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profoundly comforted, like someone dragged back from the brink of death. They slept, Jak’s hands warming her uncovered breasts.
    In the morning, awakening with the silk and pearl of Ra’s breasts in hand, Jak roused Ra from sleep by anointing them with kisses. Ra was the possessed for a change, and Jak’s mouth moved from breasts to ribs to abdomen to belly, nipped at her thighs, buried in the rich curls below her hips. But Ra’s hand stopped Jak from kissing the wine-tinted blush between her thighs.
    â€œWhy?” Jak looked up into Ra’s ebony eyes. “I want to please you.”
    Ra shook her head. “If yours is off limits, then mine is too. Don’t look like that. I’m not punishing you. It would be unfair. I cannot take from you what you won’t take from me. And you have no idea how badly I want it.”
    Jak climbed up the length of Ra’s smooth body, laid bare in Jak’s descent but for the tattered sweater, and lay against her, head on the pillow of her breasts. The room was purple with light diffused through the blanket window. In the kitchen, the pendulum of the clock swung, weights ticking as gravity worked upon them. Jak didn’t remember Ahr having a clock.
    â€œWe forgot to eat yesterday,” mused Ra after a bit.
    Jak sat up in dismay.
    â€œSooth, Ra. No, lie down. You’re going to be fed.” Jak jumped up and surveyed the kitchen fluttering with light through the makeshift windowpane. Empty . This was the same kitchen in which they’d been snowbound, picked clean by Jak and Ahr before setting out for Rhyman. There was nothing here to make.
    â€œCome back to bed,” Ra said with a laugh, arms outstretched. “Let me eat you. ”
    â€œIt’s not funny,” Jak protested. “You need to eat. I’ll go to RemPeta. They’ll lend me something.”
    Ra laughed again. “A Meer is in your bed, and still you worry about lack. You want to feed me? What, lif , oranges? Berries? Flat cakes? Ham?” They were tumbling from her words and into reality, appearing on a generous mother-of-pearl tray in Ra’s lap. “Come back to bed. I’ll be good. I’ll eat what you tell me.”
    They slept again after they’d eaten their fill, drifting off by the fire and not waking until after dark. Both were uncomfortable from having forgotten to relieve themselves, and Ahr had no indoor privy, only a wooden outhouse behind the mound, unless they wanted to use the piss-pot. They raced outside in the chilly dark, naked and laughing, and Ra nearly wet herself when Jak beat her to the outhouse.
    Leaning back against the closed door, Ra waited outside, noting Ahr had chosen to carve the feminine moon rather than the masculine sun for the door’s ventilation. Stars soared overhead as well, with a real moon to pale the cutout—full tonight and lighting the glen below Mound Ahr over a cluster of silver-etched trees.
    Her mind was full again too. Were those pieces of diamond pressed into the dome at Ludtaht Ra? That piece like a moon-cake—she must put them in the oven for the Heart of Winter. But was it winter?
    Someone’s coming. There was someone coming through the darkness she didn’t want to know—perhaps her mother, Shiva, remote and gliding through the jade glass of her temple like a ruby swan on a pearl lake, while Ra learned the lessons of stillness, waiting. Waiting…
    Yes, she was waiting. Standing without moving. Waiting for something to happen. Something terrible. Trying not to be heard. Oh god, would he come in here? Would he find her? Please don’t let him come in.
    This was not one of her unanchored memories; it belonged to someone else. She was dimly aware of that, had never been in this room, this indoor privy chamber where she now pressed flat against the cold wall, heart beating too loudly. Kol will hear, and Fyn isn’t home.
    The memory belonged to a child.
    The door