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At the pass, the border was a bit crowded, which was a bit of a blessing as it gave Renna a rest. Our transit into Getta was uneventful - Renna's papers were a bit unusual, but entirely proper. Crossing Tiko to Samik's home was the hardest part, as it was climbing down.

To our surprise, Renna's mother Emmaine answered at the door. She didn't hesitate even a moment in hugging her. "Oh, dear, how good it is to have you back! And Famir, too."

Behind her scampered up Toln, his fox ears twitching. He hid behind his grandmother and said, "'lo, unle Famia." -- 'Hello, uncle Famir.'

Renna crouched down and said, "Hi. I may not look like it, but

"Ond Enna?" -- 'Aunt Renna?'

She nodded. "That's right. I'm glad you

"Not Enna."

"I had to change, yes."

Toln hid behind Emmaine again, burying his face in the fringe of her vest.

I put in, "I see you got the message I sent?"

Emmaine nodded. "Yes. I was actually expecting an older goat gentleman."

"You knew about that too?" Renna blurted.

Emmaine touseled Toln's hair as she went on, "Yes, of course. We called the fitters, and they told us. They don't hide it. Please, come in. I'd offer to wash, but we're a bit low on water. The rain tipped over the reservoir, go figure!"

The house was stone, smallish and old, and had been in times past an outlying part of the fortifications at the pass. The interior was a small and packed, with papers, toys, and tools crammed in every space it might stay. The thick rug had once been bright and strong-patterned but was now worn down and more than a little dirty. A soft chair stood out as being new and relatively clean, especially in comparison to the one next to it. Between them was a ceiling-height naga stand; across from them, a bench and a small table. Behind the soft chairs was a small desk and the ladder to the loft. But that was only half the room. It was possible to stand upright in human form in some places, but one would be face to face with the large shelves suspended from the ceiling. These held books, the dishes, clothing, more tools - even Night's bed.

As Renna collapsed into the older cushioned chair, I asked, "Toln, where's your sister?"

"Owside."

Emmaine said, "Would you go tell them? Thanks." She sighed, saw Renna had closed her eyes. After a few seconds of watching, it was clear Renna really intended to rest, so her mother gestured for me to come with her. We followed Toln out into the garden, matching our coils side by side. I had always gotten along well with Renna's mother.

She waited until we were a decent distance, then asked, "How is she handling it?"

"Seems all right. At least, she is so long as she's... well, I don't know. It could be that she was fine as long as she knew her body was temporary."

Emmaine nodded soberly. "Nice place to visit, but..." It wasn't a joke, just shorthand.

"Right. Eventually she's going to have to make a new home."

We came to the edge of the terrace, looking down the mountainside into the valley and the sea. There they were, on the next terrace down - Night and her father Samik were mending the wall. Toln was already down the ramp, and they looked up.

I hadn't seen Night for a year - she'd been away when Renna and I came by on the way out - and was caught by surprise. She looked exactly like Renna had when we first met. The expression in particular. Other aspects differed - she was two years younger, and much lighter-skinned, but the face, and the expression... it took me back to that moment.

We'd known each other for some time already, as school-assigned pen pals. We'd told each other stories, desribed our families, and sent pictures. It was a trick, of course, to get us to put in extra effort on these assignments as if they were for a friend. But it didn't matter. Her letters were far more detailed than any of the others anyone else got, and I tried to return the favor as best I could. So when we met - four days shy of fourteen years previously - there was already something there, and she was happy to see me even as she needed to learn my face in the first place. Night had seen me before, but the look was the same.

All that took two seconds to run through; I carefully slithered down the terrace wall and offered a hand up to Emmaine, who followed gingerly. Samik approached and shifted down to naga form, calling out, "Hey! I heard what you did!"

He took my hand and hugged me roughly. I didn't like it but understood that was just how he was. What was odder was the reaction. Once he had released me, I repled, "Oh?"

"Scared off three bandits, saved my sister's life."

"Ah. Well, thanks, though it didn't feel that impressive at the time." I thought he had put it a little strongly. Had Emmaine embellished the account to improve his opinion of me? I only remembered two, and they weren't bandits, just pickpockets. "How are you doing?"

"Heavy rain recently. Some of the terraces washed out. Not ours, but..." he gestured along the wall.

"A good time to check that yours are in good shape?"

"Yup. And how is Renna?"

Night, standing back in human form, her hands crossed behind her back, added, "What is she?"

Emmaine and Samik looked to her reprovingly, just unsure enough of whether that was actually impolite that they didn't go further.

And I drew a blank. I'd been thinking of her in naga form because of seeing Night. "Er. Well, she's really tired. New body is, uh, well, we'll see. And... raccoon! That's it. Raccoon."

Toln had circled around between his father and sister. He looked up and said, "Donagee!"

Samik said, "Yes, a raccoon is like a tanuki. Good, Toln."

I was beginning to see the resemblance. I had never doubted, of course - Salma had been faithfully his since, well, just around the time I met Renna - but it was nice to be able to see it. Toln was less foxy than I remembered, too. He'd been... it suddenly struck me that I'd begun thinking numerically about people, appraising forms. It felt filthy to begin assigning those numbers to my family. Even the in-laws.

Like, what did it matter if Salma was a 1:4 or so fox? Not at all. But I realized I wasn't judging, just describing. Toln had been a very foxy little baby, around 1:8 or so, and was beginning to get a bit more anthro as he got further through his third year.

This took longer to get through, and Emmaine said, "It looks like you're pretty tired, too. What are your plans?"

"Well, we were going to just go all the way home, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen. And I'm not sure you have the room."

We were suddenly shaded as Salma came to the terrace edge above us. "Ah, so the stranger sleeping in my living room must be Renna. Welcome back." I nodded, and let her continue; she turned to her husband. "Of course it had to be. Who else would take the old chair over the new, but one of you two?"

Emmaine coughed. "Maybe I would too. Anyway, it looks to me like the only way you're all fitting is if I go back home. I've seen my daughter safely back. It's enough, and I need to go tell Bold his daughter's back. I'll see the rest of you soon, right? You are coming down for new year?"

Samik and Salma shared a look, and nodded. Samik gently hugged his mother and said, "We'll be down, don't worry."

Emmaine waved to the children. "Okay, see you two in a few days!"

Toln began crying, and Night tried to calm him; but Emmaine had already shifted human for better speed and was setting out purposefully. Salma came down and carried him off to calm down.

I asked, "Can she make it before dark?"

Samik shrugged. "She'll be close enough she can get home before she runs out of lights. She's good at casting that one, like her daughter. Now, you..." he came over and slapped me on the back again. "Tell us about your trip."

"The trip? Well, Weld is beautiful, but we didn't get a lot of free time there. And everyone was so afraid."

"Really."

"Yeah. Well, Periten is about to be returned to us, and last we saw them..."

"... was a thousand years ago, and they were busy getting thrashed by Weld, which is why the wish separated the two, in the first place."

"Well, Weld is a bit worried they might be out for revenge. Periten was definitely a weird country, I grant. And I can understand caution. But they're taking it to extremes."

Samik humphed contemptuously. Night asked, "I read... they don't believe in the gods?"

"Well, they believe the gods are evil or careless. If they didn't believe in the gods, we wouldn't have the wish they made."

Night sagely nodded and supplied, "No raising the dead." Then she frowned as if thinking of this for the first time. "Makes you wonder what was going on over there. We never had serious trouble with necromancers - say! Did you know that refitters used to be necromancers, before?"

"Really?"

"Yes. Of course that was five hundred years ago, but it's the same guild, same family. They still use the permitted forms of necromancy for their healing. I looked it up when I heard about aunt Renna."

"Okay, some places I've been are now retroactively a bit creepier."

"On the other hand, if they decided that necromancy was wrong, then maybe they wished for it not to work, just... because."

"Maybe so."

I looked around; we were alone. Night was making me... homesick, almost. Nostalgic. I needed Renna. "Let's see how she's doing."

We slithered back, not synched up due to our size difference, so I went in front when we came to the narrow path. If I had felt like talking, I would have shifted human; but seeing a young Renna when I couldn't even remember her new face apart from that she was a raccoon... I needed to get back.

I came into the tiny house again, and kissed Renna on the cheek, studied her face. I felt déjà vu, recalling my careful examination of her face back in Rin, the face of the sad body; and then recalled long ago when we'd first slept together - napped, really - and I stared at her sleeping face for what felt like an hour. I hesitated, realizing that she could well want to switch out again, and this too would be just another in a parade of her faces. But I couldn't help it. For now, this was Renna.

She opened one eye, and smiled. "How are you doing?"

"More important, how are you?"

"Much much better." She st up droopily and stretched. "Maybe not so very much better. But still. I can handle weak. Weak can get stronger."

I slithered up onto the other chair and watched her.

I woke, not having expected to fall asleep. A dinner call. I shifted human to get up, and walked back through the equally if not more cramped kitchen, to the rear door and the terrace table.

Salma and Renna were already sitting, facing each other across the low table; Samik was rubbing his wife's shoulders. Renna turned and smiled, and I could see a hint of her old self, somehow. Maybe in the rhythm. I sat next to her, lotus-style.

"Showoff. I can't do that anymore."

Then I noticed what was on the table - a code table I had devised when I was fifteen, so Renna and I could write more freely. I had never actually seen her copy of it. It was almost illuminated. Mine had been minimalist and functional. "Hey. Wow."

Samik nodded. "Found that. With those." He gestured to a stack of papers. Our letters.

"Oh wow, today is just a nostalgia trip, isn't it?" I took the stack and flipped through. One stood out just by its formatting. "I remember writing this one."

Samik shook his head. "You encrypted your love poetry?" There was that contempt.

"You would too, if you were that bad at writing love poetry."

Samik stared, then cracked up. "Now I've got to know."

Renna sighed. "Should I?"

"Well, I dunno. They could use it to unravel the whole code."

"If they're really good; and so what? It mattered then, when I had a space a little larger than Night's for my very own, and dear brother didn't even stay out of that."

"And he still wants to go through our letters."

"They're sweet. I bet he thinks we were organizing trysts or something." Which, on a few occasions, was true. But we had destroyed those letters anyway. It was pretty shocking how paranoid we'd been. And... come to think on it, that was one of Samik's focuses of contempt.

"Fine." I pulled out the sheet and oriented myself on the code table. "It's been a while..." My hands ran over the board, measuring the steps out. I mouthed the letters and remembered. Having worked as a telegrapher, I was able to build up a buffer much more easily than before.

The others fell to starting dinner; I ignored their conversation to hold on to what I was reading. After a few minutes, I had the first two lines. I held up my finger to get attention, and recited, "When the light grows dim, it is you I see./When quiet descends, the words that ring are yours."

Night said, "It doesn't rhyme."

"It will. Like, the next two lines could end, umm, 'free' and, umm, 'pours'. I'm more worried about the inconsistent scansion. It has a limp."

Renna added, "And a lurch." and she kissed me. "I think that was enough - for here, at least. I'd like to take them home. We can read them at leisure."

Samik frowned. "So, how were you decoding that? You were going all over the place there."

I looked to Renna. If I was in a bit of a minefield, here, as far as Samik was concerned. His annoyances with me were seeming arrogance and excessive privacy. Renna said, "Samik, what was he just saying about big brother still wanting to go through our letters?"

"Not that, you can have the letters. I was just impressed at how impenetrable it was."

As he said that, I thought back. This particular code wasn't really related to the main codes we'd ended up using, and we hadn't said anything all that sensitive in it. It was too slow to decode and encode, and if you slipped up once the entire rest of the message came out as gibberish. He could have it. Showing them took just a minute.

"Huh. Sounds simple now that you describe it. So, anything special about the board?"

"Well, it's just a square with every letter occurring once in each row and column, and chaotic instead of ordered."

I was about to start eating when Salma said, "You didn't wash up. Why don't you go to the sidehouse?"

I did get up, and followed where she was pointing, to a new addition. Stepping in, I found a sink and sanitary toilet. That was new. I washed and returned. Samik looked at me pointedly. "Nice to know we're not barbarians anymore?"

"Ha ha. That's not what I said."

He did a fair imitation of my voice. "'Sanitation is the principal benefit of civilization', I think it was?"

"Mainly around childbirth. Your midwife followed strict cleanliness, I'm sure." I was about to go out and defend myself further, but gave up. If after all that I was still going to be needled, there was no point.

It was not a sign of more to come, though, as the remainder of dinner passed cordially.