I wonder if the holes might have closed by now.]

Maze and Alay's wedding is in two days – it's going to be at Keer's house at Mesiath (Keer really likes the tall trees and is the only one of the Senior Taren Setari who took his land grant somewhere other than the islands). Alay's just starting to show, and she and Maze are so funny together right now. She's been rostered on 'light duties', and drops to only training at the talent school after the wedding. Maze wants to wrap her in cotton wool, and you can see him making himself not do that, and you can see Alay trying not to enjoy too much how he's fretting over her. They've fallen so hard. I always enjoy when they're rostered to guard us – Sen insists on saying hello to the baby by wrapping her arms around Alay's waist and kissing her stomach. Alay goes all pink when she does this, but says that there's no need to tell Sen not to. I've been seeing quite a lot of them both because Maze and Rye, having finished preparing the place for Maze and Alay's wedding, have started working on "The Wedding Garden" for Kaoren and me, and have been pulling out trees and scooping out dirt and experimenting with water features on the south side of the island. Alay comes and watches and is highly amused and happy about how much Maze enjoys it all.

I feel very protective of them, which is silly of me, but I don't want their wedding spoiled by the brewing shitstorm about touchstones. Between the kids and the Setari I've been busy playing down any upset I might be feeling myself. Kaoren's not fooled of course, and knows that I've had to wake myself up out of a few projective dreams as well. I make sure I don't dump all my stress on him, and after over a year together I'm better at spotting when he's stressed or worn, and knowing ways to make it better. His meditation garden is really important to him that way: a space even I don't go into unless he asks me. His sights are so overwhelming sometimes, and one of the things we designed the entire house around was this quiet and peaceful place. He'll go out there even when it's snowing when he needs to de-stress.

But he smiles more easily these days, and that makes me very happy indeed.

Epic Fight is Epic

So much fun. The big snow dump finally came, and 'First Park' (as we've taken to calling the park between Lohn and Mara and Jeh, Ketz and Grif's houses) was a fantastic place for it – we knew where the benches and rocks were, and there were enough trees for a little bit of cover, but not enough to be getting in the way. The fight was in two parts – first a massive, silly free-for-all which all the younger kids got to participate in. [It was great to see Deal running about shrieking with the rest of the younger kids – and also that he went and clung to Grif when he got a bit overwhelmed. He's still a pretty trembly sort of kid whenever anything unexpected happens, but is no longer constantly dependant on Zaranar, and has become rather possessive of his three new parents – he gets jealous if they show too much attention to anyone but himself, Zaranar or Ennan.]

After the first fight, Alay and Ketzaren took all the younger kids for a snowman building competition on the patio of Ketz, Jeh and Grif's house, and the snowball fight became 'serious business'. Well, as serious as it can be with ten year-olds. The second game was a paired hunt, and each Setari was paired with a relative to make winning harder. Kaoren was paired with Rye, of course, and I teamed with Ys while Lira teamed with Siame until deciding to pretend that she'd been injured and going to Lohn and Mara's to watch (and obligingly help) Mara's grandparents prepare some of the truly massive amount of lunch needed – her interest in cooking hasn't waned yet. The hunt was a frantic affair with so many people (all Setari on Muina had been invited, plus any relatives they wanted to bring) and though everyone was supposed to keep it light-hearted, it got rather intense in spots. It was a very close fight – Raiten's younger brother has a strong combat sight and together they were extraordinarily good, and there were plenty of excellent teams. Rye doesn't have combat sight, and he was totally white with nerves beforehand because he hates the idea of letting Kaoren down. Fortunately Kaoren's just god-like at these things, and also rather good at creating opportunities for Rye to get shots off, and though he didn't win as totally as last time, he still brought 'Team Ruuel' in first. He said afterwards that wanting Rye to win was excellent motivation for doing his best, and I have a nice scanner image of Rye's celebratory hug with Kaoren. Kaoren looks totally like Rye's Dad in the picture (except for only being ten years older) and it's one of the few images I have of him publicly smiling.

After that there was the snowman judging (carefully arranged for the maximum number of prizes – most creative, most colourful, scariest) and then a huge and somewhat frosty picnic lunch and some more generalised snow sculpture and then everyone staggering off to their respective homes. [Nils and Zee were my bodyguards for the afternoon, and so it was a quick and nippy flight back.] I did a projection of a bunch of cups of Lindt hot chocolate and pushed to make them as 'real' as possible, and they at least lasted long enough for us all to taste. Overall it was a great day.

Not everything was perfect of course. I've got a serious chocolate jones now, and Sen's a little ill. Getting waterproof Winter clothes for everyone wasn't too hard, since there's been plenty of preparation put in for dealing with Winter, but keeping it on Sen is almost impossible, so we had to hunt about for the layers she'd shed, and she'd managed to chill herself enough to be running a fever the next day. Nothing too serious according to the doctors, but she's very grouchy and hard to please when she's got a cold. We've poured a couple of fortifiers down her and that should be enough to kick it.

Plus, while the Setari extended family is very cheerful and happy and supportive, no-one's cheerful and happy and supportive 100% of the time, and there were little spats of grouchiness, particularly from a couple of the elder kids (Lohn's eldest niece is a bit of a drama queen and so far as I can tell she thinks Shar should pay her some attention). Just like the Setari, not everyone in their families is super-nice, and one of the things that underlined that was when complete details and tons of scans of our snowball fight turned up in the news by evening. It's very likely someone sold the story, and the problem with it being someone who came to the fight is that they're all family. Kaoren says we'll have to think about a slightly more restrictive guest list next time, which is probably a good idea anyway, since it was a lot of people.

Oh well, it was a very positive story and all the shots of my kids were good ones - particularly Ys and me throwing snowballs at each other (and Ys actually looking like she was having fun, which she would since the thing she likes most about snow is an excuse to throw things at me – I think she finds it therapeutic). There's a cute one of Lira sprinkling crushed nuts on a cake, and that scene of Rye throwing his arms around Kaoren when they were announced the winners and Kaoren smiling down at him. And also one of Kaoren's snowball interceptions, when he knocks an incoming ball out of the air with one of his own. I have to agree with his increasingly frenzied fandom that he looks _so_ hot when he does that. Kaoren's fanclub is beginning to rival Raiten's. The Setari fanclubs completely boiled over with all the great 'off-duty' images of them.

My biggest down for the day was Eeli, who still hasn’t shown any signs of waking. She was so happy when she was first to capture me last year. She would have enjoyed this year so much.
Neither Third nor Twelfth have been posted to Muina in an age, but both are due to be rotated in soon and I'm really looking forward to seeing Zan again.

Finally

Maze and Alay finally made it official and registered their engagement, sent out invites to an engagement party and to a wedding in two months, and mentioned that btw Alay's pregnant.

They'd told their families first, of course (for Maze this includes Heleste's family, who he remains very close to), but while over the past month they'd spent enough time together that the senior squads were aware that they were 'spending time together', a short engagement and a pregnancy totally floored them.

It had taken the whole month for Alay to decide to go ahead with the marriage part. I'm pretty sure that she'd rather doubtfully agreed to the whole 'two friends with children' concept, only to find after having sex with Maze that she really didn't think she'd be able to cope with being married to him when he only cared about her as a friend. If she hadn't immediately fallen pregnant, she might have chickened out. As it was, Maze scheduled them to be my bodyguards once a week so they could think about it some more, and seduced her each time. The second week she stayed the whole night in his room, and by the third you could really see how differently they were behaving with each other. Not just an acceptance, but an increasing preoccupation with each other. They might have started out with an idea that they could hook up out of convenience, just so they could have kids, but it's a good deal more than that now.

Maze was wandering around the morning of the day before yesterday looking pretty stunned and thoughtful. But very happy. Alay just glowed, and I knew even before they told me that they'd managed to get past any lingering doubts. In any case they had to go ahead and announce something soon because anyone seeing them together these past couple of days couldn't miss how in love they are now. [Kaoren finds the idea of Maze using our house as a romantic rendezvous tremendously funny.]

I had a lot of fun today – they announced it while the kids were at school and I had Mara and Ketzaren as bodyguards (or torturers, since they were forcing me to seriously dodge them or get all bruised from being tackled) with Lohn watching and making comments. When the invitation arrived by email, Lohn read it first, since Mara and Ketz were doing their best to push me without swatting me, and ended up accidentally knocking me onto my ass when Lohn suddenly yelped out the equivalent of: "Holy shit!"

Ketz picked me up while Mara gave Lohn a reproachful look, but he just gabbled: "Read your email, read your email!" and so we did and there was a very sweetly worded email from Maze and Alay inviting everyone to a party that night to celebrate their engagement and coming child. I had to pretend to be preoccupied with my bruised ass so that I could turn away and hide my grin at their complete dumbstruck disbelief.

They all opened channels with Maze and Alay and tried not to sound too amazed while they gave them their congratulations. I kept quiet, only saying that a lot of the junior female Setari were going to be devastated, and everyone was far too distracted to catch me out – at least until Zee, Nils, Jeh and Grif came across to have a big gossip session and Nils all of a sudden pounced on me and asked "How long have you known?"

"Since Sen greeted Alay with a joyous announcement of 'Baby' about a month ago," I admitted, and he laughed and said Maze must make more convincing threats about spankings, and they were all surprised but sort of reassured that I'd known about it.

The engagement party was fun. Sen delightedly announced that the baby's name was 'Secret' (Katen), which Maze and Alay thought very sweet, but they're underestimating how much she means it. The party was at Maze's parents' house, which I hadn't visited before, and again involved interesting traditional baked treats. Since it's not picnic or patio weather it was a tight fit, even though they'd restricted the guest list down to closest friends and family. Alay got taken off by the rest of the 'First Squad girls' and given a stern talking to. Nils teased Keer about him having to hurry up and get engaged to one (or all) of the few remaining Senior Setari still available, and less lightly teased Zee about getting left behind (he wants to marry her, but she wants to hold off). I spotted Mara talking a bit sadly to Lohn – it bugs her a lot that she hasn't immediately gotten pregnant.

We didn't stay too long: I did some projections (to explain ice-skating) just so we would have to leave the party early, which is me attempting to be a kind and subtle Mum. Both Lira and Ys started their first period this week, and they're very crampy and totally embarrassed, and want nothing more than for it to not be happening. Definitely not in party mood. I took them for a check-up, and in six months they'll be put on contraception which will stop periods as well, but the medics prefer them to have normal menstruation for a few months first. Kaoren's pretending he doesn't know, and I've been having 'Mum-talks' with them which mortify them both even more. I will very obligingly make sure their bathroom is magically always stocked with pads and tampons and things because Lira practically died having to ask for them in the first place. I remember my Mum sending me to buy pads back when I was about fourteen and I just couldn't bring myself to.

Lira might be younger (we've settled on next month as her twelfth birthday), but she's far more physically developed than Ys. I've already bought her training bras, though she refuses to wear them just yet. Kaoren and I had the funniest conversation at the party, because we'd both noticed Del (Mara's nephew) and Lore (Ketzaren's young brother) watching Lira with unmistakeable interest, and both of us immediately wanted to hide her away. She is undoubtedly going to have a great many guys after her, not only because she's getting more and more gorgeous, but because of the whole tragic Lantaren heroine almost-princess thing. And she has a certain proud charisma which can be very compelling. For the moment she's following Ys' lead and being painstakingly polite and wholly unwelcoming to anyone, male or female, who pushes to get closer to her, but I don't think that's going to last. She's perfectly conscious that people think she's beautiful, and enjoys that, and she's somehow transformed Ennan into an admiring follower. [Lira's actually done Ennan a world of good, just because Ennan really wants Lira to like her, and is so absorbed with getting Lira to accept her that she's distracted from her nightmares and the overwhelming grief of losing her family.]

But Lira is probably best described as capricious, now that she's no longer isolated and angry. She constantly shifts her interests, exploring something, growing quite fascinated by it, then getting bored and dropping it completely. Art, music, dancing. Her latest is cooking, and she's still in the very interested stage of that, but I have no faith in her not dropping it entirely next week. I don't particularly care – to a degree I even encourage her to try out as many things as possible – and the only stricture I place on her is that she has to complete her set school work, and participate in family activities. But I'm hoping to teach her to be aware that if she behaves that way with people she could really hurt them. Perhaps I'm being unjust – she's remained very firmly Ys' compatriot – but I can easily picture Lira picking a person up for a week or two and then tossing them aside and not even thinking about how they'll feel. But Lira can also be very compassionate once she realises something – she was lonely long enough to not _want_ to do that to people – so I think it should mostly be okay so long as I can get her to be a little more aware.

Ys is perfectly aware of social consequences, for all she picks and chooses who to bestow her compassion upon. She clocked Del and Lore ogling Lira just as readily as we did, and was very scornful of them as a result. Scorn is still Ys' default reaction to most things, but I know very well that it's a cover for a wider range of responses. Just looking at her reading access list tells me so much about Ys. Currently it's still great heaps of history and sciences – lower highschool level for the most part, dipping into more advanced books when she wants to pursue an explanation of something. [She's already more than equal to handling anything her age level at school can throw at her and well beyond. Ys is so intelligent I'm surprised she didn't work out how to read just by looking at an alphabet, and her only weakness is that the classes are always starting on areas which she's never studied at all and she has to do catch-up before handling the current work.]

And she gets through huge galloping realms of fiction – she basically allows herself a novel a day, slotted between school reading, extra reading on the subjects on her courses, and a thorough review of the newspapers and interface sites she has bookmarked (all the kids, even Sen, are incapable of not checking to see what people are saying about them each day). Her fiction interests range all over the place – she especially loves Earth fantasy stories and is forcing me both to keep conjuring up new books to read to her, and also to write up a proper translation dictionary of Taren to English. Dinner every day involves me adding a mandatory three words to the dictionary while we eat and then answering Ys' cross-examination of the fine detail of their definitions. Kaoren says it's very useful, and is trying to remember each day's three words as well (Lira, Rye and Sen to a lesser extent), but none of them can rival Ys, who simply doesn't forget anything she doesn't want to. [She wanted ten a day, but that would have made dinner very long.]

And in all this she has an absolute soft spot for what I think of as 'girly' books. Teen romances and schoolgirl 'chum' stories about closeknit groups of friends overcoming spite and pettiness. Being brilliant doesn't stop Ys from being a girl, and she wants acceptance and romance every bit as much as I did at her age. The influx of Taren students at the talent school is helping her get past the way she was raised, but she's never going to forget being 'three against the world', and she doesn't trust unknown Nurans at all. The visits to Issen Notra are fantastic at cheering her up and giving her an outlet, but I think she's well aware that finding an attractive boy her own age who even comes close to her intellectually is tremendously unlikely. And she's always going to be a boyish-looking girl – her chest is still completely flat and she has a string-bean figure and her face is just average, her hair uncooperative and her skin unremarkable. Sometimes I see her looking at Lira – luminous skin, masses of waving hair, thick sooty eyelashes, gorgeous features and the beginnings of a proper figure – and it's obvious she's ticking off the same list. She doesn't seem inclined to resent Lira for it – Lira's far too important to her – but I remember too well myself how I felt like a different, lesser species, all plump and pimples, when I was only a little older than Ys. I knew that, no matter what I did, people would never respond to me the same way as they do to really gorgeous girls and all the hot boys I had crushes on would be eternally out of my league.

A common problem, and I think Ys will survive it. My Mum was right about me being better-looking once my skin had cleared up, and while I'm still nowhere near gorgeous, that didn't stop Kaoren from wanting to sleep with me. Ys has her own attractions, and if she ever lets her guard down she might find that more people are drawn to her than she expects. For the moment I think she has a crush on Shon (who scored brownie points both by being great with Rye, and by being related to Issen Notra). She pretends to find him boring, of course, but Issen Notra is not the only reason she's so careful about her appearance when she goes on her monthly visits.

I'm such a softie about Ys. I went to one of the few custom clothes-makers in Pandora a couple of weeks ago to talk wedding dresses (to make projections of what I mean by wedding dresses and to try and design one which doesn't look completely out of place) and my primary preoccupation was that I needed flower girl dresses that were both girly and yet suited Ys. Ys won't wear girly clothes because she thinks she doesn’t suit them, so my secret mission is to find something which looks so good on her she can't help but want to wear it. Fortunately the dress-maker seemed to properly understand what I wanted, and to take the request seriously. [Of course, being able to say she designed Caszandra's wedding outfits gives her plenty of incentive to take me seriously – I have to admit I find this fame useful at times.]

That's about all the planning I've managed for the wedding. Maze and Alay's baby will be born just before it. Other than First Squad romances, it's been a quiet month, the highlight being Sen's birthday (I had a winged fairy princess dress made for her, which she would wear for every moment of every day if she were allowed to). Kaoren thinks we're over the first hurdle of her Sight developing, and we've been having more unbroken nights, and Siame is being very useful and encouraging and giving Sen confidence that things will get better. [Siame is getting along very well with everyone but me. Me she tries to have as little to do with as possible, and we're letting it go at that for the moment. Kaoren's still very worried about her, and content to encourage her to stay on medical leave and paint.]

Siame's very fascinated by snow, and has been making very white paintings – and naturally all the kids find snowball fights and building snowmen and discovering icicles to be fascinating and new and fun. It's all rather a light snow layer at the moment – the heavy snowstorms haven't started yet – and we're going to go across to Siriath and have another epic snowball fight, but this time with children and random family members involved, first weekend after it starts to snow properly. We're going to make a yearly tradition of it.

Rye's rather mournful for the effect of Winter on his garden, but was handily distracted into documenting the Winter habits of all the animals he's discovered in Summer. And is practicing faithfully for snowball throwing.

Lira's twelfth birthday in two weeks and I'm really stuck on what to get her. There's plenty of things she'd enjoy, but she doesn't have any overwhelming passions I can cater for.

Sudden Development

Maze and Alay hooked up! I can hardly believe it.

I'd noticed that when Maze schedules people to be my babysitter, he's usually obliging about sticking couples together – Nils and Zee, for instance. Not Lohn and Mara together any more, since they adopted, but he'll usually pair Ketz and Jeh, or Ketz and Grif. And Mori with Ro, since Eighth is currently stationed on Muina – Maze obviously knows all about people's love lives. I thought that scheduling himself and Alay together semi-frequently was just because they were 'left-overs' and didn't have kids to look after.

They never acted lovey-dovey or anything, but a short time after the wedding I noticed that Maze and Alay were awake long after midnight out on the balcony, and the next day Alay was even quieter than usual, looking like she was doing some hard thinking. And she was weirdly awkward with Maze, which made me curious.

Maze didn't schedule himself or Alay to be my bodyguard for nearly a month, but when he did, it was both of them together again. Sen was going through a bad patch, so I was distracted during the evening, and the most I thought was that Alay looked a bit stressed and I wondered if I'd upset her because she almost looked like she wished she wasn't there.

Quite late in the night, though, when I'd gotten up to fetch Sen - who had woken from her latest nightmare and was just lying there all wrecked – I noticed that Alay was in Maze's room. I couldn't let myself obsess over it too much. When Sen's in such a bad state, I have to concentrate myself on totally supportive thoughts and just try and project love and safety to her – it's the only thing that seems to help. But the first thing I was thinking of when Kaoren woke me in the morning was Maze and Alay. Maze, however, had gone for a walk down by the lakeshore, and Alay was back in her own room, asleep. Maze seemed totally normal – maybe a little thoughtful – when he came back for breakfast, and when Alay came out and didn't even look at him I was starting to think maybe they'd just been discussing missions or something.

But then Sen (who was still very tired and subdued) suddenly brightened magnificently, and hopped off her chair so she could fling her arms around Alay (at thigh-level) and pronounce in ecstatic tones: "Baby!"

She'd used the English word, since it's something I sometimes call her when she's very upset, and Alay initially just looked confused. Maze knew the word though, and suddenly looked extremely happy, and gave Alay one of his super-special smiles and obligingly translated. Alay went very red, and looked like she was almost thinking of running away, but then stroked Sen's head and looked at Kaoren, asking: "Can she really tell?"

Kaoren (who I think thought the whole thing super-funny, but was good about not showing it) nodded. "Pregnancies are very clear almost immediately from conception. Congratulations."

Alay went even redder, and looked hugely conflicted and put on the spot, but then bent down and hugged Sen and said "Thank you," and then she and Maze went down to the pool to talk (we've put a couple of benches in nooks down at the pool, and they're very sheltered and peaceful and seem to always attract couples, even though it's icy-cold outside these days). Sen took the opportunity to point out that here was proof that there was no need to wait until after a wedding to have babies and I had no more excuses (so much fun watching Siame's face whenever Sen starts insisting that Kaoren and I have babies NOW!). Kaoren then gave Sen – and the rest of us by proxy – a careful lecture about letting people make their own announcements, and respecting their privacy as much as possible, and Siame (very nicely) volunteered to take the kids off to school to clear them away.

Kaoren and I had a fun discussion about him being able to know when I get pregnant before I do, and the invasive aspects of my powers, and of Sight talents, and why I never use my visualisation abilities to find out for sure what's going on – and whether Lira is likely to. But then he had to head out to meet his squad for an Ena mission (Fourth's working with Eighth trying to establish paths through the spaces to the new settlements, which gives me a lot to fret about, but they've not had much trouble with it).

Alay eventually came back alone and I think was very glad that it was only me there stacking the dishwasher. I smiled at her and said: "Congratulations, too. Do you want me to pretend Sen didn't say that?"

I think she was kind of tempted, but instead shook her head and said: "That would be pointless."

I figured that Alay probably wanted some thinking time, and asked her to work out with me (I get to have a little more control over my exercise days and am missing being able to go out in the canoe, but it's way too cold - will probably start snowing soon). I don't like working out much at all, but it's a useful preoccupation if you just want something to do and not talk. Of course, Alay could have been having plenty of lively discussions with people over the interface, but I kind of doubted it. She almost seemed like she didn't want to be pregnant, even though she would have had to have had the medics take away her contraception. And have had sex with Maze.

Of course, I was boiling over with curiosity, but managed to at least do a half-assed routine swapping from machine to machine. Alay stayed in a brown study the entire time and didn't even notice how little effort I was putting in.

"Do you want a boy or a girl?" I finally asked.

Alay blinked – I think she'd forgotten I was there – then said: "A girl. But – either."

"You'll make great parents. Sen loves playing with you."

"Sen loves playing with everyone," Alay said, amused, and then shook her head. "You must have no hope of keeping any secrets, with three Sight talents in the house."

"No secrets to keep," I said with a shrug. "I'm not sure Kaoren could be with me if I did. He sometimes even picks up when I'm planning birthday presents, and gets stressed about it. It's all well and good when Sight conveniently explains stuff, but when all it does is tell him there's something I haven't told him, it's really awful. I understand more now why he didn't want to have a relationship with me – it just surprises me that Sight talents can stand to have a relationship with _anyone_."

"Your Kaoren is so good at not reacting to the things he must see that it's easy to underestimate just how much Sight is telling him. I won't make that mistake again."

"Don't forget Lira's and my people-sense either," I said (getting all hot with embarrassment). "One of the reasons I was so happy to move away from barracks was because I just didn't need to know so much about who was sleeping with who. It's not a sense I can turn off, either." I paused, then added: "Are you going to get married?"

"I don't know. I didn't expect this to happen so quickly." She looked frustrated, then gave me a very dubious glance – I'm not a person she usually has personal conversations with. But I think she also didn't want to talk to Zee or Mara or Ketzaren or any of the people who have known her and Maze for years. "Maze will never stop loving Heleste. They completed each other in a way that makes any other person impossible for him. And I – I lost someone too, and though I did try to pretend I could recover from that, I never have. I blame your children for this."

That made me blink, but then I understood. "Maze really loves Rye, doesn't he? But you like Sen more, I think. So you both decided you wanted children?"

"We could have adopted, of course. We might still. And we're not on Tare any more, where it would be so difficult to get approval without two parents. But – there's no 'we', and what kind of situation is that to bring children into?"

I found a towel and wiped my face, thinking that Maze must be great at talking people into things when he sets his mind to it. But that actually having sex with Maze had obviously given Alay more doubts than the month or so she'd thought it over beforehand. I couldn't tell if that was because she hadn't enjoyed it, or because she'd liked it too much.

Standing up, I handed her a second towel. "One thing that's been obvious to me all along is that everyone in First Squad loves Maze. And that Maze loves everyone in First Squad. Maybe not the same way he loved Heleste, but it's not a competition is it?" I grinned. "One other thing I know is that Mara's going to be pissed. She expected to be pregnant already, and now you and Maze are going to be first."

With some doubtful reassurances about the kids not telling – Sen was very serious about not gossiping, but if she gets excited she tends to forget – we split to go have showers. When I came out, I gave Maze a big hug and congratulated him, and really he's just so happy and pleased. And very caring about Alay – after all, he mightn't love her in the same way as Heleste, but if he didn't find her in some way attractive he could have offered her a loaded turkey baster. He kissed her as well as hugging her when they went out to freeze on the patio for another talk (and then I took myself off upstairs so as not to be too annoying).

My replacement bodyguards are Enma and Bree of Second, who I'm not so close to I have any trouble not mentioning these developments, but I really hope I don't get any of First Squad as my guards until Maze and Alay have announced these developments, and they said they're wanting to wait and keep it low-key until the pregnancy is more advanced.

Neither of them have built their own house yet – just ones for their relatives. I guess they considered my house 'neutral ground' where Alay could decide to go into Maze's bedroom or not, and they wouldn't have to worry too much about barracks gossip. Definitely underestimated our combined sights, but we will at least try and keep quiet about it.

_So_ hard. Really needed to pour all this out and hopefully will be completely not-explosively gossipy.

Autumn Bride

The wedding was so much fun. I embarrassed myself by crying during the ceremony, but it was an amazingly happy and perfect day.

The week leading up to it was remarkably hectic, starting with Kaoren returning from Tare with his family. Meeting Kaoren's family went mostly well – Sen set the tone by squealing out "Seemee!" and hurling herself on Siame, and then going all shy (or pretending to) and hiding behind Siame's leg to peek at Kaoren's parents and brother. Siame ended up performing introductions, and then was dragged off by Sen who wanted to show her her bedroom. Siame didn't stand a chance against a full-on Sentarestel charm offensive.

Overall, I didn't dislike Kaoren's parents, or his brother, but I'm still glad that they've gone back to Tare. Kaoren's mother, Teor, is very grand and witty, and didn't act at all hostile or nasty to me, Kaoren or any of the kids. His father, Paran, is quiet and abstract, and obviously adores his wife but is absorbed by his own work. But they're both very definite people, with very strong views, and the force of Teor's personality particularly is so strong. The first day she was there, Teor told me she knew I'd be able to influence Kaoren to stop being so foolishly self-sacrificial and to stop feeling obliged to be a Setari. She just doesn't believe Kaoren could possibly like being a Setari, especially not more than drawing, which he'd been devoted to before being drafted for the Setari program. And she so firmly believed this, and was so convincing, I almost found myself composing arguments to get Kaoren to retire. Since she's a Sight talent, it does tell me just how much Kaoren's decision to devote himself to the Setari program cost him.

They were very positive and admiring about all the kids, particularly Rye, who has such a passion for what he's doing. Loving what you're doing and doing it well are the things they consider perhaps the most important. But they also have firm opinions on how you should go about it. Kaoren's mother's an _arranger_. I didn't mind too much that she organised years of practical botany courses for Rye, since he already wanted to do that and we can always rearrange it, but Ys and Lira are both still discovering things they might possibly want to do. Ys, I think, wants to study literally everything and refuses to accept that she will never have enough time, while Lira is simply enjoying being alive.

Lira came to me very incensed on the day before the wedding and treated me to a barrage about how we were all stupid and blind, and once I unravelled all this I found that Teor had decided that Lira needed to learn music, had chosen which instruments would best suit her, and signed her up for lessons. With Ys she'd asked her about her reading habits, and given her a reading list, and worked out the ideal maths/science program. It's not that Ys doesn't like maths and science – any more than Lira actually dislikes possibly learning a musical instrument – but Ys also currently wants to devour every book in this rather old Taren schoolgirl series (something like The Babysitter's Club) but is pretending that she doesn't have any interest in that sort of thing at all, so got extremely grumpy at the idea of admitting that she didn't care if they were frivilous. And they both loathe choices being made for them.

I can see where Kaoren inherited his love of being in charge from.

Arden was less forceful, but more disconcerting. He's very like Kaoren, but with rather longer hair, and a tendency to mock, and to ask uncomfortably insightful questions. He's as protective of Siame as Kaoren is, and wants her to choose to do whatever she prefers to do, rather than leave the Setari simply because their mother wants it, or stay in the Setari because Kaoren wants it. His strategy for this was to encourage her to paint while she was staying here – she immediately produced this hugely embarrassing portrait of me with my face all bruised, and my boot camp hair cut, talking to Nils lying smexily in the grass – conveniently leaving out everyone else who was sitting around that day. She's incredibly good, but not at all satisfied with her work, and Arden (and Muina) filled her head with possible painting subjects, and he got her deeply involved in trying to paint our waterfall pool, timing it so she wasn't finished when they were due to leave, so Siame's ended up staying with us to explore her art rather than be a Kalrani. I don't think Kaoren's mother's fooled by Arden's machinations in the slightest, but so long as Siame's painting she's happy. They haven't decided if they'll actually move to Muina themselves.

The fortnight they were here was so filled with things happening that we avoided anything more than the occasional frowning match. Lohn and Mara's relatives arrived later the same day, and we'd offered our two spare guest rooms (Kaoren's family were using the "future kids" rooms) to handle some of their overflow. We ended up with Lohn's sister Elha and her husband and three kids, just until the temporary wedding guests went home. Two twin girls Sen's age and a boy a year older, which was a most wonderful development in Sen's view. And Mara's brother had two sons around Rye's age, and Ketzaren had a much younger brother of around fifteen, and Jeh's sister had three girls ranging from nine to fourteen. And then there was Zee's brother's kids, and Maze's extended family (including Heleste's relatives), and Alay's younger brother, and Kisikar, who had retired from First, and Nils' nephews and it was just so amazingly many people, all eagerly setting up house and then wanting to be taken on tour and have meet and greets and pre-wedding events.

Everybody (including me and Kaoren) had taken leave so we could play tour guide, and we mostly travelled with Maze's family and Kisikar, and every day a different place – Pandora highlights and Calasa and Mesiath, and then the two newly seeded towns – Zurenath (the place with all the whiteberry bushes in the southern hemisphere, which they think will be very good for farming) and Liriath in the northern hemisphere, which I think would equate to about Spain in terms of proximity to the equator. The trees there are low and dark, and there were black hills looming at the edges of the huge flat valley centred around the platform town.

It was really interesting going to an apparently super-traditional Taren wedding. Kaoren had brought back formal clothes for all of us (girls dress pretty much like the boys when they're ultra-traditional). There are rituals for the two days beforehand – little formal exchanges of gifts and items. Mara made this huge cake and her father formally delivered it to Lohn's family's (brand-spanking new) house where they practically pickled it in alcohol in readiness for the wedding. Then the next day Lohn delivered Mara's wedding robes to Mara's family's house (after spending weeks trying to get some kind of symbolic piece of stitching on the back just right). Then on the wedding day all the bride and groom's close friends showed up at their respective houses and stole them off to do a preparation ceremony (I'm not sure if the guys did exactly the same to Lohn, but we pretty much gave Mara a bath – dressing her in this thin shift and pouring warm scented water over her and ritually drying her and then painting all these 'henna' decorations all over her face and throat and arms. Everyone there does a tiny piece of the decoration, and you're supposed to luck-wish the marriage while you're doing it. Then (after blotting her dry) we dressed her in the robes Lohn had brought and took turns combing her hair and putting pieces of jewellery on her and then we blindfolded her and delivered her up to the little whitestone pavilion in their park for the ceremony.

Lohn was there, also covered in decorations and dressed in robes and reeking of the scented water, standing in a row with Maze and Grif and Nils and her brother and a cousin, and Mara had to pick the right one just by squeezing all their hands in turn. We all sat about on cushions and rugs (or rocks and benches for grandparents) and watched Mara offer Lohn her name, and Lohn accept it, and their parents make little speeches and accepted their new son or daughter, and so Lohn is now Lohn Senez and then we all ate a piece of the very alcoholic cake, then had a huge picnic which lasted till the afternoon got too cold for us to be outside any longer. [Autumn is now well advanced, and we get warm enough days, but cold evenings.]

Lohn and Mara had included their kids and ours in their getting-dressed ceremony, and Sen naturally adored that, and Lira and Ys didn't nearly manage to pretend they weren't touched and awed by the whole thing. Rye was all pink and blushing. Fein and Shar have been wholly overwhelmed by Mara and Lohn's families, who have embraced them in no uncertain terms, and there were plenty of games for the kids as part of the post-wedding picnic. I think having a lot of Taren kids (and even some Kolaren ones thanks to a few of Squad One's families being invited) introduced into the mix is benefiting Ys and Rye immensely. The idea of being 'just a servant' is wholly against Taren philosophies and simply not on the radar to them. They're Caszandra and Kaoren's wards, brave and exotic and not for a moment to be dismissed because of the length of their names.

Sen tore about madly, got wholly overexcited, and then came and smothered me in very sticky kisses – I think because of how happy Rye was, chatting with a half-dozen boys his own age about Muinan animals and the park design and canoeing and making arrangements to teach them to swim. [We've since had the whole pack over to our island, for a mass swimming lesson, and gone over to Siriath for another.] Ys and Lira didn't embrace popularity so completely, but they weren't hostile or rude either (and I was very pleased to see that Ys had decided to be protective of Ennan and make sure she wasn't overwhelmed – that's Ys all over).

The Setari-relatives' children will be attending the talent school as well – most of them have near-Setari level talents or were even washed out of the Setari program early on. I'm really glad of that, of the changes it should bring to the school, and the opportunities it will give Ys and Rye to be around some peers they haven't erected huge walls against. Mara's brother's sons, Del and Serry, have joined Fein as Rye's closest compadres, and they fill what few moments he had left spare. Sen, of course, considers everyone around her age as belonging to her. Ys and Lira are polite, but pretty self-sufficient.

I eventually got a bit exhausted from all the socialising, and Kaoren and I have been having a quiet week this week. We also wanted Sen to have a break from so many people. She thoroughly enjoyed the wedding, was brimming over with joy, but this is also an effect of her Sight – being surrounded by radiantly happy people is a bit like swilling champagne. Psychic children are complicated.

Mara came over today for a bit of peace and quiet as well. First and Second Squad are really enjoying living with their families near them, but their places can get pretty raucous. We sat out on the balcony (Maze and Alay were my guards) and talked about the transformation Siriath – and all of Muina – has undergone in such a short time. I still feel guilty about it sometimes, particularly when I found out that my otters seem to have moved away from their stream – or died – and that they're talking about settling Border Collie-ville next.

Maze is looking very alive and non-tired these days, and full of plans to turn his bit of Siriath into a test ground for his landscaping ideas. He's been doing courses, and takes very seriously the time he spends with Rye, who had a lot of practical experience on Nuri (at least until the bastard head of his house realised how much he loved gardening and wouldn't let him tend the vegetables any more). Rye and Maze are actually doing a couple of the same courses, and while Rye still struggles a little with reading (he does okay, but it's not quick and natural for him yet), he's picking up the scientific concepts quite well for a kid of twelve. [Rye's not able to do the level of courses that Maze is doing, yet, but they can both attend all the 'practical farming' courses which the 'university' is running. Re-learning how to farm Muina, and getting large-scale food production thoroughly established, is a very important part of COTIS' settlement plans.] I did lots of projections of different sorts of gardens on Earth, and then we talked over Winter and whether our houses had been properly prepared for it.

The kids came home while Mara was still there (we've more than a couple of boats between us now – simple covered 'platform' style ones that are nice and easy to drive about – and we rotate kid-collection) and I could tell from the way Sen behaved that Alay was, as I'd suspected, not feeling nearly as happy with the world as everyone else. She's always been 'the quiet one' of First Squad – she isn't shy, is actually pretty decisive and definite about things, but she's the least chatty. She likes listening to classical music a lot. Since Nils told me about how she'd loved one of the Setari killed by the massive – Suzlein – I've wondered whether part of the reason Alay's quiet is the same as the reason Maze is (or was) sad.

The way Nils talked about him, I don't think Alay was very in love with her technician, which is probably a good thing because so far I haven't seen any sign that he's coming to Muina to be with her. Perhaps she cared about him more than Nils suggested, and that's why she's down, or maybe it's just because she's surrounded by romantic things, and the person she loved is dead.

She really likes Sen, though (everyone does!) and let herself get drawn into a silly game with Sen and the kittens and it was nice to see her laughing. Sen's had such a rough time of it the past couple of months, and still her first instinct is to cheer up anyone who isn't happy.

My kids are the best.

Islands

Contact with Tare and Kolar was made only two days after the last time I wrote. It took them another few days to scan the last short section and calculate an end to end run of both routes, but after that the floodgates opened. [Finding a path meant a lot of sitting around in deep space taking readings of how deep space moved over extended periods of time – like being in a tube where the sides kept compressing or wibbling in and out. Once it was clear that the variations were predictable and repetitive (a bit like tides), they fed all their readings for the whole route into their computers and calculated open end-to-end runs. It takes between three and five hours to get through now, instead of just one, and there are long patches where nothing's aligned enough to get through, but we're actually a lot less cut off than everyone feared we'd be. They're now trying to work their way to the pillar where Second Squad was stranded to see what condition it's in.]

It must have sucked to be on Tare and Kolar and just not know for four months what had happened. Kolar had no idea what had gone on, and from Tare's point of view I'd vanished and a bunch of people had gone haring off into deep space to look for me and then all of the Ena had melted down and they could only hope it wasn't the beginning of the end. They didn't know if I was alive, whether the colony was alive, whether all of Muina had been destroyed. At least the decrease in ionoth numbers and the slacking of the tears into real-space gave them hope. Of course, once Muina's collected four months of news had been transmitted, there was a media frenzy over the whole drama of my kidnapping by the Cruzatch, and the risky destruction of the malachite marbles, and then the short eternity of picking collapsed building off the top of me and hoping they got to me before I died. And Lira.

I've been trying to imagine what it would be like to be in Lira's position at her age. Used as a tool to destroy her world, trapped in a half-life, doing what she could to sabotage her captors, and then after connecting with me finding that everyone she knew was dead and she was partways responsible, and that she might possibly not really be alive. There have been articles talking about how dangerous Lira and I are – the things we could be used for – but mostly it's open adulation. The 'MBC', wanting to keep on COTIS' good side, are careful never to be too full-on, but even they maintain a 'Caszandra-Watch' page which is constantly updated with the latest images and stories about me and my family. And a lot of that is now about Lira, who is after all a gorgeous Lantaren who helped save them all, and there's a couple of billion people fascinated by the idea of her.

Naturally some pretty unvarnished opinions of her have leaked out of the talent school, but these are very inconsistent. Some people claim she's traumatized and describe her as clinging to Ys for support (Ys is still getting positive press for being so brave the previous time I was kidnapped). Others say she's full of herself and cold and arrogant – the classic evil Lantaren. But mostly she's seen as a true Lantaren princess and it's almost expected and accepted that she be a bit imperious and pampered. I make sure to check the news and keep alert to what stories are going around about them. Lira finds anything about her, positive or negative, to be annoying, but doesn't seem to be getting too caught up by it. Rye gets embarrassed and Ys occasionally infuriated. Sen's still a little too young to comprehend more than the fact that everyone knows who she is and they wave at her when we go into town. And then new pictures of us show up on the interface. Living on an island was a damn good idea.

Ys' birthday went well, I think. The microscope was thoroughly approved of, fortunately, and I could tell she was relieved that her birthday lunch was a pure family affair. She just isn't a social girl. But it was only when we took her off in the afternoon to Pandora that I felt like I'd really succeeded in making her happy. Ys is much smarter than I am. She's smarter than Rye, than Kaoren, than any of her teachers or the people she meets regularly. I can practically see her brain overheating sometimes, trying to make up for lost time, and I've been worried that – friends with Lira or not – she'll feel lonely or isolated because she doesn't have anyone who can think like her.

Issen Notra thought my idea for a birthday present was very funny, and was happy to be Ys' surprise for the day. When Ys realised she was going to be given a whole afternoon with Issen Notra just to talk, she lit up amazingly, and she was in a daze when Kaoren brought her back that evening. A head full of _answers_. And Issen Notra has invited her back for an afternoon once a month, which is far more than I asked for, but Issen Notra says she enjoyed herself a lot, and that she thinks it important for Ys' development. Once she'd emerged from her daze, Ys went very quiet around me for a while, and I kept catching her watching me in an analytical sort of way. She's stopped that now, but this past month has been a series of positive steps in our relationship. She doesn't resist me nearly as much.

Having a flood of new episodes of The Great War also produced some odd family moments. Especially since the first new episode was my actual log of being stuck in Calasa. It made for really disorienting 'tv', since underwater swimming isn't exactly a great visual, and the only thing you can do to make hours and hours of swimming more interesting is to cut most of it out – they were very clever with the segues though – they simply made the clock display quite large to show the amount of time passing during the scenes they were cutting through.

The new season had started broadcasting on Tare over two months ago, and there were a lot of interviews with the producers and the actors about how difficult it had been to produce when they didn't know if anyone at the settlement was still alive. And tons of reviews talking about how immensely traumatic it was to watch my log.

The traumatic part posed a bit of a parenting problem for us. Fortunately we had a day's warning, since they only transmitted news, not entertainment programs, with the first contact. The kids read about it straight away, and Fein (who has become fast friends with Rye) was asking questions about it and that probably wouldn't have mattered except that Sen got wind and wanted to watch it. That put us in a bit of a bind, since she'd been having so many nightmares lately that we'd been trying to keep her away from any 'negative stimulus'. She couldn't watch it without us giving her permission – and she didn't actually argue with us when we first said that it would be too scary for her – but she was very subdued and hurt by our refusal and then had perhaps her worst set of nightmares yet. Kaoren said that this was a Sight talent reaction: the need to _know_, particularly about things and people who are important to you, can be overwhelming.

Sometimes it amazes me that Kaoren's so sane.

We decided the best thing to do was to make The Great War strictly full-family viewing, and only in the mornings or early afternoons so that Sen isn't likely to sleep immediately after. Lots of explanations and support and then a carefully managed story time. We kept the kids out of school that day (and skipped our training) and watched the log-file episode. Sen actually took it pretty well – she kept patting my arm and trying to console me – and then switched to doing that to Kaoren, which told me pretty clearly how much he hates watching this log.

Ys, Rye and Lira held up well at the start, mainly impressed and disbelieving of how long I swam about, and asking pertinent questions about whether the burn hurt and why I'd changed direction. But when I broke down crying after reaching the desert, they all went grimly subdued. Me crying isn't something Ys and Rye are used to, and Lira didn't take it a great deal better. Ys is one of the few people who recognised that after I'd set the arrow alight, I almost lost my way walking back, and that seemed to horrify her more than anything else.

The scenes with actors playing out the drama of the search were a relief, and the kids were as usual very critical of the fact that none of the characters resemble the people they know. Though Teral Saith's Lastier has become subtly more like Kaoren since they met, and the moment when Lastier lets his guard down when they find me more-or-less alive was a really powerful one, which I think impressed them all. Lira immediately asked Kaoren whether that was really how he'd been while I was lost.

He shook his head. "I was very angry, the entire time," he said. "None of us read those platforms correctly – they serve so many purposes, but it was mass blindness not to see this one. And to run those tests without a single Setari to observe was one of the poorest decisions made during the entire settlement." He smiled, a faint, wry expression. "And I composed many lectures for Cassandra, for letting herself be stood on that platform, and then for being where I couldn't find her, and I think I was angrier with her than anyone else. But I thought the arrow was a very good idea, so I forgave her." Then he pulled me over to his lap and squeezed me really tightly and Sen patted us both. Ys, Rye and Lira all looked conflicted, but then Rye crept over and joined in, and Lira and even Ys after a pause, and Sen told me to promise not to get disappeared ever again, and I said I'd certainly try my best, and then we got into a highly interesting discussion of how Kaoren and I fell in love, and so now the kids know more about our romance than anyone else, and Sen was happily diverted into the question of our upcoming wedding and different wedding customs and the idea of flower girls.

I've been getting more hugs since then. Not from Ys, but she leans against me sometimes, and sits close during story time. Sen was probably the least effected out of all of us, and slept peacefully that night. Everyone else had nightmares. We've watched the rest of the episodes which have been released, and none have been half as distressing, though we made a decision to censor parts of the Velcro massive episode, and just told Sen very generally what we were taking out. The very annoying consequence of the log file episode is that tons of people now want to have _all_ my mission logs released. I'll resist that one for all I'm worth.

The feel of the settlements has changed a lot, now that we're back in touch. Everyone had been quietly getting on with it in the last few months, but while they did seed plenty of new buildings, and prepare infrastructure for new settlers, it was more an atmosphere of consolidation and settling in. These past few weeks have really geared things back up again, even beyond the level of those frantic post-signing days. After a few confirmation trips, we've seen an enormous influx of settlers. Tare and Kolar spent the cut-off time processing settler applications, preparing the core components for a bunch of nanofactories, and finishing up the large deep space passenger transports they'd been preparing. When you've got ships capable of bringing two thousand people in at once, it doesn't take long for the population to surge, though processing 'security passes' for two thousand people at once is a bit of a pain. At least the subway is up and running, so they can quickly get from the spaceport to the platform.

Mesiath is already getting to be impressively large, and quite lovely – they've thinned out the trees in the new city area, but not removed them all, so that the centre of the city is still a bit foresty, and then opening out to the south where there'll be farmland. We went on a day-trip there, and the look on Rye's face walking beneath those massive trees was great fun. Kaoren and I had a talk about using his land grant to have a few 'summer houses' dotted across Muina, which makes me feel awesomely rich and self-indulgent, but I think would make Rye ecstatic. Maybe in a couple of years. Now that Mesiath is well advanced they'll be seeding another two 'major' settlements, and the provisional council pushed for the decision to be made by the settlers rather than just dictated by the bluesuits and so there's full-on debate about that. COTIS' only requirement was that they be around platform towns, one northern hemisphere and one southern hemisphere, and they created little 'tourist videos' about each site and people get to vote on their favourite for each hemisphere. The desert one is coming total last, unsurprisingly.

Some of the Nuran 'faction' haven't been very happy with the new developments. While we were cut off, they represented a solid percentage of the population, and since everyone was in Pandora they could remain relatively close-knit. Now that Taren and Kolaren settlers are pouring in, and adoptions are sky-rocketing (COTIS prioritized people who showed a genuine interest and capacity for adopting children), they're not only being outnumbered, they're being fragmented. COTIS is being all obliging and ensuring each settlement will have a cultural representative, and is capturing as much information as possible about Nuran customs and language, and even decided suddenly to assist in setting up infrastructure for Nurenor (basically turning it into a Nuran-run farming settlement and sneakily supporting a more reasonable person to be in charge of it) but when it boils down to it, the Nurans are absolutely going to be only a tiny part of Muina's whole. Of the two billion-plus people living on Tare and Kolar, more than half have indicated they want to relocate to Muina at some point in the next ten Muinan years (an idea which completely boggles my mind). Of the fraction of eventual Muinans who have a Nuran background, most will have been absorbed into Taren and Kolaren families. All the adult Nurans I've spoken to are either sad about this, or angry. Fortunately the angry ones are a relative minority.

All the squads which had been stationed on Muina before we were shut off went back to Tare or Kolar, even the rest of Fourth Squad and Lohn, Mara, Jeh, Grif and Ketzaren, who wanted to take their kids to see their familes (and see if Deal and Ennan's nightmares could be addressed by a less traumatic journey through deep space). COTIS swapped in new squads, of course, but for a brief time it was really weird for me to have bodyguards not drawn from First, Second or Fourth. Eighth and Squad Two looked after me, and then Fourth came back. And of course First and Second, who have all served their minimum time, and have opted for 'Muina transfer' rather than retirement, and so will be posted here pretty much permanently.

Lohn and Mara (and, indeed, almost all of First and Second Squad) are expecting masses of family soon – families of COTIS staff get settlement preference, and Lohn and Mara used a bit of Setari leverage to be able to include a few friends as wedding guests as well. Their wedding is only nine days away and is really turning into a bit of an event – word of it inevitably leaked out and the Setari-Watch pages are full of endless speculation and delight. Fortunately there's no private airships yet, so they don't have to worry about people flying over taking photos the way outdoor celebrity weddings on Earth do. Their park has shaped up nicely – the grass a bit patchy in spots and with lots of shrubs and weeds, but it still looks very attractive, and Maze and Rye have been having great fun with it (Maze really is really serious about becoming a garden designer). The trees everywhere around Pandora have started their shift into Autumn colours, and the islands are all gold-tinged with hints of orange. Should be spectacular.

We're facing our own relative-influx. Kaoren (who wrote emails to Siame every week during the cut-off so that she got a flood once channels were open) decided to bite the bullet and invite his parents and his brother to come visit. He's doing it because he wants Siame to come back here because he thinks that's the best chance for her to work out the issues she has about me saving her, or me taking Kaoren's attention away from her. And, really, it would be strange to marry Kaoren without meeting any of his family except Siame.

None of us are looking forward to the visit. Kaoren's not actually on argumentative terms with his parents, but he has as little to do with them as possible, and since they're both Sight talents they're perfectly aware of that. He's heading to Tare tomorrow, to pack up all our stuff at the Tare Setari headquarters, and will return with his family in three days. [Kaoren really doesn't want anyone else handling the objects which mean a lot to him because of how they feel through Place sight.] We talked a lot about whether to make it another family trip, but we think it best to not take Sen through deep space at the moment. We could sedate her for the trip, but that won't stop her Place and Sight talent from operating, and it might be painful for her. We also – in theory anyway – want to see how we cope with being away from each other for a few days.

We both know we're going to have nightmares the entire time, and stress out about being cut off from each other, but I guess I'll feel less of a wimp if I prove to myself that I won't fall into a heap if Kaoren's not within reach.

Happy Families

Still haven't managed to regain contact with Tare or Kolar, though according to Tsur Selkie's whiteboard Tare and Kolar have managed to reach each other. In the next couple of weeks maybe. It'll be weird when we start getting new settlers again. After months of being cut off, people really are beginning to consider themselves 'Muinan'. Even Pandoran and Mesian, now that both settlements are up and running. It's so extraordinarily strange watching the continual expansion – new buildings going up, old ones painstakingly restored, animals and plants discovered and half-remembered names given to them, or new ones made up.

Rye's named several species. Kaoren and I are being continually impressed by him, by his methodical cataloguing of the flora and fauna of the island – Shon helped him with understanding the initial requirements and he's been producing reports on Arcadia ever since (he asks Kaoren to review them for spelling and word selection before he submits them, but his reading and writing skills have improved immensely and it's hard to believe they've been written by an eleven year-old who couldn't read at all six months ago). Shon tells me that, though they might review the islands properly at some future date, the work Rye's doing is genuinely valuable. There's these tiny, hand-sized brown and black possum-like things which haven't yet been located anywhere but Arcadia and Siriath, and Rye named them Restals (for Sentarestal) and he's borrowed several scanners and is practically creating his own mini-documentary about them. Rye fills every moment of each day – caught up in his garden, his cataloguing, school studies, and combat training. He's also very interested in the team sports which the schools have started organising, and has improved as a swimmer in leaps and bounds and is just embracing his new life so wholeheartedly. Time spent with Kaoren is still his greatest joy, but last week I got this sudden violent hug in return for a whiteberry muffin which I'm happy to take as proof that Rye is glad of me as well.

Ys' twelfth birthday is coming up and I've been struggling to decide on the perfect present for her. Ys already has the two things she wants most: Sen and Rye safe and happy, and access to more information than even she can gulp down. Lira fills any need for social contact beyond Sen and Rye, and the only thing Ys would probably admit to wanting is to not have to go to school because it interrupts her reading. I have an idea about something she'd probably enjoy, and I'm going to ask Issen Notra about it, but I have to work myself up to that because it's a big favour. I'm also going to get her a microscope, which I think she'll find interesting – I've had that ordered for weeks.

Ys and Lira get a bit grumpy with each other occasionally – Lira doesn't think studying every free moment you have is at all amusing – but fortunately their friendship is proving pretty solid, and Ys always makes time for family events. They're both still fairly reserved with me and Kaoren, but are growing more confident and less defensive. It helps, I think, that Kaoren and I are very careful to treat their rooms as _theirs_ and never go into them without asking permission, and to keep the certainty of routine and be very consistent about rules. Everyone has chores now, and an allowance if they do their chores, and I'm completely fascinated by the things they choose to buy.

Very good news about Lira – she's gotten a tiny bit taller, and the medics say she's developing normally. So, whatever else she might be, she's not frozen in time. She's developed an interest in music now, puzzling her way through the massive amounts available through the interface, and I'm wondering whether to start her with learning an instrument, or encourage her into art – she still likes playing with Ys' modelling toy, but I'm not sure how passionate she is about any of it. She's more inclined to be social than Ys, is more interested in girl things, but still hasn't adjusted to not being isolated and kept separate and so has a habit of reacting with suspicion to anyone trying to talk to her, and is very imperious with all but the close circle of people she trusts (she's imperious with us too, but not as consistently).

Sen's not been having too good a time. She's transitioning into one of the tough periods for Sight talents, where most of the certainty vanishes, and there's rarely a night when she's not punished with cruel and confusing dreams. And her Place sight has begun to develop, which means touching certain objects or being in certain places can be very painful. We've been making up a bed for her in the little side-room off our bedroom (which I intended as the "baby's room", if and when we have any). It works very well for Sen, letting us get through most nights without having her in bed with us, but close enough to help her through the worst dreams. She finds having us within earshot very comforting. The change is sad, though, because she's no longer inclined to hug everyone and anyone and will even flinch away from people at times. Kaoren's wealth of experience with controlling his sights is exactly what she needs, but there's nothing anyone can do to stop this from being an awful patch for her.

My own month has been fairly busy. Now that I'm properly recovered from my injuries, I have a regular work schedule. Mostly visualising whole forms of decrepit and ruined books recovered from Calasa, and sometimes the insides of rooms. They're being very careful about not overtaxing me, and every second day is an exercise day. I'll probably 'retire' for a couple of years after Kaoren and I get married, but even though I'm theoretically rich enough never to work again, I'm happy enough to contribute in these non-dramatic ways. Still rather wary of them plugging me into Ddura-making machines or anything, but they're keeping quiet about those possibilities at the moment.

My fitness is probably the highest it's ever been, and I'm even progressing a little in combat training. I do a lot of canoeing – Kaoren's birthday present to me was canoes for the whole family (we had to build a boat house and a dock). Even better, he arranged limited permission for me to go off on my own. I have to tell people where I'm going, and not go out of the immediate area of the islands – and my guards of the moment get to stay on alert and track me via the interface - but it's still a taste of independence which I really appreciate. Mostly I go with people anyway. Kaoren and I like getting up just before dawn and going out just the two of us, and I think the group trips are one of the things that all the kids really look forward to, even Ys. Each weekend we paddle to a different island to explore. I've even paddled the kids to school a few times, though mostly we use a platform to take them to school.

I visited Siriath quite a bit while Lohn and Mara's and Jeh, Ketzaren and Grif's houses were being constructed. They'd pretty much built an entire community – seven broadly expansive multi-family houses in anticipation of contact with Tare being re-established, since they knew that not only their parents but most of their siblings were going to apply to settle. Housing is so cheap and easy with whitestone, and they built quite close to each other so that they can share the power, water and recycling installations which are the costly part. Each house has land about the size of four suburban blocks (I think that would make them an acre of yard for each house) and in the centre of them all, leading down to the lake's edge and a dock is a big semi-cleared space which will be a grassy parkland once it's all settled down. Lohn and Mara plan to get married in their park, and Maze and Rye had a great deal of fun 'consulting' on the design. A few more Setari house 'clusters' have been seeded about Siriath, and also on the furthest-out island, Nula, but none have been finished yet.

Lohn got amazingly stressed about the big Choosing. They were all a bit keyed up about it, but Lohn especially just hated that there would be all these kids that they _didn't_ choose. And that those kids would know it, and feel rejected. I had a chat with Mara, Jeh and Ketzaren during their dual housewarming about whether I felt like I was Sen, Ys, Rye and Lira's mother. Which is yes and no, really. I don't think any of them – even Sen – think of me as their mother. Sen might one day. To Ys, Rye and Lira, I think we might be too close to their ages for them to consider us Mum and Dad, even after we formally adopt them. But Guardians, elder siblings, whatever. We're family now, and I love them all.

Mara, Ketzaren and Jeh had a very interesting discussion – more with each other than with me – about the children they liked most among those they'd been working with at the talent school. And once again I was just so utterly glad I didn't have to do any picking. They were talking about whether it was better to adopt children who you simply liked the most, or if it was kinder to take those who needed you more. One of the medics working with the Setari and the talent school had already adopted, and she'd chosen a very traumatised and isolated girl around Sen's age who had lost everyone she knew, and who wasn't coping at all well with the 'boarding school' living arrangements. She wasn't a very appealing kid, inclined to snivel, but it really helped her to 'belong' to someone. And yet, as Jeh pointed out, holding stoic resilience against children who were coping better didn't seem fair.

Moving in to their new houses had been the decision point they'd set, and three days after the housewarming party five kids came home for the first time.

Which kids were chosen mattered a lot to me – Mara and Lohn are so important to me that I stress about things coming between us. I made sure not to offer opinions on any of the residents of the talent school, though Lira hasn't been shy about sharing her thoughts on them with me, so I've more of an idea of the major personalities. I would have found it awkward if any of those chosen were ones who didn't seem able to see Ys and Rye as anything but servants. I didn't even talk about this to Kaoren, but he could tell as usual when I'm stressing, and pointed out that Lohn and Mara care about our kids a lot too, and were likely have taken them into account.

Lohn didn't succeed in talking Mara into taking four, so they stuck with their original plan of two. Both of them boys. Feinaren's about six, and a real imp – spends all his time swarming up trees. Sharalentelasker (Shar) is fourteen and it's a bit hard to tell what he's like since he likes to watch more than talk, at least when I'm about. Sen – who is my early-warning system for suspect people - doesn't object to him, so I know he can't be too bad, but I had to ask Mara what had drawn her to him. Fein I can understand – he and Lohn are a lot alike – but Shar seems very self-contained and able to handle himself and not someone I would have expected them to feel all parental about.

"We wanted to get him away from Nuran politics," Mara told me, looking wry. "He's one of a half-dozen who could arguably be Nuri's heir if they were going by their rules of succession." She laughed at my expression. "Not that that's any reason for me to want to play parent. He's a little distant, but still very socially adept, and has rather ruthlessly squashed a few disputes within the school. If he was in the Setari he'd be on the captain track. Which is a good thing, but we also noticed that he was terribly tired every morning. That's the impact of the politics – he has a lively night life thanks to being drawn into the Nuran power struggles."

"And you got all protective." I understood it then. "A bit like me and Ys – Ys is so much better at looking after Sen than I am, and I keep having to find ways to ensure she no longer automatically puts Sen above herself. Because I want Ys to have time to be Ys."

Mara nodded. "It's a very odd feeling. We had been planning on taking two younger children, because someone as old as Shar will never truly regard us as parents. And he doesn't _need_ us. But I wanted him to have a quiet night."

Ketzaren, Jeh and Grif ended up doing something similar. One of the children they chose, Zaranar, is sixteen. She has a five year-old brother, Dealanar, who is very traumatized and withdrawn – they lost their parents and several other siblings, including Deal's twin – and Ketzaren says they wanted to both give Deal the care he needed, and also make sure Zar had a chance to look to her own future as well as Deal's. Zar's really interesting – she's not some angelic, self-sacrificing type, but full of curiosity and with an excellent dry sense of humour. I'd like to get to know her better, but Deal pretty much stays attached to her leg, and doesn't like her talking to anyone else – getting him to separate into age groups at the school has been pretty difficult, and over the months he's actually been getting more clingy, not less. Ketzaren says it will be a slow process teaching Deal to feel safe with anyone else, but she seems determined to succeed.

Their third adoptee is Ennanal, a ten year-old girl. Ennan likes to dance about – she reminds me of Sen when Sen's happy – and she also shares Sen's tendency for terrible nightmares, though these are because she lost her family, and because she found the journey through Deep Space particularly terrifying, not because of any sights.

After they'd had a few days to settle in, we had them and the rest of First and Second over for a barbeque, having had a discussion with our kids beforehand to make sure they weren't too uncomfortable with the idea of these kids coming on 'their territory'. They knew them all already, of course, since they go to the same school, though Zar and Shar are in the elder 'grade' and they don't have much to do with them. Fortunately Fein is someone Rye already seemed to think was okay, and he was quite keen to show off his garden and parts of the island to him. Lira and Ys made it clear that so long as no-one was allowed to go into their rooms, they didn't care who we chose to have over, but they ended up politely taking Ennan around and keeping her entertained. They're not going to leap into friendship with her, but they didn't freeze her out, and I made sure they knew I was pleased with them for being nice.

Sen was having one of her bad days, and ended up in my lap most of the time – which at least made her match Deal and gave me a chance to chat with Zar. Shar started out more like a visiting dignitary than a child – all formal and polite and detached – but then we went down to the docks so they could try out the canoes and he enjoyed that, and was positively approving of the idea of canoes for Siriath after everyone's passed basic swimming. It was fun noticing how pleased Mara was by that. We're going to get a larger boat/platform so we can 'carpool' the kids to school. Canoes and flying and the simple six-person platforms are all dandy in sunny Summer weather, but won't be much fun in the middle of a Winter sleet or snow storm. Lohn was very amused when I showed a projection of waterskiing and said that Urth people had the oddest idea of sport. But that it would be fun to try. And that we'd have to go to some of the larger lake/oceans some time to check out surfing. They don't have as strong a tide on Muina, but in the larger bodies of water they do get reasonable waves.

Except for Zar, who has a medium strength level, all the kids are extremely strong talents, which of course is why they were in the talent school in the first place. They're not on par with the Setari (Nuran or Taren/Kolaren) because they don't have the expanded interface or ability to focus their connection to the Ena. Endless discussions recently about teaching new Setari, and the Nuran methods used to become aware of the Ena link versus cheating using me. More and more of the Taren and Kolaren Setari are becoming able to enhance themselves, but many of them still can't. Inisar described how the Nurans do it, which sounds to me much like a cross between Amerindian Spirit journeys and sensory deprivation. When they're vetting apprentice Setari they start them off at around five years old, give them mental exercises about thinking about the world around them for nearly eight months, and then they have five more months of these 'ordeals' where they try and focus their own connection, and if they don't succeed by then they're finished as an apprentice and go back to their former lives. It's a terribly young age to be doing things like that. The Nurans believed that if you didn't learn very young you would be incapable of learning, and they're not sure if my enhancement means they're wrong, or if learning when older is only possible when a touchstone is involved.

There won't be any more Setari adoptions for a while, I think. Plenty of the Setari are in relationships (mostly with other Setari) but not ready for kids. Nils and Zee are very much in a relationship now, but they've no immediate plans to move out of barracks, and keep going off alone on their weekends together. They might be all confident and social, but they're also both really really private people. Not that Nils didn't show up after he and Zee got back from their holiday and pretended he really was going to spank me, and then hugged me and kissed me on the forehead. He and Zee are so happy together.

There's a lot of happiness going round.

Stood Over

The gate to Earth actually opened. When the drones suggested a critical time was approaching, Kaoren and I and the kids (with First Squad as escort and a bunch of technicians) went and spent a morning there, waiting for something to happen. I couldn't see any difference when it did open, but Kaoren's gate-sight allowed him to toss my letter through. [He had a death-grip on me, arm firmly around my waist, and looked a great deal more relaxed after it had closed again all of thirty seconds later.]

A week later I got to go into the Ena and try and visualise Mum to see if the letter had reached her and I knew even before she spoke that it had because she'd put the photos I'd sent in picture frames and put them on the bookshelf next to the tv. Jules was playing games with ones of his friends in front of the tv, and leaped up shouting to his friend: "I told you so! I told you so!" and then to me: "What kind of psychic things can they do?"

Mum had been in the kitchen, but came out at the fuss and looked around at all the black-clad figures, then came across and hugged me hard, and we talked until Maze called time. It's going to be weird, explaining about projections and introducing Kaoren each time. Kaoren has had me teach him how to say a few things in English - his accent is so cute - and Mum quickly caught me up on the news from home. Nick and Alyssa have hooked up! Mum said they bonded a lot over being about to talk about me possibly being on another planet (which is not something Mum has encouraged be spread far and wide). That's kind of cool and weird at the same time. I couldn't maintain it for too long - looking at Earth takes way too much out of me. And I cried a bit, and was happy because I'm no longer entirely lost to Mum.

The kittens are getting leggier and more mobile, and I'll probably have to find some kind of bells to put on a collar, because they've definitely got strong hunting genes. They're called Mip and Tick-tock. Mip was Sen's suggestion. I suggested Tick and Tock for names for both of them, but Sen liked it better as a single name. For the moment family votes are mostly still boiling down to Sen's preferences, but I'm glad to see that Ys and Rye are being positively influenced by Lira. Lira likes Sen, but she doesn't put her whims above her own.

Lohn and Mara's house and Jeh, Grif and Ketzaren's house are both at the nearly ready to move in stage. The rest of the Setari aren't moving as quickly, though most of them have taken their land grants by now. Barracks are just easier, and houses are something that the senior squads want more for kids than for privacy. Lohn's fretting about the adoption stuff, and Mara says it's because he likes so many of them, but they're only planning on two. They've included a lot of extra rooms in their house design, but that's partly because they have families back on Tare, and want them to visit or stay, and they're going to try to have a baby fairly soon after the wedding.

I had a fair bit of stress a week ago. I've been on-and-off discussing being a touchstone with Lira (who still won't admit to being able to do anything any more), and told her about how I'd once made Nils dream about things which had happened to him in the past, and hadn't been able to break out of the dream. She told me that people with illusion talents are the ones best able to guide projections, and they were deeply involved in the construction of the 'machines' for the grand projects like the Ddura. Unfortunately, I was stupid enough to mention this, and of course the technicians were fascinated by the link and wanted to set up some experiments to see whether Nils could make me project stuff. It's one of the few things I've really, absolutely refused to do. Not with Nils, not with anyone - but especially not with Nils. I was pretty calm about it when they suggested it initially, but when they sent Maze back to have a deep and meaningful about it, I got all stressed and barely stopped myself from asking him if he'd appreciate being forced to relive Heleste's death, and could only say: "I really mean it. I can't hurt people that way." And of course was really upset about it afterwards, and had nightmares, and I guess Kaoren and Maze between them told the technicians to back the hell off firmly enough that they decided to leave it be (for now - being able to create things like the Ddura is something they're very interested in).

Fortunately Nils wasn't around for any of this. He's spent the last month out at Oriath assisting with the slow excavation of the massive pile of rubble. I'm pretty sure he asked for the assignment. Kaoren sometimes heads out there for brief trips, but it had been weeks since I'd seen Nils.

The next day Zee showed up unannounced - just dropped out the sky as I was watering the interesting flower bushes we'd planted on the top garden (they're something the botanists found in the old town's gardens - a bit like a climbing rose, but without thorns and with leaves so dark they're almost black. Pink and white flowers, and I'm hoping to grow it all along the upper garden balustrade and have it droop down to the patio).

Zee looked really grim and commanding and pointed wordlessly at my eyrie. Principal's Office time. I went quietly, seriously feeling like I was about to be yelled at. [My guards were Glade and Par, who were downstairs in the kitchen making what they promised to be the best meal I'd ever tasted (and was actually not too bad, for all that most of the Setari barely ever have to prepare meals for themselves). There was no way they'd come interrupt us, though I have to wonder what they would have done if Zee _had_ started yelling.]

Her voice was all tight and angry when she said: "I've had it with being told that these dreams were so traumatic and secret that you can't discuss them in any way." I opened my mouth to ask her how she'd feel in Nils' position, but she made a chopping motion with her hand. "Just tell me."

I've never seen Zee act remotely like that before, so full of repressed anger and frustration. I felt awful, of course, because I really _wanted_ to tell Zee, but was sure Nils would hate me for it. But Zee was looking like she'd hate me for not telling her, and the way things had gotten with Nils, I could barely talk to him on the rare occasions I did see him.

"Did you know that night was Heleste's birthday?" I asked, cautiously, and watched Zee's colour change - white and then brick red. I hurried on awkwardly: "I had no idea that Nils and Heleste had been together. The first dream was a real shock to me, that this person who everyone only ever mentions in connection with Maze was someone who was everything to Nils. I dreamed of the first night they were together, and he was just - so completely hers. And then the next dream was Maze and Heleste's engagement party, and Nils was there congratulating them so cheerfully, and he's so good at pretending he's not upset that I was totally fooled until I saw his face later that night and he was barely holding it together. Maze had to explain it for me - that Heleste had told him how Nils had made some kind of executive decision to end their relationship because he could see how strongly Heleste felt about Maze. That he made out that they'd just drifted apart, for all that it came close to destroying him to see she felt that way. I guess people must have believed that it had just been some fling for both of them, because no-one acts like Heleste had any real history before Maze. And Nils goes about acting all flirty, and has this promise with himself to never really care about anyone again. But then there was the third dream, another of Heleste's birthdays. I don't know exactly when - I think maybe the one before last, since he looked the same. He apparently always talks to her on her birthday - he'd conjured an illusion of her and was just talking to it. About the promise he'd made to himself, and about you, and how he'd made sure you'd never want to get any closer to him. And about how tired of everything he was."

I broke off, all choked up and ashamed of myself, and a little afraid of the expression on Zee's face. She just left without another word. After a lot of agonising I sent a channel request to Maze and told him very guiltily that I thought Zee was going to go kill Nils and it was my fault. I don't know if she ever planned to, but she'd already gone through Calasa and was at the platform town nearest Oriath and since she's telekinetic she could just fly to the research site. Maze said calming things to me, and contacted Nils and told him to head in Zee's direction (because he's not keen on having senior Setari arguments played out in front of an audience). He didn't go after Zee himself, but instead came to see me and assured me that no matter how angry Zee might be about anything, she wasn't likely to try and kill Nils. [I think he also came to check to see if Zee had yelled me into a quavering heap or not.] Maze was very good at making it all into much less of a drama, and came down and distracted Glade and Par during lunch so that they at least wouldn't ask why I was all wide-eyed and blotchy.

The details of what Nils and Zee said to each other I don't know. I do know Nils ended up with a black eye because Lohn caught a glimpse of him at the Setari building, but I haven't seen either since because Maze told them both to take a week's leave, and they did exactly that - by setting their interface to 'do not disturb' and going off on a camping trip together. I ended up having an impromptu senior squad dinner party because as they finished their work assignments, they all migrated to my patio to chuckle over the new development. Nils did open a channel to me briefly, but only said: "Just because Zee bullied you into that doesn't mean you're not getting spanked," and laughed and broke the connection. He sounded so awesomely happy.

Kaoren told me later that night that the role of Setari was permanently changing, that the senior squads had served so unrelentingly for so long that it wasn't surprising that they were moving very quickly to things they hadn't been able to allow themselves. I'm very curious to see if there are any more hook-ups and especially how Nils and Zee behave from now on - they're due back later today.

It's my birthday tomorrow. I'll be nineteen, which feels really old and really young to me at the same time. I'm feeling very lucky that Kaoren changed his mind after only six months.

Warming

Have been in our house three days now. It's a big adjustment not having so many people around me, not having the constant background noise of support staff, and the greensuits and technicians on the floors below, and of squads in the surrounding rooms. It's a lot more restful, and I'll be glad to not know so much about people's love lives.

Planning approval and the seeding of the house happened pretty quickly, but it took a couple of weeks longer before all the fittings were in and tested and working - ours was a fairly fiddly installation, since we needed the power and water and recycling unit and environment control, all for one small(ish) building - without disturbing the spring which feeds the waterfall. There's quite a few rooms tucked into the hill up near the crest which support the building and provide a reservoir for water pressure and so forth. The house is on the west side, about a third down the hill, and Pandora is to the east. Our view is full of lake, and will have magnificent sunsets, and in Winter we'll probably be able to see First Squad Island to the south and slightly west, but at the moment it's all gloriously unoccupied.

Maze helped a lot with the landscaping - scooping away the part of the hill on the south-east side where we want a big, enclosed grassy backyard, and shaping the face of the hill which forms a rear wall to the roof garden. Both areas are mostly still raw dirt at the moment, though we have marked out garden beds and planted a lot of seeds which the botanists tell me should be a suitable grass for a lawn. Maze and Rye have bonded over earnest discussions about which trees to remove and which to transplant so that we have a lot of sunlight, and selecting just the right trees for the backyard, and finding a big bunch of rocks to split and turn into stepping stones for a path. Maze thoroughly enjoyed all that, and says he's going to study landscape design and build gardens. I think he's serious.

Since most everything we had at the Setari building belongs to COTIS, we had a lot of shopping to do. Linens and kitchen stuff and chairs and tables and curtains (which at least the Kolarens understand) and dozens of things which we kept realising we'd need. Pandora still doesn't offer a great deal of variety for all of these things - even with the industrial sector expanding by the day, it's not like there's dozens of different rug manufacturers. The interface made it easy to compare what was there, and we would have a family vote for which of the few designs available we would pick. We also went on an actual shopping trip at the mall/subway station which you can enter through Moon Piazza, which is where most of the handcrafted items are displayed. Lots of amazing stuff there - a lot of the early approved settlers were arts and crafts type - and I bought this incredible tapestry which is deep green with mostly white flowers arranged on it in intricate Art Nouveau-ish lines inspired by the Calasa decorations, and some really nice glassware and plates and things and had the greatest difficulty getting them to accept payment for any of it. We had lunch at one of the new restaurants, and I wish I could figure a way to take the kids out without having people show up outside where we're eating and cheer when they catch glimpses of us. Even Sen went all shy at that one (or possibly just overtired from all the excitements and the challenge of sampling everyone's desserts).

Images of our house didn't show up on the news until after it was nearly complete, which makes me like our architect even more. It was inevitable that pictures would leak once it reached the construction phase. The last few days have been really busy, because Kaoren and I were not only trying to get everything habitable, but were also preparing for a housewarming party I wanted to give to thank everyone. Most of the food pre-made by one of the restaurants, but I actually wanted to do a little cooking myself and everything. Lohn and Mara helped a lot. Their house is going to be seeded soon, and I'm going to enjoy returning the favour as much as possible.

The guest list was a bit of a struggle, because I really owe all the squads, even Fifth, but even though Fifth have been behaving well, they are still pretty much full of themselves. And much as he tries to hide it, I think Kaoren would prefer that I never spoke to Els again. And there's been an awfully large number of medics devoted to keeping me healthy, and all that sort of thing. I ended up just inviting First, Second and Fourth and Squad One and Issen Notra and Shon, since these are the people I'm closest to. [And Shon's two sisters, partially because I wanted to see if the youngest would scream and point at everyone. She and Sen got along extra-well, despite the age difference.]

The party was last night, and I think everyone enjoyed it. It was a fairly warm night, but there was a nice cool breeze, and the terraced patios worked really well as I introduced everyone to the grand Aussie tradition of the barbie. [It was easier than I expected to get a bbq. Custom-made, but again Kolar has a lot more things like this than Tare, and so it wasn't like I was asking for something extraordinary.] I had to be a bit experimental with marinades, but by now it's not too hard to get meat and vegetables (instead of algae-blocks) and while everything's not exactly the same, it's similar enough. All the squads were very amused to discover that I'm quite capable of cooking. I got up early this morning and made everyone pancakes for breakfast (having finally found recipes that allow me to identify something like the right ingredients - lots of different powders, with water added).

The surprise of the night came from Kaoren, though, who produced two tiny little black scraps after dinner. Kittens! He said he remembered me saying that kittens are supposed to come in pairs, and I have to admit I was just as excited by them as the kids. [The cat colony of Pandora is still mostly feral, but some of the adults have been semi-tamed, and their kittens are rarely left with their parents.] The kittens (which we haven't named yet) weren't the least bit afraid, but did get a bit stressed by there being so many people, and went and hid behind Nils, which everyone thought was hugely funny.

Nils was being all cheerful and relaxed, and shows no sign of being in the slightest perturbed by Zee and Raiten casually dating (which is, so far as I can tell, where those two are at). The fact that Sen kept doing nice things for Nils - bringing him cushions particularly - showed me that he's feeling awful. Sen seems to believe that buried in a large pile of cushions is the best place to be when you're hurt. I have to admit to avoiding being alone with Nils, because I'm so upset on his behalf, and there's nothing I can say. He's way too private a person to want me trying to cheer him up.

I don't know how serious Zee is about Raiten. They just seem to be enjoying each other's company at the moment. Raiten's a great person (I'll never forget how humiliated he looked when his government ordered him to try and buy me) and he and Zee go well together, and I guess I wish them well. Just because Nils is in love with her doesn't mean Zee has to love Nils back, and I think that if she had been really certain she loved him she wouldn't have let him push her away out of a fear of having his heart ripped out again. I don't know. Late last night I ended up in my eyrie with all the First and Second Squad 'girls' talking about the plans for Lohn and Mara's upcoming wedding, and adopting children, and having babies, and I thought Zee seemed a little sad and withdrawn. She and Alay were my guards last night, and she seemed cheerful enough this morning, and very amused by my pancakes.

So, good things happening and no dramas. The gate to Earth is finally showing signs of becoming more aligned, and I might finally be able to send my letter. My hair is growing out super-slow, and at the moment I have all these feathery half-curls which looks kind of weird to me, but not too bad.

I'm up in my eyrie again, with the wind blowing the super-sheer gauzy curtains about (I can hook these completely back for the view, but when it's sunny they're great at cutting down the light - since it's furnished almost entirely with window-seats I can sit behind the curtains if I want, or the central octagonal couch/table). Jeh and Regan are guarding me and are down on the patio chatting, and Kaoren is at Calasa and the kids at school, so there's no-one else in range of my senses. The kittens are chasing the curtains, which I should probably teach them not to, but I think it's too cute to stop. The kids have to think up names for them today, and we're going to vote tonight.

Guess I'll go make Jeh and Regan some lunch.

Getting on with it

Wow – feels like forever since I've written. December already.

We just got the designs for our house back from the architect-type we sent them to. House design professionals are in major demand right at the moment, as COTIS has started permitting people to construct individual buildings, so we were expecting to have to wait a while, but she obviously bumped us to the top of the queue and worked double-time, getting very intensive surveys done of the site and taking care of the complexities of the design and recommending some changes. We'll have to review and tweak a little more, and get planning approval, but the few mild inquiries Kaoren's made with the handful of construction firms which successfully set themselves up here before we were cut off makes it clear that we don't have to worry about waiting on the huge demand for their services, and for the construction supplies. I'm not sure there's any way to stop people from giving me this embarrassing extra-special treatment, but I have at least realised that it usually extends to all of the Setari and is a way of thanking them for putting their lives on the line. And there's a lot of prestige for the architect and builders, too. I'm pleased with the architect because our house plans haven't appeared on the news yet.

And I'm pleased because the kids are so incredibly excited about moving to Arcadia, and I really want to make sure it happens as soon as we can manage. They'll still be going to the talent school, and I still have to be guarded (and after some thought we added two extra guest rooms because we are simply going to have to cater for having two semi-permanent guests for the foreseeable future), but there's just something about the idea of having _our place_ which is a really important step for all of us. I also have to decide whether to employ someone to help with the cleaning – we're going to try on our own at first, but it's a big house and it might be a bit much. While I don't mind the kids having some minor chores to do, I especially don't want them to be having to do laundry or scrubbing bathrooms or all the things I've been fortunate to have COTIS staff doing for me. Of course, nanotech helps with a lot of this stuff (there's these cute little self-propelled vacuum cleaners which I think they have on Earth too), but there'll be less lolling about all day for me (as if Mara would let me). Whitestone does make it easy to build big sprawling houses.

Also on the staff front, Maze tells me that I probably would have had to have several staff devoted to handling packages sent to me on Tare if the interface hadn't made it impossible for people to actually _post_ things addressed to me, and there's actually a postal rule set up about unsolicited gifts to the Setari which covers me as well – there's some kind of verification code you need to be given before you're allowed to send it (the stuff you purchase and order over the interface works on this anonymous id system). The same set-up is in place here, but is a lot harder to manage, and the support staff have to deal with people just walking up as close to the building as they can get before greensuits intercept them, and leaving packages and presents for all of us. I'd never actually thought that through in detail, but of course Raiten's fanclub alone could probably fill a room each month. The island and Setari guards will make it harder for people to do that, but non-COTIS staff are becoming more mobile. I feel all weird about that, because it is people trying to be nice to you, but I guess if we started accepting all these presents we would need a house twice as big to put it all in.

The final treatment on Ys and Rye's backs was finished just two days ago. It wasn't a tremendously painful process – much like my legs it tended to make them feel queasy and slightly feverish – and they couldn't go swimming, which they regretted rather a lot. We celebrated by going to the island for a swim (Maze and Zee as our escorts this time), and even though they still wore the same shorts and shirt ensemble which they've had each time, I noticed a certain air of freedom which I think may be because now there's no risk of anyone seeing the scars through their wet clothes. As we understand the Nuran culture better, we're beginning to realise why they wanted so much to hide them - that a whipping like that was very extreme, that it was punishment more suited for some deep and heinous crime, and that it marked them not as victims, but as monsters. For eavesdropping on a lesson. The expression on Rye's face when the blue bandages were taken off for the last time and they showed him an image of his back was enough to have me hiding tears, and Kaoren went incredibly quiet. He and Maze had a discussion about it afterwards, and neither of them could properly speak they were so angry. Not many people know about the scars, fortunately, and I mean to keep it that way.

My bones have knit obediently, nanotech making it quick enough that yesterday I was finally allowed to dump the sling. Kaoren and I took immediate advantage of that, though we have to be relatively careful because my bones need to not be stressed for a while. Today we went into the Ena (four squads and Tsur Selkie) and did visualisations of Tare and Kolar. Tsur Selkie had me visualise his office first, where I discovered a large whiteboard-type panel full of details about things which had happened on Tare since we blew the marbles. Tsur Selkie's a fore-thinking type of guy, arranging for that if communication was cut off. The same set-up had been made at the COTIS headquarters on Kolar, except with a bunch of distinctive items in the room to make it easier for me to visualise.

News was mostly good. Thirteenth had been in the Ena when the marbles had been blown, and was listed as out of commission recovering from injuries. Third is back on duty, though Eeli is still in a coma. The squads there had a chance to rest during the disruption, and ionoth numbers are significantly down. They've observed the same sort of relaxing in the tension on the tears into real-space, and there was a lot of technical stuff about the measurement of it. Also details on the attempts to chart a course back to Muina and Kolar. They've made more progress than we have, having vastly more manpower, but estimates for when we get into communication range again are still in the months range. Kolar's news was unequivocally good. A lot of their major ionoth problems were middle-sized roamers, and their numbers have practically dropped to nil since the disruption. Their gates are also 'relaxed' and they're making moderate progress on the complicated process of charting safe passage through the tides of deep-space. There was a Kolaren in the room with that white-board, and Tsur Selkie had a nice formal conversation with him which was very funny because the Kolaren realised he had to be a projection, and was very cheerful and excited by the while situation, and extra-pleased that one-way communication had been established.

I fell asleep in the middle of this, of course, and have woken in bed to find Kaoren deeply asleep wrapped around me. I'm so glad not to be all broken and wincey any more, because there's few things nicer than waking to find Kaoren wrapped around me. I've been reading the news while debating waking him up to ravish him. COTIS sent out a press release with the good news while I was asleep, and people are being very pleased about that, and also quite fascinated by the knowledge that I have to be the source of the information.

I've been managing to keep out of the news the last couple of weeks, for the most part by staying in and keeping my head down. I've been following a lot of the debates about the laws being drafted, but have gotten a bit tired of it. Most of the other news is about who has been granted various bits of land, or contracts, and the progress at Mesiath. The first 'New Muinan' baby was born a few days ago. They called her 'Caszandra', and when I grimaced at that Kaoren informed me that she was hardly the first baby lumbered with my name, and certainly wouldn't be the last. 'Kaoren' has become a lot more popular for boys, too.

He is looking particularly gorgeous, lying there asleep. Perhaps

This day today

So it's been one year today. I spent the afternoon writing a letter to Mum, although the natural gate they've been monitoring for me still hasn't shown any signs of opening (and rather a lot of disturbance thanks to blowing up malachite marbles). We've printed out some family photos, and I've made an envelope and stuck a few stamps on it if and when the gate finally does think about opening we're going to try and toss the letter through and hope someone gets it to Mum. Kaoren's found a clear plastic slip-cover for me to stop it getting rained on.

Here's what I wrote:

---

Dear Mum (and Dad and Jules and Aunties and Nick and Alyssa and everyone)

Well, I'm still here and not there. I'm no longer trying to get home, because I guess I already am home. I wish I could visit, though. I miss so many things. But I'm happy here now, and unless I was sure I could get back here, I can't risk even trying for a quick visit. I'm hoping to be able to get a few letters through.

I'm glad you got a chance to see Kaoren when you last saw me. He and I have been engaged nearly four months now. He's not much like Hei from Darker Than Black, but is focused and smart and perceptive. Serious, but with a really good dry sense of humour. He's nearly twenty-one, and the wedding's scheduled for 25th March 2010. The long wait was initially because of legal requirements and is pretty meaningless, since we live together already, and are working on plans for getting a house built. And we have four children, heh.

They're orphans, and kind of adopted us, and we're going through the process of formally adopting them in return. Ys is the oldest (we think). She, Lira and Rye are all around eleven. Sen is four. They're really great kids, and far less bratty than I ever was. I'm not really 'Mum' to them, but I feel very parental, and I think we've built up some trust. Fretting over them makes me want to hit myself for all the times I was a complete bitch to you. Ys is very (supremely) smart, and just loves getting explanations for things and spends every free moment she can galloping through school studies. It's hard to get her to express her opinion on things, but she certainly has them. Lira has them too, but is less reticent. Lira is proving to be rather artistic and likes creative work far more than school studies – she keeps working on this model of a cat and it become more lifelike every time. Rye is a nature buff, and likes nothing more than to work with plants and animals, although Kaoren comes in as a close second on things which make Rye happy. We've been giving them swimming lessons, and Rye just beams the entire time Kaoren pays him any attention, but is also quite shy. Sen is a sweetheart, very social and outgoing and adorable – with a strong streak of little minx mixed in – though occasionally she acts older than her years and does her best to arrange for Ys and Rye and now Lira to be happy in a totally Machiavellian way. Ys and Rye have been looking after Sen since she was very young (and since they were very young too). None of them are related, and they've faced some hard things in the past and are very protective of each other, and, well, a lot of my energy is going into thinking up ways to make sure they feel safe and have everything they want.

It's been a very dramatic year for me (on top of ending up here in the first place). I became rather peripherally involved in Kaoren's work (in a mostly passive but useful way), so I guess you could say I've been gainfully employed. Fortunately they've made a major breakthrough in their main goal, so everything should be a lot quieter here in future – and Kaoren and I are okay for money, so I'm not having to stress about day-to-day stuff. It was very hard to adjust at first, particularly because I had to learn a new language, and I was just so outside everything. But some very nice people took me under their wing and it was a bit like gaining six older brothers and sisters, and I've developed an extended family of people who look out for me. I've also become kind of well-known here, which has been very embarrassing and annoying at times, and does mean that I have to guard my private life, and make sure the kids get to have one. [Our house is going to be on an island, and it will make it easier when we move there – just at the moment I don't go outside much.]

I'm hoping that one day it'll be easier to get between here and there and it would be great if you could come here. I've enclosed a bunch of photos of me and the kids and some of the people who are important to me and the place where our house will be. [I had to get my hair cut really short and hate it and hope it grows back quickly.]

Lots of love to everyone, and I really hope you get this and know that I'm happy. Miss you heaps.

Cass.

---

The photos were a bit tricky, since I didn't want to have anything undeniably alien in them, and I particularly didn't want any pictures of me with fading yellow and green bruises down one side of my face, and a sling. Fortunately that's all on the same side, and so I sent one recent image showing me in profile, tickling Sen's feet on the couch (Sen is fantastically ticklish and goes into spasms of delight), and a few older ones where my hair was still long (particularly one from when Kaoren, Sen and Rye fell asleep on the couch with me, and I'm looking down at Ys). The rest don't have me at all. I included a shot of First Squad, and also of our waterfall, and wrote who everyone was on the backs. If the natural gate to Earth does look like it's about to open, the letter will be in its protective cover all ready to go and hopefully the gate will open in roughly the same area back home (there's no particular guarantee, but natural gates generally don't move around much) and someone will see it and pick it up and post it. The contents are innocuous enough, and of no apparent value to anyone but Mum, that it wouldn't tempt anyone to steal it anyway, and it's unlikely to scream "not of Earth origin" to anyone, even under fairly detailed analysis. I'm going to do a projection a week or so afterwards and see whether Mum's received it.

Nearly at the end of this volume of the diary, and I've written an unspeakably huge amount over them all. I've been keeping it up out of habit, rather than out of that need to talk that it helped with early on, so I think I might write less frequently from now on. Kaoren teases me occasionally about them being historical documents, but I took him seriously enough to make sure to include in my will that they aren't ever to go on public record (even if no-one here currently can read them). There's more than a few things in here that I couldn’t tolerate other people knowing.

One year, whole different life.

Rearranging Status

COTIS released an official statement this morning about the results of all the monitoring of the Ena and so forth. The storms of energy we set off have calmed down, and they're going to start trying to chart a course soon, but warn that it will take months and isn't entirely guaranteed of success. As for the tears into real-space, they haven't conveniently vanished, but like when a stretched, torn cloth is smoothed out, they've sort of relaxed back into place, so that they're more slits than gaping holes. They're holding out hope that, with time, these will actually seal themselves, but it doesn't look like that's something which will happen quickly. On the plus side, Setari squads sent to do a Pandora to Calasa clearance reported that ionoth numbers were significantly lower, the populations dropping back to more like what the senior squads encountered when they first began clearing spaces. The drones set at the tears near settlements are also reporting far fewer incursions into real-space – possibly because of the numbers, but also probably because the gates are less visible.

This is all a big weight off Maze's mind, since it means that the squads back on Tare are probably not being overwhelmed. It also means that all those nearly-graduated Kalrani who have been training for years haven't found themselves drastically defunct, though I doubt Maze considers this necessarily a good thing. Plenty of people are itching to have me visualise Tare or Kolar to check on conditions there, but Tsur Selkie and Issen Notra pretty much made a like-it-or-lump-it decree about me being in full health before making any attempt. And Lira is still resolutely denying any ability to do so.

She's infinitely less biddable than me, and has this wonderful incredulous and disdainful glare for when people start asking her questions or trying to push her to do something she doesn't want to do. I'm waiting to see if she'll use this on Kaoren – but then all the kids respect Kaoren's authoritah with an implicit acceptance that he only tells them what to do with good reason. And even though it's patently obvious she's never cleaned up after herself before in her life, Lira's quick to take cues from Ys about making your bed when getting up in the morning, and taking your own dish to the sink after eating. Sen is more of a problem in the tidiness department – especially with the pieces of Rye's construction kit. She leaves the epic structure Rye's been slowly putting together alone, but will make little things out of stray pieces, and then scatter everything throughout the whole apartment. Ys and Rye cleaned up after her until Kaoren spotted them doing it, and then he told them not to and made one of Sen's pre-dinner tasks to collect everything she's scattered and return it to its proper place. Sometimes she's grumpy about doing it, but she hasn't refused yet, and it's fun to watch Ys and Rye itching to help her, and at the same time exploring the sensation of not having to. Kaoren's very firm on the you-clean-up-your-own-mess front, and I've noticed the past couple of days that Sen sometimes remembers to put things away now. [Not usually, though!]

I'm definitely not the disciplinarian of our family unit, though I'm not quite a complete pushover. Maze said he was impressed with how very firm I am when discussing Lira's handling, and I teased him a little telling him we only needed one lab rat in the family. But more seriously that it was no longer _necessary_ to use either of us, just convenient, and on that basis it was better if I worked with them rather than expose Lira to the number of experiments and tests I put up with.

The fact that the Ddura she created are still functioning suggests that there's a good chance she won't just fade away. Whether she'll age is a different question – the scans show her to be straightforwardly human, but ionoth (if that's what she is) have never been known to age or change drastically. They're a more fixed imprint. Lira and I talked it over and, medical emergencies aside, she'll put up with a short scan once a month so that they can track any development. I think she agreed because she wants to know herself.

Since I was having personal health discussions, I had separate conversations with Ys and Rye and told them to think over whether they wanted the scars on their backs erased. I showed them a comparison of what my legs look like now compared to what they looked like after I dreamed of Cruzatch (a useful distraction, since the scars aren't something they're happy discussing). I told them that it was a choice they could make at any time, but they went off and had a talk, and came back almost straight away and said they wanted them gone, so we've arranged for that.

Erasing the scars on their spirits will take longer, but I think this will help.

Kids

Another session of house design before dinner, to revisit and tweak. Sen had come up with a bed design which was basically a giant cup full of cushions - you'd need a ladder to get in or out of it. Ys obligingly created the shape she wanted, but then started asking questions about how we'd all sit on the edge to listen to stories, and wouldn't it hurt me getting in and out, and pretty soon it was just a wide bed with a bit of a dip in the middle for better cushion retention. She's had plenty of practice handling Sen. Rye wanted a bench added for his terrarium, and we wandered through the virtual space thinking about things to put stuff on and things to put stuff in and how much we wanted to be whitestone and how much real furniture. We also needed to think about power and water and the sewerage/recycler, and being careful not to mess up the flow of the stream when whacking a great big building beside it. None of this is stuff we have the expertise to be able to do, other than to note the need. We did talk about boat-houses and canoes and day-to-day transport. I doubt my P-plates on Earth would count for much when trying to get hold of one of the many fancy variations of whizzing-aboutness here, and I don't think most of them will be available for private purposes any time soon, anyway.

Kaoren had also searched out aerial scans of the islands from last Winter, which showed us how bare and exposed it would be. The hill will help. It doesn't get cold enough here, and the lake's too deep, for there to be a solid layer of ice on the water, but I am going to have to make sure the kids are perfectly clear on how against the rules walking out on an ice crust is going to be (tempted as I might be to do so myself).

Kid control is a big thing in Pandora, especially on these warm Summer days. Ours aren't the only ones being given swimming lessons, though there's some debate as to whether this makes them safer, or just encourages them into the water. A little boy drowned today, which is pretty horrible, and I've gotten a bit fretty about letting the kids loose on the island and all the things which could bite them, or they could fall off or into. The interface does make it safer, since they can call for help, and an alarm is set off if they're unconscious. The kid who drowned was one of the interface hold-outs, and I can't help but think about whether he'd be alive if he'd had it.

COTIS is also struggling with moonfall. For a long while people stayed respectfully away from the old town during moonfall, but gradually the whole 'free aerial alcohol' thing has meant more and more people of all ages deciding they want to stroll through the old town when the moon's out. There's a lot of debate about whether it should be allowed, and all the accidents and things which might happen to people who are aether-drunk, and how even technicians trying to rescue an injured person would get drunk getting them out. Aether effect is a kind of radiation, and a simple breather doesn't protect you from it.

That's something they're going to be dealing with at every platform town as Muina grows in population. Great pictures this morning of mounds of people sleeping in the amphitheatre. All very well in Summer, but probably not so good a thing in Winter.

I figure the old Muinans living here must have just gotten drunk once a week, since the aether flowed down off the roofs of their houses. Even little kids. The pro-aether people are arguing that it would function as a kind of health care, and it's not too bad if you don't go and sit on the roof or dance about in the amphitheatre. I don't know, myself. At least it doesn't seem to make most people violent, like real alcohol, but obviously there'll be stuff like Cajal deciding to force Kaoren to fight him. I suspect aether-effects are one of the reasons the old Muinans specially built the platform towns, rather than incorporating them into their major cities.

Friends, Family, Home

So Ys came back from school today looking immensely relieved. Mara actually clued me in on why, since she'd been at the talent school that morning. Ys hasn't suddenly become popular or anything, although one or two of the kids seem to have made slight overtures (which unfortunately Ys is completely disinterested in). But Lira is the focus of an immense amount of fascination. An actual Lantaren, beautiful, a second touchstone, hailed as my saviour and a brave spy who'd worked against the Cruzatch and – perhaps most importantly – with lots of syllables in her name.

I should have seen it immediately. Lira's the first friend Ys has ever had – a rather different relationship to Sen and Rye both, who she treats in a more parental way. Lira and Ys bonded thoroughly sharing moments of scorn for me, and just get along very well. And going back to the talent school, for Ys, meant there would be dozens of rivals for Lira's friendship, and the fact that Ys and Rye were 'mere servants' would almost certainly be underlined, and Ys wasn't quite certain how Lira would react to that. Mara couldn't give me all the details, but it was plain that Lira wasn't terribly keen on the mass overtures, and when Mara had headed out for her shift Lira was welded to Ys' side and was glaring furiously at one particular clutch of kids.

I got an earful about that from Lira herself when Ys and Sen were safely in the bath (Ys still gives Sen a bath, and I suspect hasn't realised that Lira's probably perfectly aware of the scars on her back, after days of watching us invisibly). I gather she'd said a few very rude things to Ys' greatest detractors and been lectured (no doubt very gently) by their age-group's supervisor about good manners, and wanted to make quite clear to me that she had no intention of being nice to anyone who thought Ys and Rye didn't belong with us. I just said: "Good for you," and told her to let me know if anybody bothered them too much.

Mara insists that the students at the talent school aren't all bad, or even mostly bad, and says that Rye at least is starting to inch his way into a wider social circle. Sen of course charms everyone in sight. I had something on the lines of a parent-teacher meeting beforehand, and another in a few days, and I'm fairly confident that there's plenty of supervision, and no tolerance of an attitude that syllables equal value. Since the head teacher is Taren, and Ys is so amazingly smart (and Rye a pretty high achiever), the teachers are actually very interested in all four of the kids. My next meeting with them is about trying to catch Lira up, and to stop Ys from exhausting herself, plunging through as many lessons as there are moments in the day.

I had a lot of fun reading the latest chapter of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe to them this evening. They're very caught up in Edmund, about whether he should be rescued or deserves his fate. Sen adores Lucy, of course, and she's far more sympathetic toward Edmund than Ys, Lira and Rye. Ys is monstrously impatient to know what happens next. I suspect she usually reads ahead for these night-time stories, and because it's in English she can't (and she's already learned the English alphabet and can recognise the character names when I show them the illustrations). Being all impatient does mean that she doesn't let Sen linger in the bath a moment longer than she considers necessary. So funny.

I adore them. Kaoren and I are both finding that abrupt parenthood is surprisingly to our taste, and the awful tension and after-effects of me nearly being killed (again!) are fading. Our only real downside at the moment is our complete lack of sex life. My face has only just stopped hurting enough that he's willing to kiss me, and neither of us find it much fun when I get into an uncomfortable position at night and wake up really needing some pain medication. It's getting better though – wonders of Taren technology and so forth.

Future Plans

Today was the weekend, and when we asked the kids what they wanted to do, I wasn't altogether surprised to find that Arcadia was top of their list. Ever since our picnic on the roof got live-streamed, they've become extremely reluctant to go outside in exposed places (except possibly Sen, who thinks people being fascinated by her is a right state of affairs, and would probably most like to go visit the café again).

Nils and Jeh were my guards for the day. Even with Kaoren with me, I'm not allowed off without at least two Setari with me. Lohn and Mara came along too, but they all stayed off out on the shore while we had another swimming lesson. Lira was more confident this time around, and even Sen started paddling about as they played a game of water chasies. I sat paddling my legs in the water and leaning against Kaoren and feeling a weird sense of achievement every time one of them laughed.

After a group lunch, we all went on a walk to the island's centre (Nils carrying Sen) and found a grassy meadow not quite in the middle which had things like partridges which shot off into the air and gave me a near heart attack. But it also had butterflies, and Sen revived and ran about trying to catch them, and Lira and Ys collected flowers, while Rye had a long discussion with Kaoren, Jeh and Lohn about classifying plants and animals, and how he could make a project of studying the island's flora and fauna once we lived here. Nils was in a very laid-back mood and teased me mildly, but mostly just watched the kids with a smile while Mara talked to me about some of the work the senior Setari have been doing with the kids at the talent school. Assisting with talent training is something they're used to, but the focus is rather different with the Nuran kids – not so intense and purposeful and disciplined. Mara says that even though the Kalrani were away from their families, having a home and returning to it during holidays, and also having the focus of the mission, made them far different students than devastated orphans.

"It doesn't help that they think we're shopping," Nils said. "Or want us to be. It adds a painful edge, although also some high entertainment. Most of the Kalrani try to impress, but they don't try to sabotage each other in the hopes of winning some secret competition to be adopted."

"There's only a couple like that," Mara said, with a wry glance at Nils (I'm getting better at not picturing them having sex, but I'm always going to be aware that there's history there). "The Nuran household structure seems to have been a force to be reckoned with, full of feuds and rivalries and alliances, and that's partway carried over. Most of them will introduce themselves as 'of suchandsuch House', and those who have other household members here or in the town seem more secure and comfortable, grouping together. In some ways it helps, but it's causing a lot of issues because some also tend to act as if they've inherited control over anyone who was once of their house. That group that took off to Nurenor, for instance, were almost all from three of the larger houses, and some of them simply unable to disobey orders from seniors of the house. And belonging to a major household meant immediate prestige, even if you weren't at the head of it, and so there's children who no longer have any semblance of a house and miss it terribly, and even when they have others of their house with them, find that their house has no power here, and they're in a culture which heavily emphasises individual merit. All this on top of losing their parents."

"And the news service is constantly providing touching adoption stories," Nils said, dryly. "Where lucky brat number 4000 catches a family's eye and is no longer just one of many powerless orphans herded about with the mass. An immediate gain of security, prestige. The oldest ones are finding it hardest – less likely to be adopted, struggling with schooling requirements they would never have dreamed of, and facing the prospect of filtering to the bottom because no-one is going to reach out and pick them and they'll be transitioning to being responsible for themselves soonest. And then we go and dangle ourselves in front of them – beyond you showing up and saying "I need a few more", we're probably as close to instant prestige as they can see right now."

"I don't think I could do that," I said. "Pick, I mean. Sen adopted me, not the other way around, and I got too emotionally involved with all three of them to not keep caring. Lira was the same way – she just happened. But you're thinking about it, aren't you?"

I looked at Mara, who nodded. "Jeh, Ketz and Regan, too. Of course, right now we're all in barracks, and aren't feeling inclined to retire, but if we can get these houses built, then between us and the school we should be able to manage it. And you're right – the idea of picking is strangely daunting. Not so much for making a choice which will work for us, but because then there are all these children we didn't pick. And for every atrocious creature shamelessly trying to win favour, there are a half-dozen who are adorable. And even the atrocious creatures are breaking themselves apart inside. It's one of the big downsides to having Muina cut off from a fresh influx of settlers – COTIS intended to have each and every minor settled with families as soon as possible, because they need that level of care. You only have to look at these four to see how much a sense of belonging does to offset the weight of trauma."

The idea of 'Jeh, Ketz and Regan' kept me occupied for a while, and I still don't quite know if they're intending to set up one house together, but I can see Mara's looking forward to the idea of having a home and building a family. She says she and Lohn are thinking of simply having two weddings (commitment ceremonies) to handle having lots of important people on two different planets. I also couldn't help but notice that Nils was very quiet the rest of the day, and to feel sorry for him and Maze, who would both be really good fathers, and are both really caught up in their feelings for someone who's dead. I don't think Zee is stupid enough to believe Nils is the type of Lothario he's apparently tried to make her believe he is, so I guess she must be offended that he feels the need to put her off that way. And she's been spending a lot of time with Raiten from Squad One lately. Even though being alone is a choice Nils has made, I feel so awful for him.

Ys also went quiet in the afternoon. It's because of going to talent school tomorrow, and she makes me want to tag along and stand over her protectively. Really, given how brave Ys was trying to help Siame and me in the lake, you'd think there'd be some kids there who would see her as more than a servant. But at least I think she's readier to believe that Kaoren and I value all four of them, and that I have succeeded in creating the sense of belonging Mara was talking about.

Settlers

Having my arm in a sling is driving me crazy. It's awkward and clumsy and makes getting dressed and undressed a complete pain, and I'm very tired of doing everything one-handed. Today I've been wearing my uniform just because Kaoren was gone early and I couldn't stand trying to put on anything more than my harness. I've got it in Summer mode, and it made me realise that I've been making an unconscious decision not to wear my uniform generally. Although it was very useful when I was kidnapped, overall I've just been happier to dress in my own clothes.

I've been doing schoolwork with Lira. She can read and write, but in Old Muinan, and she was very frustrated with the sudden leap backward. She doesn't have Ys' absolute love of knowing things, and was finding Ys' explanations frustrating. Ys is relatively patient, but she's so smart that remembering new words is incredibly easy for her, and in some ways it's simpler for her, Rye and Sen because they haven't learned slightly different characters, and slightly different spellings, and slightly different rules. Lira's no more of a fan of getting things wrong than Ys is, and more likely to get frustrated and give up, so I spent the morning doing basic kindergarten lessons with her, and laughing over the things I got wrong, and talking about what it was like when I first got here, having to repeat infant-grade school a couple of months after doing my high school final exams. And I managed to settle a convenient arrangement where Lira would do her lessons with Sen, to try and encourage Sen to pay a little attention in school. And Sen, of course, wants to be all helpful to Lira.

We're all getting quite good at understanding each other speaking, in Taren, old Muinan or Nuran, though often the subtleties of what we're trying to say is lost. And I was disconcerted to discover that I seem to have introduced a few English words into the general language here – 'okay', and 'cool' particularly – and I've been trying to work out _how_ since The Great War didn't have details of my actual speech, and there's very little publicly available of me speaking. I think it's actually gone out from the Setari and the support staff who work in the Setari building – maybe describing how I speak to people?

The news service is all very excited about the progress made at Mesiath – they're not quite ready to transfer any settlers there, but they had plenty of shells of buildings from last time, and have succeeded in fitting a few of these out – Taren has lots of different alternatives for power supplies, and are very interested in trying to understand moonfall, but currently the Mesiath buildings are solar, with a larger powerplant due to be built. They've opened out quite a large gap in the forest, which makes it look very different, but still beautiful, and I'm glad to see they've kept a number of the middling-sized trees rather than just clear-felling everything.

The really tall trees are hugely heavy, and they can't just knock them over to cut them up because they're building close to and on where Mesiath used to be (it's so ruined there that they decided to not try building next to the old town like they have in Pandora). One thing all the cleared trees from Pandora and Mesiath have provided is massive amounts of wood, and a thriving wood furniture industry has sprung up. Mesiath particularly has such enormous trees, that one particularly talented Taren has been crafting really nice furniture (mainly chairs) carved whole from massive blocks – some of the furniture she creates is really monumental and heavy and impressive and some of it is light and beautiful and kind of art deco. Taren tools combined with masses of raw material makes for lots of fun. All sorts of other wooden products, too, like bowls and toys, springing up all over the place. And a lot of stuff made from hairy sheep wool. The economy here is a bit weird and will remain so for some time, and they've been having plenty of discussions about how the sudden isolation from Tare and Kolar will effect its growth. No-one will starve on Muina, and the nano-factory can churn out things in bulk, but handmade items – anything unique and individual - are very popular, and there's quite a bit of bartering going on, since having lots of money on Tare or Kolar isn't quite the same thing as being rich when you're cut off on Muina.

The other hot item is the 'constitution', as the provisional council try and reconcile three sets of laws and customs into one which will be acceptable, and everybody and their second cousin vie to get their suggestions heard, or to angle for getting themselves appointed on the Council once it stops being provisional. It's going to be a mix of merit and election, and it's funny reading stuff by Tarens who can't bear the thought of people getting in on pure popularity compared to Kolarens who can't stand the idea of what they insist on calling "highest IQ wins". Nurans are a lot quieter about the whole business (because most of them are kids and because they're well aware that there's no chance of any hereditary rule), but they really do have a deep-seated class culture, and so when they do talk they always seem to raise questions about the candidate's family and background, rather than their qualifications or deeds.

Pretty lively stuff. Seems more real to me than Australian politics, but I guess I have more of a stake. I'm keep an eye on what the adoption laws are shaping up to be. And the question of second-level monitoring.

No Secrets

A lot of time in medical today. If I'd been on Earth, I'd probably have pins or something put in my arm (it's the upper arm which is broken), but here I have nanotech work.

Now that she's gaining more interface access, I sat down with Lira and talked to her about the total fascination she's going to have to deal with, partly because of her connection to me, but also because of who she is. That the interface will allow people to record anything they see her do, and that quite a lot of people will happily make up stories. [At least the interface 'mature content' controls means none of the kids can see the vast array of porn fanart involving me, Kaoren, and every Setari unfortunate enough to have ever been seen by anyone.] And that she especially needs to understand the rather strange relationship we have with the Setari, and the whole deal with second-level monitoring.

Kaoren and I have succeeded in arguing against Lira being on second-level monitoring for the moment, and I told her that I'll try to keep her off it, and have vague hopes of arguing my way off it as well. But she needs to know that everything I see and hear is recorded, and that if she tells me something important enough I'd have to tell at least Kaoren, who would then have to decide whether we can choose not to pass it on. That the things which were reported to COTIS were theoretically private, but that stuff like my file being stolen could very well happen.

As you can imagine, Lira wasn't terribly pleased, but was nicely sympathetic about me being stuck on second-level monitoring. And even more fortunately, Ys and Rye already knew about the monitoring from watching The Great War, since I belatedly realised that I'd never discussed this with them. I'm not altogether sure Ys would have forgiven me for telling Lira things she doesn't know, and of course it hadn't been necessary because COTIS doesn't feel the need to have reports on what any of the kids but Lira might say.

The fact that Lira created the Ddura is a deep, dark secret for the moment. I can't say that I'm keen on being used that way.

With Candles

Rye's reaction this morning was so much fun. He woke before we did, and came running into our room, excited beyond words and then was too overcome to wake us up and kind of danced in place, which _did_ wake us up. And then he couldn't speak, and when Kaoren sat up and put a hand on his head and said: "Happy birthday", he flung his arms around him, and then got incredibly shy and tried to pretend he hadn't. Kaoren hugged him carefully, and helped me up so I could too, and we both were having trouble not smiling too much.

His present was a terrarium – one we'd had great difficulty fitting into his room and inspired by Taarel's particularly magnificent one. We'd spent the last few days arranging for the plastiglass tank, and the lights, and consulting with the botanics technicians about plant selection. Once it had been assembled and planted up, Lohn and Mara had kept it in their room, and brought it in to us when the kids were asleep. They got a big kick out of the whole thing. It was definitely a present which Rye appreciated. He was particularly amazed by one of the plants, a small-leafed ground cover with some little daisy flowers sticking up on slender stems. This was something called "gilly", which is a Nuran herb, and which the technicians very kindly resurrected from the flower Sen had given me, way back when I first met her. They're actually quite pleased with it, and I gather it was a useful cooking ingredient on Nuri. Rye's got one of the first clones they managed to construct, and most of the rest of his plants are Muinan herbs. Looking after them all will be exactly the kind of thing he most likes.

Even Ys approved, and showed it by leaning briefly against me as I watched Rye showing Kaoren each and every plant, and going over the information the botanists had provided. For Ys, that's extremely demonstrative, and I squeezed her shoulder in return, but didn't annoy her by actually saying anything.

Nor was this the only birthday treat we had in store. Since Maze was in charge of the duty roster, he had no trouble arranging for a couple of hours in the middle of the day so we could have a picnic lunch at Arcadia. [Well, actually, given how complex the duty roster is, I think it was a lot of trouble, and it was extremely nice of him. But he looked so relaxed and happy that I think he was glad to do it.] First, Second and Fourth were invited, and we brought huge picnic baskets of food (including a cake with candles, which is an Earth tradition I insisted on) and worked up a big appetite swimming first. They'd brought breathers this time, and Kaoren compounded Rye's ecstasy by giving him a personal underwater lesson. I wasn't allowed to do more than sit in the edge of the water, because of my arm and ribs, but that suited Sen just fine, and I don't think Ys is quite ready to go swimming underwater either, although she'd probably have nerved herself up to do it if pushed – she loathes admitting to being afraid. Lira has never even been allowed to go near something as dangerous as a large body of water, and was very stiff and doubtful as Mara and Zee took her through her first swimming lesson, but Ys was quick to take her in hand, and I think helping Lira increased her own confidence.

After lots of swimming, we ate ourselves sick, and I taught everyone a translated version of "Happy birthday to you" and we all sang it to Rye, who went crimson and blew out his candles very enthusiastically. Then we went for exploratory walks, and checked out where the house would go according to our tentative plans, and looked at the forest behind it (discovering enough little animals to make Rye even more enthusiastic about living here). More than a few of the Setari went and had a look at the neighbouring islands, and the one south of Arcadia could pretty much be renamed "First Squad Island", judging from some of the discussions I overheard.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone as unremittingly joyful as Rye was today. He radiated full-wattage joy until finally running out of steam around bath-time, and then he went all tired and sweetly shy again. It was a marvellously happy day for everyone, and I was particularly pleased with how at peace Maze looked. A lot of shadows have been lifted from everyone's future, and we've come through it with far fewer deaths than we all feared. I got plenty of hugs.

Best of all, no pictures of us showed up on the news. The islands are far enough away from shore that if the Setari go ahead with their plans to snap up all the available land there, it will be an enjoyably private place. And with the generosity of the lands grants, they have enough to split the grant to a house there, and also land somewhere else. It'll be quite a neighbourhood.

Education

Nothing major today, other than it being very quiet because so many people were off on missions. Kaoren was at Calasa, while almost every telekinetic and levitation talent was off in Mesiath clearing trees and seeding and feeding whitestone. Mori and Alay were my guards - I'm going to be assigned babysitters for the foreseeable future, but so long as I stay inside the building I don't have to have them sitting right on me. Alay says I can consider them the day's trainers, though with an arm in a sling and ribs protesting whenever I bend even slightly, it's more training for the kids at the moment.

Rye's fine with anyone giving him combat training, but both Ys and Lira are very doubtful about the whole thing. I told them that knowing how to beat up anyone who might attack them is a good thing, and Alay laughed at me and said I should take my own advice.

We've set a tentative date of five days from now for the kids to start attending the talent school again, since that should give Lira some time to adjust to the interface, and to just be more comfortable with being here. I can tell that Ys hates the idea, but is being very good about not arguing or showing how she feels. If anything, she seems even less eager to go than before. I know that the particular children at the talent school are a big issue for Ys, and I asked Kaoren whether he thought it would be better for the kids to attend a different school, but the problem is Lira needs to be protected, and Sen needs intensive talent training. We're going to keep a close eye on them, and see how it goes.

We're waiting up now, until all the kids are thoroughly asleep, and we can put Rye' birthday present in his room.

Public Speaking

Today was the ceremony of thanksgiving.

I was pretty tired for all of it (contributing no end to the talk about how horrible I look) because I'd gotten up a few hours after midnight and sat with Lira, who was having a terrible time. I took her down to medical, but they're still very unwilling to give any form of pain relief during interface installation, and because she's taken a strong dislike to medical (no surprise there) I took her back up to our rooms and sat out on the balcony with her.

We had a long talk then, about her being raised as a touchstone. She was separated from her family when she was a baby, and only met them once, and was embarrassed that she didn't feel as upset as they obviously were. She was raised in a way similar to the Taren Setari - in a strict environment designed to increase her talents - but of course she was the only one, with no squad, no peers, no friends. A very isolated and useful little princess.

And we talked about what a touchstone was _for_, what the Lantarens had wanted her to do, and what the Tarens have me do. Rather to my dismay, it turns out Lira created the Ddura. That, just as with this shadow world, when they wanted particularly complex things, the Lantarens would create a kind of power-focusing device and a set of instructions, and use Lira as a kind of cog in the machine. Otherwise, she's been doing ad hoc visualisations and projections much as I have been.

The poor kid got very upset after this, and wanted to know if she was really herself, or just something which I'd made, which of course I couldn't tell her one way or another. I had to resort to my not very solid understanding of philosophy, and told her about a guy called Descartes, who wanted to know if he really existed, and came up with: "I think, therefore I am." I don't know if this was a good thing to say or not, since it made her cry all over me. At least this completely exhausted her to the point where she fell asleep, and Kaoren came out and carried her back inside for me. Then Kaoren and I had a talk about how little I wanted to go making reports on things Lira has told me alone, and I'm going to have to explain all that to her later.

Lira's a proud, reserved, standoffish girl, not at all used to being close to people, which means of course that today she's being very stiff with me. She's so like Ys. But, thankfully, the interface installation has completed, which not only means that she no longer has the headache from hell, but has some incredibly distracting new toys to play with. Ys, Sen and Rye have all been very quick to show her all the things they find most special about the interface, and she and Ys spent most of the ceremony tweaking their bedroom design.

If I hadn't been semi-conscious, I suppose I would have found the thanksgiving ceremony quite touching. Even the huge Moon Piazza isn't big enough to fit Pandora's entire population any more, but the main ceremony was there, and there were multiple other gatherings across the city, along with a broadcast. The provisional council is a mix of three Tarens, three Kolarens and three Nurans nominated to draft and recommend laws (although they have to be ratified by COTIS for some time to come). They did most of the speaking, but kept it relatively short, and someone sang, and I was just wondering if I could get away with falling asleep leaning against Kaoren when they announced me as the next speaker. Kaoren promises me he would have warned me if he'd known, but it was my own fault for not reading my email. Or their fault for having ceremonies in the mid-morning.

So I went up looking like a car-wreck survivor, with extra circles under my eyes from lack of sleep, and my voice all croaky. There were an awful lot of people watching me, but I got through that by focusing on the black-clad rows at the front.

"It's nearly a full Muinan year since I first saw Pandora's old town," I said. "It was the first sign of civilisation I'd found. I was so glad. And it was so empty." I paused, looking past the Setari to the endless swell of people, most sitting on cushions or the stone paving because there aren't enough chairs in all Pandora. "Even after I was found by the Tarens, I still felt alone, because everyone I cared about was on another world, and I couldn't speak the language, and everything was strange. Some very kind people put a lot of effort into making me feel less alone, but I missed my family and I just wanted to go home. I'm not sure I would have believed a day like today could come so quickly. That Muina would not be an empty world, and that I could stand here and look out and in every direction see people who mattered to me, who have become part of a very extended family, and that they would have made this place home. I am so lucky to know you all, and I am very glad to be here. Thank you."

That's totally not the speech I would have made if I'd put any thought into it, and ended up being embarrassingly personal, and I was bright red at the end of it, and got off stage as quickly as I could manage before I burst into tears. I could tell from the way Kaoren's eyes were nearly shut that he'd thought me tremendously funny, but he tucked me under his arm and Sen came and sat in my lap and I hid behind her. My punishment for looking so sick and exhausted during the ceremony was to be sent off to medical afterwards, where I promptly fell asleep.

Kaoren woke me in time for bedtime stories, and having finished the Kolaren story I began the rather challenging task of translating the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. My Taren is still a little shaky on complex stuff (and some of the scans were pretty shaky), but it went reasonably well without only a few pauses and the books I'd had First scan were illustrated. I ended up with five engrossed listeners, since Kaoren is very interested in Earth's stories as well.

He's asleep now, looking gorgeous. The squads are all back on duty tomorrow, and the platforms have been very obliging about starting to work again. Kaoren will be working at Calasa. They want me to do some visualisations of Tare and Kolar as well, but the "she's too injured" people are currently winning the argument.

Arcadian

Lira had very little sleep last night, and looked fantastically depressed all day. She stayed most of the day in Siame's room with the lights off. Sen was tremendously sweet, running down to the kitchens every couple of hours and getting ice which she would wrap in a towel and then sneak into Lira's room and silently give it to her and take away the old towel.

Kaoren and I stayed in all day, rarely out of sight of each other, and along with spending time with the kids, managed to have some long conversations with each other. Serious talks about not being dead, and what we would be doing next, and whether to change the timing of our wedding, and how to not have to keep relying on other people to take care of our kids for us (this mainly involves me not being injured all the time). They'll be going back to talent school quite soon, but we want Lira especially to have more time to adjust and no longer feel so uncertain about me.

We're not going to bring our wedding forward, even though the provisional laws they've written up for Muina don't have anything close to the time delay requirement of Tare. We'd been considering it because it would make formally adopting the kids easier, but Kaoren very much wants Siame to be there, and I still have hopes to contacting my family. We won't have more kids until after the wedding, which I think should give the ones we currently have enough time to feel that they really belong.

In a few days it's the day we decided would be Rye's birthday. He hasn't mentioned it at all, and from the occasional fulminating glare Ys has been directing my way, I imagine she thinks we've forgotten. The presents I bought were unfortunately left behind, but I figured out a replacement and Kaoren and I have been colluding with Lohn and Mara in getting it ready, and also arranging a surprise party. Rye's not openly looking concerned, though, and was in Seventh Heaven this afternoon because Kaoren took him out on the balcony and cut his hair off. It does make them look faintly alike, and it just made Rye so happy.

I was in medical for Siame's birthday, and I guess we won't hear what she thought of her present for quite some time. Kaoren's very worried about her, but he can't do anything but wait.

We read through the details of the Setari land grant. I'm not a Setari, so we weren't sure if it counts for me, but when Kaoren queried the contact person about that, they kind of laughed at him, asked if I had a piece of land in mind, and said 'hold on a moment', and all of a sudden I owned an island. The whole island, which comes to more than three Setari grants combined, since my land grant appears to be 'anything I take my fancy to'. I asked if I could change its name, and now my island is called "Arcadia", which pleases me to no end. I'm going to get 'Et Arcadia Ergo Sum' engraved on a stone in the middle of the island.

Kaoren's going to keep his land grant and decide on a bit of land much later. Possibly at Mesiath, because we both like it there, or possibly someplace we haven't even seen yet. A summer house, or something for the kids. I wasn't expecting to get the entire island, and had a bit of a talk to Kaoren about that. I could probably keep getting myself given bits of Muina, but the idea embarrasses me - especially because the grant of Arcadia hit the news about five minutes after it was made official. That at least pleased Rye - he's the most excited by the prospect of living on the island and he came running out to ask if it was true. And Lohn and Mara dropped by, and said that they were going to apply for part of the island just south of Arcadia and that a lot of other Setari were thinking the islands were a good idea as well. That island (currently called Siriath) is about twice the size of Arcadia and very close - you could shout at each other over the gap - and there's a half-dozen islands of varying size clustered within sight of each other.

Makes me want to try and get a canoe made.

Looking Ahead

Considerably better today, and cleared to not have to live in medical, so I immediately went for a walk down to the lake's edge all by myself and sat on a rock feeling very daring. I'm kind of a sad case. It was quite five minutes before anyone noticed (for all I was in full view of the common room) and I sat there sunning myself and looking forward to the days when no-one is assigned to guard me.

Par and Glade were my current watchdogs, and Glade came out very aggrieved and said: "You have no idea the tortures we'll be subjected to. If you're going to sneak off, make sure it's when someone from First is assigned to you."

I grinned at him (as much as my very sore face would allow anyway). "I won't tell Kaoren if you don't."

"He'll know. He always does." Glade gave me an equivocal look. "I think for the moment it's just easier on all of us to know exactly where you are, and to be sure you've got someone with you."

He meant that Kaoren has been stressed beyond the point of endurance, and I wrinkled my nose, but shrugged. "I know. But I give fair warning that I'm going to be a lot less biddable and obedient about staying where I'm put in future. Just walking out here is the first time I've gone anywhere by myself in months. Once we're sure that the Cruzatch aren't able to get here anymore, I hope to go back to not having people assigned to guard me at all."

"I'm glad it's not me you have to win that argument with." He glanced toward Pandora's heart, probably thinking about Tsur Selkie, who had summoned all the captains for a meeting with Muina's leaders to talk about colony-building. "Not that the rules haven't changed in a big way. But Cruzatch aren't the only thing we're protecting you from, and given all that you've done and _could_ do, I don't see any end to your guard roster."

"Maybe they'll guard me secretly, like the Nurans do those at Nurenor," I said, and saw from Glade's lack of reaction that he thought it very likely, if I kicked up too much of a fuss about people following me around.

That kind of put a damper on my day, but I'm still too pleased and amazed to be alive to get too upset about it. Instead I went up to the seats on the very top of the Setari building - the tree is very leafy and shady up there now and it was a warm day - only to find Nils asleep in the grass all surrounded by little daisies. He's got a bruise on one side of his mouth from impacting with the back of my head - narrowly avoided a split lip - but somehow this made him look smexier than usual.

I'm pretty sure he woke up straight away, but pretended not to, and I decided to act like I thought he was still asleep. Nils' quick thinking with the drone is one of the things which saved me, but I'm still uncomfortable with him - mainly because I'm bursting to tell him that he's being very unkind to Zee, or tell Zee just how hurt Nils is - and I don't think either of them would forgive me for raising the subject.

After finding a position on the bench that didn't pinch my ribs, I opened a channel to Mara (who had the kids for the morning and was teaching them more basic combat moves) and asked if I could borrow Ys for a while. Ys duly came up, her expression particularly fierce. It made my heart turn over, because I knew it meant she was feeling uncertain. I'd never 'summoned' any of them before. Glade and Par had retired a little downslope, and Nils continued pretending to be asleep, and I pointed to the seat opposite.

"You're supposed to be in medical," Ys said. She much prefers attack to defence.

"I escaped while they were looking the other way," I said cheerfully. "I have a particular job for you. I found this program which we can use to help try and work out what our house will be like. It's a bit fiddly and annoying, and I keep getting a headache trying to use it. See if you have better luck, and if you think you can work it properly, we'll have a family meeting and start figuring out what we'd like to have where. Let me know if it's too hard for you, and I'll ask Kaoren instead."

Nils lifted his head and gave me an amused look, but Ys was properly insulted by the suggestion that anything might fall in the too hard basket for her, and promptly lost herself in my thinly disguised present for her.

"You're building a house?" Nils asked, propping himself on one hand.

"We want to try and get permission to build on one of the islands. Barracks living has some good points, but this will give us more privacy, and I can have a garden to neglect, and we won't have to be escorted about as much for fear of passersby." I shrugged. "It's just more what I'm used to."

"And given your capacity to acquire children, the barracks won't be large enough," he added over the interface. "Are you planning on many more?"

"Not for a while. Four's more than I was thinking of, already. We won't worry about that until after we're married anyway."

My face had gone hot, and Nils laughed at me. "So easy," he said aloud, making Ys give him a deeply suspicious look. Fortunately Lohn showed up, and told us about a ceremony of thanksgiving that the provisional council had decided they wanted. This would be all about being happy the colony had survived, that the immediate threat seemed to be gone, and to honour the Setari for their work in fighting the Cruzatch.

That news was a sign that the captains had been released from the meeting, and Kaoren, Regan and Maze dropped down a couple of minutes later. Kaoren just rested against me silently for quite a while, without saying anything at all. He really is finding it difficult to be away from me at the moment, and I'm glad I've been cleared to sleep in our quarters. Mara arrived with the rest of the kids, so I had Sen for my other side, and smiled to see that Sen and Lira are both wearing their hair in two beribboned braids and are looking disconcertingly like sisters. Ys seems to have donated all her girlier clothes to Lira.

Lira is very upright and distant with most everyone, and is being very formally polite to me, as if she's a guest with relative strangers, but she immediately sat down right beside Ys and the pair of them kept whispering comments to each other.

Maze gave me one of his super smiles while he brought all the Setari - Taren, Kolaren and Nuran - into a single channel. He spoke aloud, though, specifically so Lira could hear what was going on, I think.

"The drone which managed to return from the rift shows that while the power flares are dying back, the landscape there is continuing to shift," he said. "It is likely that the pillars have either been destroyed, or have shut down. This does not mean it's impossible to reach Tare and Kolar, but that an extremely time-consuming process will need to be undertaken to map the currents, so to speak, of deep-space. The route is likely not closed, or even necessarily altered, but it will merely be a matter of timing to be able to navigate. Once we establish the timing, there is likely to only be a narrow window for travel, so multiple daily journeys will be a thing of the past unless we can re-establish the pillars. That's a matter for the long-term future."

He shifted slightly, looking thoughtful. "In any case, it is highly unlikely we will re-establish contact in the next year - Taren year - so these will be the arrangements until such time as that occurs. Most significantly, for day-to-day assignments the squads will be broken apart. Although we will nominally keep our squad designations, current squad make-up is designed for Ena work, and that will be the minority of our duties.

"They believe the platform system is recovering, so bringing Mesiath up to a self-supporting level is the primary task. The bulk of our work will be assisting in settlement - land clearance, seeding and feeding whitestone, survey and collection work, but we will also be assisting in the recovery of information at Calasa and the Oriath site. Expect to be working in groups of two to four. There will be opportunities to apply for extended leave, should you wish it. The provisional council has also established a land grant for all serving Setari, in recognition of the role we have played in making settlement possible. The grant is very generous, and I'll post details of the process as soon as it's finalised."

After shooting me a faintly amused glance, he went on more seriously: "Construction work is not what we spent so many years training for, and I know that many of you will prefer using your talents more fully. We have a little leeway with the assignments, and we will require more traditional rotation work at Calasa and the Oriath site, and once it's deemed safe, with escorting the survey ship attempting to remap the path to Tare and Kolar. Feel free to message me with any preferences, or other concerns. This is a new phase for the Setari program, but it is something we have achieved, and should be proud of. There is a ceremony of thanksgiving scheduled in two days, and then our new assignments will begin."

We ending up having a big picnic lunch on the top of the building - all the squads, even most of Fifth and the Nurans - and everyone had a big talk about bits of Muina they'd seen and liked, but how weird it would be to own bits of lands or build houses there. The estimate of it being months before there's any real likelihood for re-establishing contact with the other worlds was actually reasonably comforting to most people, because they'd been worried about it being permanent.

Sen had a wonderful time, as usual, and Rye is blossoming more in social events. Ys and Lira stuck together as if glued, and were very polite to everyone who said anything to them, but I also got a stern message from Ys that I had to arrange for Lira to have the interface installed Straight Away because it wasn't fair on her. It was a really nice time until someone noticed that the "Setari party" was being featured on the news and that we were being live-streamed with long-range lenses (and quite a few members of the talent school had taken up nearby vantage points and were watching in fascination). Nils said that islands sounded like a good idea to him too, and we all went inside.

It was the first time any images of me post-squishing had gotten out, and there was plenty of discussion about how terrible I looked. It was also the first time Lira had been publicly seen, and I have my doubts about how she'll take all this discussion about how beautiful and mysterious she is. Fortunately, what little information COTIS has released about her has made absolutely clear that she spied on the Cruzatch for us, and saved my life, and deserves a lot of credit for any of us still being here.

Obedient to Ys' edict, I took Lira down to medical and described to her how completely horrible she was going to feel over the next few days while the technicians gave her a medical exam and then a shot to the temple. They're very wary of how Lira will deal with it, but they've agreed to the initial interface installation. It's unlikely they'll ever expand it for her as they did with me, given how well that worked out.

They wanted to keep her in medical for observation, which she was extremely unkeen about, and eventually I talked them into putting a medical sense-chair up in our apartment so they'd know if she was having a crisis overnight.

After that, before Lira's headache grew enough to take all fun out of it, we all sat together and worked out some initial requirements for our house. Kaoren had borrowed one of the visual display screens from the talent school (now no longer really required, since they've all bitten the bullet and had the interface installed), which let Lira partially see what we were looking at, although it's not quite the same experience as having the interface make it seem you're _in_ the room.

Ys, to my complete lack of surprise, quickly mastered the basics of the program, and was very precise and efficient in blocking out the dimensions and shapes we wanted. It's actually a full-on 3-D modelling tool used by the technicians and architects when designing buildings, and has several levels of intricacy, all the way down to plumbing and lighting, and is what they use when preparing the forms for whitestone buildings. The first level is fairly straightforward and we can design as much as we like, and then hand it over to the experts to fix our impossibilities and problems and put in all the complicated stuff. And we're going to have to go over everything again to make sure it's bearable in Winter.

It was a lot of fun designing what our house could be like. Kaoren, being incredibly efficient as usual, had carted out a drone and obtained a proper topographic scan of the bit of the island where he wanted the house to be - basically above the waterfall and curving down one side of the little hill. It was great to see how into the project he was, and that he'd been thinking about it just as hard as the kids. Beyond a shelf where I could put my current diary built into the bed, and some interest in the bathroom and small siderooms on that floor, I left our bedroom's design to him, since I know his sights make the place he sleeps quite difficult. And we both wanted 'retreat' rooms.

The fact that we were building over a hill helped with that, and Kaoren and my particular area of the house ended up looking a bit like a stack of three octagons which weren't sitting directly on top of each other. The bedroom was in the middle, on the main floor of the building, and looked out over the central well of the patio to the waterfall. There was a sidedoor to a stairwell which led up and down, as well as out to the patio. Kaoren's retreat was one floor down, and positioned toward the back, away from the central body of the house. It involved only one window, a rear exit to what he intended to be a tiny sunken garden room where he can meditate. His room has a lot of shelving, and I knew all those things on the shelves in his quarters back on Tare were intended for this place. My retreat was on top, a kind of minaret with windows in every direction, and an excess of windowseats, and a door to a walkway across the top garden to the kids' domain.

The centre of the building had the kitchen and the lounge and a workout room, and a couple of guest bedrooms and laundry and storage area and all that kind of practical stuff. The lounge was very big and opened on to the patio, which was large, with numerous benches built into the retaining walls and had multiple levels - down to an overlook of the waterfall pool, and up to the kids' patio.

The kids' domain was actually the largest part of the house. Two stacks of three octagons linked by bathrooms. Six rooms because of Sen's insistence that Kaoren and I had to have at least two babies. She actually started out at five, but we bargained her down, and I eventually won the argument because it made me laugh too much and she was all distressed about how much that hurt me, and gave in when Kaoren told her we could always expand the house if we had more than two.

Rye very definitely wanted the rear, lower room, opening onto the back yard. This wasn't simply copying Kaoren - he wants to have a garden of his own, and grow vegetables and have pets. Sen decided she wanted the room beside his - I suspect that this is all about being closest to the action in the main lounge room, or perhaps whatever pets Rye produces. On the roof of these two rooms is a common room for the kids, which opens out on the walkway leading to my retreat, and also onto the kids' patio, and leads into two currently empty bedrooms which will have great views over the back garden. Sen has also laid claim on these in the interim, 'so they won't be lonely'.

Ys and Lira opted for the top two rooms, which will be the highest point. The whole house will be sheltered by the mass of trees on the island, and partially shielded by the hill on the Pandora side, but with amazing views across the lake toward the ducks. Ys sectioned off her room into little roomlets, so that the bed isn't visible, and so there's a sheltered study area - each with its own set of windows. Lira, by contrast, didn't want anything interrupting her ability to see out, and wanted stairs down the outside of the building to the upper garden.

There's lots of decisions about furniture - most of it will be built in whitestone - but we emphasised to all the kids that they had a couple of weeks in which to think it over before we took the whole proposition any further (the island's not ours yet, for a start), and that whitestone made it very easy to change the furniture and inner walls. They're immensely excited by the idea, by having a place which is very specifically theirs, which they get to make choices about. Sen treats it all as a joyful game, with her playing princess, while Ys and Rye got a rather shell-shocked expression at times. They're beginning to accept that we mean it about becoming a family, that we're not going to change our minds, and that they're important to us. Lira's a more confusing case - she obviously grew up privileged and protected, but I don't get an impression that she's from a close family. She's being very polite and proper even when alone with us, but forgets herself at times and gets caught up, and more relaxed, and sometimes she looks very lost and lonely. She's not only survived a great deal of trauma, but I think she's well aware of the 'fading away' possibility.

I'm never going to forget the sound of her crying, and the way her whole body shuddered while I held her. All I can do is offer her as much welcome as she'll accept.

My throat was pretty worn by the time it was dinnertime, and both Lira and I were feeling very off, so we had a quiet meal, and Kaoren read the evening's bedtime story. Kaoren dimmed the lights in our lounge and put Lira's medical bed there, instead of in the kids' lounge, where it had been originally. I fell asleep before everyone but Sen, and woke a few hours later with an extreme need to take my pain meds.

Kaoren still can barely talk to me about how he felt while I was trapped. He's been holding me and watching me write for this entire incredibly long entry, and I think he's going to be like that for quite some time. He's worried now about having a nightmare and hurting me thrashing about, but I told him to just sleep on my unbroken side and we should be fine.

Out of Touch

Slept a lot today, in between various medical things being done to me. Then Alay and Ketzaren came and kidnapped me in the afternoon and gave me a proper haircut (it's slightly longer than Kaoren's but not much - plus the eyebrow on my bruised eye seems to have been frizzled down to non-existence). Still, I was able to emerge from medical to have dinner and watch the sunset and enjoy sitting around in the common room and on the patio with the mass of Setari now filling the building. So long as I don't need to do anything two-handed, move slowly, and try not to laugh or sneeze, I think I'm fine. I got sent back to medical anyway, though, and fell asleep till now.

The squads - everyone on the planet - are currently gathered in Pandora, not even a hardy few trying to sift through the rubble at Oriath. For safety reasons, COTIS is keeping everyone in one place until the rift stops letting out strange power surges, and so we've got all these squads with only a little guarding duty between them. They've mostly been given a break to recover from the past hectic weeks and their various injuries, and are otherwise helping with colony stuff. They're not even allowed in the Ena.

This means we've got First, Second, Fourth, Fifth (who are being low-key, at least), Sixth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, Fifteenth, Sixteenth, Squad One and Squad Two to accommodate. Plus the Nuran Setari. The building is designed for six eight-strength squads, so everyone's doubled up at the moment, and they've started a second (or third, given the school) building on the south side. It will be more exposed, since there's less hill there.

There are far more squads on Muina than on Tare and I know Maze is very worried about what this will mean to the squads defending Tare. Especially since so many of those on Tare are there because of injuries. Though it seems from the cautious drone surveys they've done of near-space here that the unstable environment might discourage most ionoth anyway.

The prospect of the separation being really extended is quite upsetting for a lot of people all over Pandora - a complete loss of contact with friends and family. It's mainly just Twelfth for me, and Ghost, who we think maybe is on Tare. I can only be thankful that Kaoren insisted on moving the kids here, since Zan would have been practically the only person on Tare they've spent any time with at all.

The dinner discussion remained firmly on rebuilding Muina, and the progress of the colonies, at least partly because it was Lira's first large group outing and I'm willing to bet that everyone's under strict orders not to upset her. I had a long talk to Issen Notra today about her, and the way everyone is itching to pick her brain about all things Lantaren, and fortunately they're willing to hold off until Issen Notra gives them the go-ahead, and she doesn't plan to do that for weeks or months, and even then only sparingly. She says they can just live with whatever Lira chooses to volunteer until then.

And I am very extremely happy to no longer be so important. I'm still not allowed out without a guard, because they're still not absolutely certain the Cruzatch won't reappear, and the visualisation and projection abilities are valuable regardless, but it's the beginning of a new phase, and I can look forward to just focusing on looking after the kids and being with Kaoren and hopefully escaping this cycle of injuries.

Kaoren's asleep in the chair next to my bed again. I haven't had enough chance to be alone with him. He needs to be able to hold me, I think, and know properly that I'm still with him.

Sudden Reversal

It's over.

It's over and I'm not dead. Or trapped in a half-life or any of the things I halfway expected to happen to me. I can hardly believe it. Nor can anyone else, I think. Sudden and immense change and we've all got to adjust to it.

There's a good bit of cautious celebration thrown in as well, though.

Of course, I had to get through a lot of drama to reach this point. It started while I was still in medical having needles stuck in me, and news came in from Muina that half of Second Squad had been lost.

Not lost as in dead, but lost as in vanished. They'd been in-transit through Calasa, hauling the latest batch of drones (now produced in Pandora), and had reached the platform room to the town nearest to Oriath. And went through the platform - Jeh, Nils, Keer and Bree and one greensuit and two greysuits who had been with them - and didn't arrive at the expected destination. They were out of interface range, as totally gone as I'd been when I vanished to Calasa.

The search had been underway for a couple of hours with no sign by the time a ship reached the rift and went through to Tare with the news, and no progress had been made in deciding if it was an accident, some kind of attack, or related to the trap which Lira had warned of. The prevailing theory was that Second Squad had been caught instead of me.

There was way too much waiting around and fretting then, while the bluesuits debated whether to try and use me to try and visualise the missing. They sent two squads out to scout the near-space to try and find any sign of Cruzatch, and I had an escort of four squads when they finally decided to risk visualisation.

It wasn't difficult to do and I felt a good deal of relief to see they were still alive. Nils was looking very captainly, quite unlike his usual self, talking to Jeh while unpacking one of the drones from a pallet of them. Jeh was trying to wake everyone else, all lying about on the floor of a rather familiar-looking doughnut-shaped room. The inside of one of the pillars.

"The walls-" Halla began, and Kaoren said sharply: "Cut the projection!" and grabbed at me, but it was too late, and his hands went straight through me.

It's a little hard to describe what happened, even after watching several different logs of it. I was sitting on the testing chair we'd brought with us, looking at all the interesting symbols cut precisely into the walls of the pillar, which had shifted from glowing mildly to burning bright and from my point of view just sort of overwhelmed everything I could see and swept me away like a tidal force. I really thought I was in the undertow of a massive wave. The squads guarding me saw me just fade away, as if I was one of my own projections allowed to lapse. And to Nils and Jeh I suddenly blazed into existence, being pulled backward toward the central column of the pillar.

Nils has excellent reflexes, and threw himself between me and the central column, which was a handy way to give us both a lot of bruises. The tidal wave kept trying to sweep me on, and he let out this low gasp of pain, but managed to keep hold of me.

It wasn't a good situation though. I felt like a supermagnet was pulling me, and Nils was just a bit of squishiness that was temporarily between me and where I was going, and the pressure of it all made it very hard to breathe. Nils was even worse off, with me crushing into his chest, and even his enhanced telekinesis useless because it won't work on me, and Jeh wasn't able to budge me at all. It was obvious straight away that if he didn't let me keep going both of us would suffocate.

"Get one of the small drones," Nils told Jeh, then opened a channel for all three of us because he was barely able to talk. "Caszandra, open your suit and seal the drone inside it."

This wasn't difficult to do, though it did make me look ridiculously like I was pregnant, and spider-drones aren't exactly something that are fun to put inside your clothes. Fortunately its legs folded away in non-dangerous ways or I probably would have ended up a drone-kebab.

Nils activated the drone, added: "Sound your alert - it gives more people more ability to access your interface and suit controls,", gave me a little squeeze, then with Jeh's help struggled out from between me and the symbol-covered central column. I promptly smacked into it and vanished, falling into a river of light and passing out.

I've watched the mission log from back on Tare, where I and my projection had both vanished at the same time. Kaoren stays frozen before my empty chair for all of two seconds, eyes wide and horrified, and then goes totally captain, ordering everyone back inside at double-pace and asking Halla for her sight impressions during the brief trip back inside. His voice was maybe a little more curt than usual, and his eyes nearly totally closed, but otherwise he didn't show any sign of his feelings. [He says his mind went very crystallised and focused, and he couldn't let himself pause until he'd made sure everything he could think of doing was being done.]

Once back in real-space he was very absolute in his discussions with the bluesuits - though at that time he thought that I was trapped at the pillar with Second, and didn't know I'd spent barely any time there at all. But knowing Second was at a pillar and with drones meant they had a shot at finding them, since all the pillar locations found so far open out into deep-space. He had a scanning ship which was stationed at the rift island sent into deep-space immediately to try and contact the drones, and then arranged for a second ship to take a mix of scanning technicians and some of the best Kalrani path-finders on a trip through to Muina. And the kids, because Lira has shown a marked tendency to speak to them, and the search would be coordinated from Muina.

I can only be relieved that he did that - and that the weather was good so that they could fly quickly and weren't still in deep-space when it happened. Fourth and Eleventh joined up and went to the rift island via the Ena - a route which has been included in the regular rotations ever since I got myself trapped the first time - and joined up with the scanning ship as it came back from its initial survey.

There had already been a project underway to try and locate the pillars from deep-space. They hadn't actually succeeded as yet, but then they hadn't had a drone and squad sitting handily at the pillar location. Deep-space isn't a great environment for drones - the physics there aren't exactly helpful - but drones and ship instruments have a far greater range than the Setari. The scanning ship hadn't detected anything when it went in to hover around the rift entrance, but after returning to collect Fourth and Eleventh, they headed on the usual course to Muina, scanning madly all the way, and finally got a signal just before the Muina rift. Whereupon Nils told them that I was no longer with them.

Since they were inside the pillar and relatively protected from ionoth, the missing part of Second Squad (bruises and the remnants of severe ether-drunkenness aside) weren't in immediate danger, so the ship continued on to Muina to let them know I'd been taken, only to find out that this was old news.

From the squads on Muina's point of view, they'd been continuing their search for Second Squad when I'd suddenly popped into interface range, deeply unconscious with my alert blaring away. Nils had dropped both our logs to the drone before letting me go, so they knew what had happened to me before I'd passed out. And they knew exactly where I was, too - right at the bottom of the Oriath installation.

Fourth stayed on Muina, headed for Oriath, while Eleventh went back to trace a path to where the lost bit of Second were stuck. COTIS was already well into full battle mode, most of the Setari squads massing at Oriath, and the technicians frantically trying to overcome the ramp of doom, and also reach the bottom of the last of the other installations, since if matters came to an absolute head, they wanted to be able to blow all the malachite marbles at once.

As soon as they'd detected me, they'd accessed the drone in my suit, and withdrawn the suit enough so that it could scan what was going on. The visual had shown that I was lying alone on a (symbol-etched) platform being very unconscious. The technician driving the drone very sensibly didn't leave it sitting on top of me, but scuttled it down to one side of the platform and tucked it as far out of sight as she could manage. She even powered it down to a ready state as soon as she detected movement, and I gather that she's likely to get some kind of commendation for this, since the Cruzatch invariably destroy any drones they spot, and it was a group of Cruzatch which came and took me away - up to a room directly below the room they thought was Lira's, in one which was a similar shape, but smaller.

After a suitable pause, the technician repowered the drone and did some cautious exploration of the lower reaches of the Oriath installation. The Cruzatch had taken me up, but when the drone tried to follow it detected the heaviness which was stopping descent from above, so instead it searched down and found a particularly grand and magnificent series of sarcophagus rooms, ending in another malachite marble. Once it reached here, they tucked the drone into a corner and had a nice argument over whether to have Palanty from Fifth teleport down straight away, or to wait. They eventually decided to hold off until they'd broken through to the malachite marble in the last of the other installations. They were basically planting bombs next to each of the marbles, and they didn't want to precipitate a countermeasure by the Cruzatch.

All that time they were trying to wake me up, but I was suffering from an extreme overload of ether and was totally non-responsive. Other than them finally breaking into the other installation and planting the second-last of the bombs, there really wasn't any progress until I _did_ wake up - by which time Fourth was about two-thirds of the way to Oriath and the missing bits of Second had been recovered and had just emerged from the rift.

It was horribly like the nightmare I'd had, except that I couldn't see, and there were a whole lot of voices which went on for a really long time before my brain started operating enough to recognise them as more than noise. I was too busy noticing that I couldn't move and I couldn't see. And then that there were a lot of Cruzatch nearby. I got very freaked out, and then recognised that all the other voices had died away and it was just Kaoren talking to me very steadily.

I couldn't really pull myself together enough to answer immediately, and then said abruptly: "There's about ten Cruzatch near me. I'm lying down tied up and can't move my arms or legs. There's something over me making it too dark to see. I can hear the stones whispering. They're further away, but otherwise it's very like my dream."

This is an embarrassing bit of the log for me to listen to, because although I held it together for the first bit, I sound openly terrified just at the end. And it was awful because they wanted me to wait until the Cruzatch went away before trying anything. I passed the time on a private channel, asking Kaoren questions about what had been happening, so he caught me up on what was going on, keeping to an eminently factual bent because he knew I needed calming down.

Then I wrote the kids some letters, which I sent to Kaoren to give to them. I couldn't bring myself to talk to them, because I would have broken down completely. Since I didn't die after all, I now have a few embarrassing letters in Kaoren's keeping. He says he's going to give them to them on their fiftieth birthdays and I guess I have until then to talk him out of it (or change my mind). I wrote one to Kaoren too, which he read after they got me out, but it just says "I love you" in English. There's not that much more to say between us. And I wrote one just generally to everyone who has been nice to me saying thanks, which Kaoren is using to tease me, saying it's a historical document.

I was contemplating writing one to Nils saying: "Stop jerking Zee around" when all the Cruzatch stopped shifting around the room and gathered together, then moved away. As soon as I told everyone the Cruzatch were leaving, they hastily shut down the drone in the malachite marble room.

I'd been given strict orders on what to do when they left. I was to keep tracking them while using my suit to try and cut through my bindings, and then head up and out - or if I couldn't manage that, down to the malachite marble room, where they would try the extremely dangerous move of teleporting me out. This I tried, though it was a lot easier to say than do, since I pretty much couldn't even wriggle. The nanosuit is pretty damn flexible, though, and could do all the wiggling and sawing I couldn't manage. And can create an edge far sharper than steel.

Still, I found I couldn't just make a couple of simple cuts. "I think they've tied me down with the same stuff that net was made of," I said, struggling with the annoying rubberiness of it. "The Cruzatch keep going down, quite quickly. They're three levels below me now. Oh, they're gone. I can't feel them anymore."

At this point, the drone was reactivated, and Palanty teleported down to the malachite marble room with the last of the bombs and set it ready to go, then waited there in case I had to go that way.

It was a good, sensible plan except for the whispering.

I was making good progress on my bonds when it really started to get to me. It was like when you try and pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time. It seems easy at first, but you start to get all unco and miss beats and start rubbing your head and patting your stomach and things. I was feeling all distracted and confused, and I couldn't even properly understand Kaoren when he asked me what was happening, and when I tried to say "Something's wrong. I think it's started," I only managed a few disjointed syllables.

My vitals were climbing through the roof, and these waves of distortion started rippling out - slow billows of heat that increased each time - not minor things in the room either - they felt them at Pandora. For all I know, they felt them on Tare.

Tsur Selkie ordered immediate evacuation of the installation, and recommended that they blow the malachite marbles in hopes of stopping whatever was happening to me. They weren't quite out of the shielded level before I was unceremoniously pushed off the platform and landed splat on the ground. It was a day for collecting bruises.

This handily removed whatever had been blocking my vision and also made it slightly easier to think. I recognised, even before lifting my head, that it was Lira who'd pushed me, and she was quite a sight to see, looking like an actual ghost instead of a little girl, with great streamers of light warping off her, being pulled toward this glowing starburst above where I'd been lying.

Along with that, as soon as she pushed me out of position, the whole installation began to shake, and the starburst began to flare and erupt in a way which did not look remotely like a good thing. Lira, scowling at me out of pure fear, scrabbled at my slashed-about bindings until my arm was free, and boxed my ears when I didn't react quickly enough. My chest was feeling like I was sprinting up a mountain, and the whispering was flooding every corner of my head

"You have to _move_!"

I flailed about, feeling like I was being torn apart, and managed to get myself into a sitting-up position for a better look around the room.

There was no door. That betrayal of expectation actually cleared my head just a little, enough to realise that the burning sensation in my chest was at least in part because the air was really, really hot. My audience had realised that as well, and my suit abruptly began growing to cover every inch of exposed skin.

The sensible thing for me to do would have been to get out my breather, but I wasn't much for rational thought at that stage and instead surged to my feet, snatched at Lira and staggered drunkenly into the corner of the room. This was sheer stupidity, since Lira could have stopped projecting herself at any time, and also increased the amount of earth-shaking to a spectacular degree. The floor heaved up and tossed us into the corner (broken cheekbone), whereupon I shoved Lira underneath me and tried to cover her as much as possible. The ceiling promptly fell in, and that was it for me that day.

The earth-shaking was worldwide (there's a nice crack in one of the science buildings at Pandora and one of the towers in the old town fell down) - and a split appeared in the moon. Instead of a bullet-hole, it now looks like a comma. That happened when they blew the charges, and toasted all the malachite marbles at once, and great gouts of power rose up from all the platform rooms and malachite marble installations. The platforms aren't working any more, but they think that's because their aether supply was exhausted. Moonfall happened at the platform villages where the moon was visible yesterday, anyway. And the rift is currently a no-go area, all heaving and disturbed, so we're cut off from Tare and Kolar. They think it will settle down, but not necessarily to the way it was before, so it might be a while.

But all that was later. They blew the charges around the same time as I started causing earthquakes, and everyone got all tossed about by the backlash. I was unconscious, my vitals not immediately critical, but not likely to improve with a collapsed palace and four levels of subterranean installation sitting on top of me. Even with all the squads massed at the Oriath site, and Fourth, Eleventh and the rest of Second coming to help, it took them four hours to reach me, and by that time I was starting to get into rocky shape.

Along with the cheekbone, I have several broken ribs, a broken arm, a mildly cracked skull, every sort of bruise imaginable, and slightly seared lungs. Plus my hair seems to have been heat-frizzed to the point of no return, since I have a haircut more radical than Taarel's.

It was less than a day after going to try and visualise Second Squad that I woke up, though, so in terms of injuries this might count as one of my less serious forays. Kaoren was asleep in a chair beside me, but came awake with a start which meant he'd had an alarm set to trigger if my state shifted to consciousness. I tried to say hello, but the whole seared lung thing means that it's pretty painful to talk, so I said "I can't believe I'm not dead," over the interface instead, and he made a face at me, and then just leaned forward and rested his forehead against my shoulder. I put my hand on the back of his head and we stayed like that without speaking until one of the greysuits bustled in and made me look at little lights and drink things while Kaoren explained some of what had gone on.

"Are the kids okay?" I asked, and he nodded, and told me he'd fetch them and squeezed my hand painfully hard, then left me to the greysuits doing embarrassing things to me - I never want to have tubes inserted in me ever again. When the medics cleared me (and made me very sleepy with their nanotech drinks), he brought them down.

Sen arrived first, running ahead enthusiastically, but stopping just short of leaping on me and instead climbing very cautiously into the bed with me. She didn't say anything at all, just welded herself to my side and stuck there no matter what anyone said to her. It wasn't too bad - she'd chosen the side without the broken arm and ribs - and I patted her on the head, feeling quite overwhelmed. Rye had followed along hastily behind, but stopped short and just stared at me. [Kaoren had showed me what I looked like, which was pretty awful with my hair cut off very unevenly and a huge bruise over one side of my face and one eye swelled shut.]

I gestured for him to come closer, and tugged at one of his thick, wavy locks, then brought all three of them into the channel with Kaoren and me and said: "We'll have to get Kaoren to give both of us a haircut, I think."

Ys came in then, and completely floored me, because she was trailing Lira along behind her. Dressed in some of Ys' clothes, with some scratches and bandages of her own, and glowering at me in an unusually subdued way.

"But how?" I asked, holding out a hand for her in complete disbelief. I hadn't been wanting to think about what the destruction of the installation had meant for Lira, and certainly hadn't expected to find her with Ys.

"We're not certain," Kaoren said, watching me struggle to hug Lira and then using telekinesis to help me sit up. "She was beneath you when we reached you."

"How wonderful," I managed to say aloud, my throat sounding like it had been sandpapered. "I'm so glad."

"There's no reason she can't use Siame's room, is there?" Ys said - a pronouncement rather than a question, and I had to laugh, which hurt a lot. Ys is so protective of her family. I'm so glad she's decided to expand it to Lira.

"I think we can manage a room of her very own," I said, with some effort, and when Kaoren had given me a drink to make it easier, added to him: "If they're right about this meaning the Cruzatch can't get here any more, I was hoping they'd let us build a house on that island where we go swimming. It would be naturally private and protected, without being too far from the city."

"I was thinking the same thing," Kaoren said, looking pleased. "When you're a little better, we can all work on the design together."

I fell asleep before I really got to see more than their initial reaction to that. Rye was the only one looking openly delighted, but I think they were all pleased, and he told them that they had to make sure they had a good idea of what they needed for their rooms. I've had a chance to talk to them all individually since, and every single one of them has obviously put considerable thought into the kind of room they would like, for all that it's quite hard to drag the details out of some of them.

So Kaoren and I have four children now, though Issen Notra has told me quite bluntly that there's a strong possibility that Lira will one day simply fade away, just as my origami cranes did. They're not sure if she will age, or remain as she is now, and if she counts as an ionoth or not. She's something very new and unexpected, and there's a huge amount of scientific and public interest in her, which we're trying to shield her from. Kaoren vetoed an awful lot of the tests the greysuits wanted to run on her, and fortunately Issen Notra is backing him up. Lira, in turn, is claiming to no longer be able to visualise or project, which we're not altogether sure is true. She certainly enhances the Setari when they touch her (and without the distortion I cause). They're holding off implanting the interface for the moment, given its tendency to try and kill me, but I'm going to argue against keeping her permanently unconnected since I can see she already has realised the lack. She and Ys are thick as thieves, which I find a very handy thing.

I'm recovering quite quickly from this round of injuries. After a long second sleep I've been awake for most of today (well, with occasional naps). Sen has stayed stubbornly by my side, sneaking back if anyone tries to remove her, and seems to be acting as my social secretary, happily bullying everyone who comes and visits me. The only times she's left of her own accord is when I've spoken to Ys and to Lira, and the rest of them time she gives my visitors their marching orders when she thinks they've stayed too long. Unfortunately I can't convince anyone that I'm well enough to not need to be in medical.

It's been very interesting seeing First and Second Squad particularly. There's just something different about their eyes. Relief, of course, that we escaped any deaths (on Muina, anyway), but also this introspective quality. They're all thinking rather seriously about a different sort of future. The tears between real-space and the Ena haven't miraculously vanished, and Issen Notra says we won't know if destroying the malachite marbles has had a positive effect until the initial disruption has died down, but she does think that removing the pressure this 'shadow world' (as Pandora News is calling it) was causing can only be a good thing.

What exactly happened to the Cruzatch and that world is anyone's guess. It might all still be there, but it's far more likely to have been destroyed or now be fading away. This bothers me when I let myself think of it, because after all there seemed to be a lot of people there. Children. But then, there were a lot of people on Nuri too.

I'm still having trouble believing I'm not dead.

Keyed Up

Another bad night for Kaoren. Beyond trying not to die, I don't know what I can do for him. It must be awful to keep having something like Sight telling you you're going to lose the person you love. Other than keeping tensely alert, and taking whatever precautions you can, all you can do is wait and try and stop it when it happens. I'm less keyed up about it myself, but in a kind of determined way, because if I let myself think too much about it I'm going to have a few rip-roaring nightmares of my own.

The rest of Fourth was back from leave today, and I could see that Kaoren's open exhaustion was a serious shock to them. And poor Rye is tremendously worried, while Ys is constantly glowering. Sen at least hasn't been having nightmares, but I think her Sight has told her something because she's gone very quiet and wants to be carried about and held far more than usual. I've been condemned to medical all afternoon. Mori and Glade have been posted to watch me, which is pretty unusual, and for a while chatted to me about all the ads for the upcoming season of The Great War (which are hyping the hell out of the first episode as a major, history-making event, and showing the last few seconds of the last episode and then blackness and then a fragment of the actual audio from my log, ending in a huge splash and underwatery sounds).

I just want to get past all this nervous waiting.

Little Gestures

Kaoren had Sight nightmares about me all night. He says it was the same thing over and over - me falling and him trying to catch me but my hands slipping through his and him not being able to stop it. He was a wreck by morning (and I wasn't that great, because he thrashed about rather a lot and even kneed me in the stomach once).

We were both a bit frazzled when breakfast time rolled around, and came very close to having an argument because Kaoren wanted to arrange for someone else to take Siame home and I didn't want him to. We were fortuitously interrupted by the delivery of a huge number of parcels - the results of my shopping spree, which (after I'd separated out birthday presents) certainly gave the kids some fun over breakfast. I'm being careful to make sure I don't shower them with gifts, but things which are practical replacements in my eyes (like the endless amounts of bubble bath Sen gets through) also count as impossible largesse in their eyes, so it's a bit tricky.

I was really surprised and pleased to find a parcel which had been forwarded care of Maze, and tore it open to find that Siame's book had been reproduced precisely as ordered, with my laboriously transcribed titles included. This was a serious distraction for Kaoren, who not only was very interested in the contents (and forced himself to not more than glance at it because it was Siame's gift), but also the fact that I'd managed to get it made without him knowing.

One of the things I'd ordered was some useful paper, a thick piece of which I folded and wrote on, and a big sheet I measured out against the (huge) book, then gave to the kids the assignment of drawing pictures to make a birthday card and wrapping paper. Kaoren I took off to the shower, where I proceeded to rather tearfully tell him that I didn't want to not do the things I would otherwise do out of fear of dying, and certainly didn't want to spend any of whatever time I might or might not have left arguing with him of all people, or making Siame feel even worse about us. I guess it does count as our first argument, because we definitely had the make-up sex.

He was still pretty subdued afterwards, but quietly joined me in adding drawings to the wrapping and card - really exquisitely great pictures of some of the animals we'd seen on Muina and which he told me privately his parents would consider embarrassing just because they'd been done on something like wrapping paper and a card. He usually doesn't draw at all because of attitudes like that. I told him his parents have rods up their asses. The present looked really great, all wrapped up, and I'm hoping that it conveys to Siame that she's not lost a brother, but instead gained an extended family.

Siame's reaction to it, when we went down to see her off, was focused almost entirely on Kaoren's drawings. It was hard to tell if she was upset or pleased about this, given that Kaoren made a decision to stop drawing, and was arguably doing this because I asked him to, or because he cared about Siame. She was being on her best behaviour otherwise, self-assured and very polite - despite being tremendously weak and shaky still. No wonder she's feeling down - being sick always makes you feel awful. Her birthday's the day after tomorrow, and I can only hope that the book wasn't just the thing to make her more annoyed with me.

Today was a rough day for Kaoren. Sight isn't precisely prophetic, but those dreams mean that there's a very serious threat currently in place - and being away from me for the seven hours it took to fly Siame there, settle her in, and then fly back was not something Kaoren found easy to face - especially when it involved Siame being so ill, and having to talk to his parents. He ended up asking me to keep him permanently in-channel, streaming what was around me to him, which I did (except for going to the bathroom) and of course nothing dramatic happened at all, but he said it made it easier for him to keep still during the journey.

I was assigned to Twelfth for the day, and Zan simply incorporated me and the kids into their training regime. Lira's warning isn't something that's widely known, but Zan had obviously been told to make sure I was thoroughly guarded at all times. She managed to make it seem almost natural that there were always at least two squad members within five feet of me, and came with me herself to visit Eeli.

So many of the Setari are sporting injuries, and are looking privately worried. The only good news I had all day was that the technicians at Oriath have made a little progress with the ramp of crushing doom. They're experimenting with sonics as a way to keep the 'words out', and though they haven't perfected it yet, they are making more and more progress down the ramp before the poor drone goes squish.

No sign of Lira today.

Spiritual

After all that fuss, I slept without any dreams at all, let alone being trapped anywhere. Kaoren says that just showed that the tactic of moving me before I was drawn in worked.

Nice quiet day, anyway. I had no medical appointments, no training, and since Fourth Squad has this time as leave, Kaoren and I could spend a lot of time together, though he spent the morning with Siame. He's a little depressed about that because she's chosen to go home to their parents (she's only just reached the point of being able to get out of bed and will be a month or so in straight recovery mode). He doesn't consider it a healthy environment for her, but he's not arguing and is taking her home tomorrow (a complicated trip because she can't really sit up for long periods). I am thoroughly relieved that there's no suggestion I go with them, even though it is a bit weird to not meet or even talk to the parents of the person you're engaged to. With the interface, Kaoren could arrange that easily, and the fact that he hasn't does make me wonder what they've been saying to him. I have seen pictures of them, and also his brother – they've inescapably been drawn in by the publicity surrounding my engagement to Kaoren and were also minorly well-known beforehand at least in art circles, but haven't been interested in discussing Kaoren and me with the press at all, beyond Kaoren's mother giving the Setari program a bit of a serve. [Though I was reading something pointing out how much their reputation and sales had benefited from the notoriety.]

I got in a lot of shopping – noting with some awe the way the amount in my account keeps going up, earning interest and adding in my wages - and trolled through the billions of interface sites which aren't copied over to Muina's net, weighing up the gossip about me and the kids and the Cruzatch and all the rumours about what COTIS is doing or not doing and the extreme fervour about spies in our midst. In the afternoon we were able to take the kids swimming. Zan couldn't make it, but Ys and Rye are confident enough now that they don't need a person devoted entirely to them. Still swimming with frantic inefficiency, but no longer with overtones of panic. Ys swims with dogged determination - nothing like being dropped in a lake to demonstrate to her that this is a useful skill - but I think she's relaxing about it a bit. Rye's really loving it, and I cheerfully taught him some different dives (notably bomb dives). Sen is still slightly scared by the whole thing, but is happy enough so long as one of us is sticking within arm's-length.

And she always radiates a deep sense of contentment when we do family activities. I think the older two still doesn't fully realise that Sen sought me out not because she wanted parents, but because she wants Ys and Rye to have parents. I don't feel particularly used, though. Sen does genuinely like me – her sights may have told her to trust me, but it's the way Kaoren and I behave which prompts all those joyous little hugs, and she will turn to me for comfort if she's upset.

After today's bedtime story, Kaoren and I spent quite a long time talking about the kids and their particular strengths and needs. Ys is making frightening progress in lessons, outstripping Rye's far from negligible efforts, but only tolerates physical activities and talent training. Rye's more of an all-rounder - doing very well intellectually, physically and artistically - and far more interested in developing his talents than Ys. Sen enjoys game-based lessons, and is well-situated for her age-group, but not surging ahead like the other two.

We were sitting in my window-seat talking over the interface, and I got a little distracted by how beautiful Kaoren is and started kissing him, and enjoying very much Kaoren's reaction whenever I try and take charge. We've already learned to make sure not to go stripping off in unlocked rooms, and were just getting to the stage of deciding we needed a different room when we realised we had an audience, and I looked up to see Ys and Lira, and had to laugh at them.

"You look like twins," I said, which drew a fierce scowl from both of them.

"No we don't," Ys said. They don't, either, other than having typical Lantaren colouring. Lira is very good-looking, a bit similar in structure to Sen or Zee, with long, thick hair. Ys is almost boyish, skinny and unremarkable, and her hair is thin and fine and uncooperative. [And Rye keeps reminding me of Nils, but without all the smouldering.]

"You do when you're both pulling a face like this," I said, twisting my mouth with scornful disgust, and laughed at them again because they both reacted with the same angry annoyance. "Hello again, Lira," I said before they got too annoyed. "Is it harder to project all the way to another planet?"

"Is that where this is?" Lira glanced past us to the towering thunderstorm approaching outside. "I suppose it might be. They're building another trap for you, so maybe it's good that you're not there."

"Did you hear what kind of trap?" Kaoren asked. [He'd handled being sprung with his usual aplomb, but I think he was a bit embarrassed.]

"They're making it very hard for me to get near," Lira said, shrugging. "I only heard two of them arguing about how it was a bad idea because it risked speeding something up or making something break, but the other one said that it doesn't matter if it speeds up because if they get a second touchstone they'll be able to finish off properly and then they won't have to worry about it at all again."

"Any idea of when their trap will be ready?" I asked, and she shook her head.

"They're really worried though," she said, with some considerable satisfaction. "They really need to get you soon. Can you show me what this world looks like?"

She sounded angry when she asked, which was a combination of very justifiable rage at the people who'd kidnapped her, and an attempt to disguise a resurgence of the sheer horror of her half-life, which she seems to be trying not to focus on in preference to foiling their plans. I have to struggle not to cry every time I think about it.

All five of us ended up taking her on tour, since Sen woke up when Ys went to tell Rye, and attached herself to Lira in a pleased and very protective way. And the kids were useful tour-guides, too, since they insisted on showing Lira the things which most interested them as residents of a non-technological world. Moving walkways and elevators and the COTIS ship dock, and the roof with its whitestone expanse and the enormous storm roiling toward us. Kaoren told me that the bluesuits pretended they were having a drill, put COTIS on alert, and actually cleared corridors rather than have too many people see her, since Lira is very secret still, and stands out incredibly in her rather formal Lantaren outfit.

Sen was asleep on her feet by the time we reached the roof, and Kaoren carried her back down to our apartment and put her to bed, while I trailed along making sure Rye kept walking in his enthusiasm to describe what travelling in the ships was like (they're all immensely impressed by the ships). Lira faded away before we'd quite reached the apartment, and I spent quite a while talking to Ys and Rye over the interface, since Rye's caught up with Ys in understanding just how bad a situation Lira is in, and went all white-faced and horrified. As soon as I left them they both hopped into Sen's bed, which is a sign of how deeply upset by this they are.

Kaoren's been in interface meetings ever since, but is very unkeen on letting me out of his sight. Another trap for me is not a good thing.

A Heavy Place

I dreamed of the Oriath expedition last night, of Kaoren and Halla and Tsur Selkie comparing their impressions of what was happening to little balls which a technician was tossing down the problem ramp for them. They were bouncy rubbery things, and the technician sent one ricocheting up and down and it became less bouncy and less rubbery with each impact.

I only watched for one ball, trying to work out a weirdness which I realised felt like Lira - it felt like Lira was there beside me, though I couldn't see her. And I realised I could, just barely, hear whispering.

That totally spooked me and I made myself wake up. Ketzaren was sitting on the side of my bed, waiting to see whether I was going to have a crisis, and let me squeeze her hand for a bit before getting me to explain what I'd been visualising. That, of course, created more than a bit of a problem, because they don't want to risk me getting mentally trapped again, and don't want me to be in Pandora if that's about to happen. Fortunately it was nearly morning and I'd had a reasonable rest, so I wasn't in immediate danger of passing out or anything, and after some back and forth discussion they decided that a few days back on Tare were in order, just to make sure, but that they could use the opportunity to poke me at the Oriath site first, to see if I could tell them anything useful.

This was a plan which didn't exactly please anyone, but beyond throwing a bomb at it and hoping for the best, the technicians are pretty stymied by the Oriath site. So after breakfast Mara stayed at Pandora with the kids, and the rest of First Squad took me to the nearest platform town, where we were collected by a ship which took us the rest of the way. It was southern hemisphere, and quite cold, but not far enough south to be snowy. The 'palace' itself was covered in climbing vines which had dropped their leaves, so that it looked like it had been tied down with woody ropes.

They didn't want to risk me being there too long, so I pretty much arrived, glanced about, and First and Fourth joined up to take me down along the main corridor only partially cleared of ancient corpses to look at the ramp.

Kaoren was being particularly upright and silent, with his eyes half-lidded. He loathes the 'poke Devlin at it' method. And it didn't help that this was one of those times where I wasn't feeling comfortable with it. I leaned against him in a not very mission-like attitude, and streamed to them the whispering I could hear. And then over the interface I suggested that most everyone wander a little way away because I could still feel Lira there and I was hoping she would manifest herself.

Everyone except Kaoren, Maze and Tsur Selkie went off around a corner, and Maze and Tsur Selkie went and stood as far away as they were willing to go, and I said out loud: "I'd really like to talk to you, Lira."

When she appeared, she was kind of tucked against my leg and behind me, as if hiding from having to look directly at the ramp.

"I'll try not to cry all over the place this time," I said, having to clutch Kaoren rather a bit to stop myself from being visibly upset. "We're trying to find a way to get further down."

"That's where you think this room is," Lira said, sounding very subdued. "Can you hear it talking?"

"Yes."

"What are you planning to do if you get down there?"

"Silence it," said Kaoren, in a very soft voice indeed. "We don't understand what they did well enough to undo it gracefully. We can only try to pull it apart and hope we don't destroy everything else along with it. We don't know what will happen to you, Liranadestar."

She looked up at him, this terribly grave, measuring stare. Then said: "It's the words which are making the things you put there fall apart," she said. "The words are eating them."

She vanished, disappearing from underneath my hand - and out of my senses. I felt too sick about it all to even talk, but I watched as they tossed a couple more balls down the ramp, and they now have a log which shows that the quality and strength of the whispers changes when you toss something down there.

First stayed at the site, and Fourth was flown back to the platform town with me, and we hopped through Calasa to Pandora, and we're all on the way back now - including Siame and (to my surprise) Eeli. I have a suspicion that moving her is because they're unsure what will happen to the rift through deep-space if and when they pull the malachite marble system apart.

Once we were out of Pandora, I managed to talk Kaoren into getting some sleep - he looks to me like he pretty much hasn't been sleeping since Fourth was sent back to Oriath. He eventually gave in and stayed in his pod because he knows I'm worried about what's going to happen when I need to go to sleep, and so I want him not to be exhausted when I can't stay awake any longer. I've been sticking close to him, because I know that it will make it easier for him to sleep. The kids and I played games most of the trip, with me being very reassuringly not ill and not vomiting and not in a coma. They've tanked now too, and most of the rest of Fourth, and I'm pretty tired, but I'm holding out till we're 'home'. Not much longer.

A couple of days on Tare has made my birthday plans for Siame fall apart rather, since I doubt she'll be returning to Muina with us, and barring dramas we're due to go back the day before her birthday. I'm trying to decide whether to buy something for her. It's made it easier to deal with Kaoren and Rye's presents, though. Kaoren's is something I've been working on for a while - another secret from him I guess. It'll be easier to complete with Tare's shopping resources, and I'll shop ahead for Rye's while I'm here and maybe for Sen as well.

I feel so awful about Lira.