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snarled in Ebbanai’s two right front legs. Long, lean, half the net-caster’s body length, and built low to the ground, the slow-moving perermp found itself tangled up like some animate length of ship cable in the frantic Dwarra’s lower limbs. Four-legged Dwarra and multi-limbed herbivore found themselves tumbling over and over downhill as each sought frantically to extricate its entwined limbs from the other. As they rolled, Ebbanai strained his antennae toward those of the perermp, trying to indicate that he meant it no harm, but the twin protrusions of the lesser creature remained maddeningly out of reach.
    Coming to rest at the base of the slope, more irritated than angry, Ebbanai relaxed the skin flaps that had been reflexively held close to his body so as not to become abraded or, worse, ripped away. Rising, he methodically unwrapped the clumsy creature from where it remained tangled around his legs. Its wide-spreading mouthparts were flat and fleshy, suitable only for munching on the soft, low-growing, moisture-laden vegetation that covered the dunes. Even so, it did its best to bite him, antennae flailing and meeping feebly as the net-caster flung it over the nearest hillock. Landing with a heavy thud, it promptly righted itself and scrambled off in search of the nearest hole large enough to admit its bruised, attenuated body.
    Breathing hard, Ebbanai plunged down the entry path paved with flat, irregular stones he had laid with his own hands. He even forgot to extinguish the greeting light, leaving it to flicker away atop its post, wasting oil. This far from major arteries of commerce and the sins of town, it was not necessary to lock the front door. Everyone along the inland peninsular road knew one other.
    Storra was waiting for him. On the nights when he went out with the net, she would stay up working at the loom located in the forepart of the house, utilizing her weaving to keep awake until he returned. The pungent aroma wafting from the kitchen smelled of jent leaf and koroil: she always prepared a late-night snack for him, knowing how hungry he would be after long, hard hours spent casting and pulling in the weighted net.
    As he drew up sharply, his thin torso expanding and contracting with the exertion of the single, pleated lung within, she turned from her loom and eyed him up and down. While the piquant food simmering in the kitchen hinted of her concern for him, her tone did not. That was Storra: an unpredictable ongoing collision of the caring and the caustic.
    “You’re home early,” she observed succinctly.
    “I saw—I saw...!” His upper body sank down into its more flexible lower half. The nature and evolutionary design of the Dwarran spine prevented them from bending over very far. He fought to catch his breath.
    Rising from her comfortable squatting position before the loom, she set aside the length of indigo-stained seashan she had been working into the half-finished carpet and glanced behind her mate.
    “Not anything edible, it seems. I see net, but no feyln, no marrarra, not even a handful of soft-shelled tibordi.”
    He started, looked suddenly embarrassed. He had forgotten to leave the still-damp net outside, on its drying rack.
    Hurriedly, he retraced his steps and dumped it outside the front door, not even bothering to ensure it was properly folded. Her eyes contracted suspiciously when he, for the first time she could remember, threw the bolt that secured the door against the outside.
    “You have not been working,” she accused him deliberately. “You have been off stargazing and sipping brew with those two no-goods Brrevemor and Drapp!”
    “No, no,” he hastily corrected her. “I swear on my father’s heritage, I haven’t seen anyone else all night long!” Starting at the crest of his smooth skull, a perceptible shiver started southward, traveling the length of his body until his podal flaps were visibly quivering.
    Her annoyance changed quickly to concern. “Are you