In the time it took me to pick up and bag the crab, the bright-white figure had faded in the vog. When I flicked my tongue, there was her scent, minty grapes. The smell found her somewhere⁠ ⁠—⁠ not far⁠ ⁠—⁠ to my left. A leap and a short glide brought me along the scent gradient⁠ ⁠—⁠ some strides behind her, if I had to guess.

Was that grapey smell her perfume? Or something else? She wasn’t the type to use perfume, but that scent still outdid everything I had! It smelled better than my honey chamomile, at any rate.

Flicking for the smell again, slinking forward in a low-walk, my mind was in my tongue’s whirling forks, my neck-frills were folded, and my eyescales were flushed and cloudy. Then the scent of grapes sharpened at once. Sharp, like I was right next to her.

My frills flapped open and my eyescales cleared, but not fast enough. That was how my head met Hinte’s side, followed my haunches meeting the ground, then Hinte’s glass-covered foot meeting the air just in front of my face.

That foot held her knife, and it had stopped just as the scowling wiver jerked her head around and saw that it was bumbling me, not anything dangerous.

“Ground yourself,” she said. With that and nothing else Hinte turned away. Around her, two dark frills waved and wrinkled, circling her head like scaly fans. All the while, her head was jerking around, looking for⁠ ⁠—⁠ or at⁠ ⁠—⁠ something outside the six strides I could see.

This was Hinte. Time with her had never been pleasant, not the way it had been with my brother. She didn’t make it so, and I wasn’t waiting for it. But I had to stop and stare at how silent and scowly she was this evening. Maybe she was shedding?

As I peered at her, though, and caught how her face relaxed when she looked away⁠ ⁠—⁠ the scowl dropped, her frills bent and twisted instead of standing straight⁠ ⁠—⁠ I frowned. There was still a slight clench in her jaw, as if from a distant irritation; but that had lingered all evening, and between everything else, there was obviously something more hiding there.

Was I the problem?

“Hinte-gyfar?” I said, laying special non-emphasis on the honorific.

She snapped her head back to me, lips curling into a frown, forked tongue slipping into her mouth⁠ ⁠—⁠ details I noticed only from being so close. Her face looked dark in the lake, her scales almost black. You could imagine they were anything⁠ ⁠—⁠ even a night-blue⁠ ⁠—⁠ but in the light they would gleam a deep, dark-green, the color of the forest-dwellers.

Hinte’s eyes hid behind amber-lensed goggles. Their straps looped around her head, made of a pitch-black schizon that added a poisonous tinge to her scent. When the light hit the goggles just right, the wild, iridescent lenses turned her eyes into a chameleon’s.

I had to look up to meet her gaze, and when I did, those goggles bored into me, and I flinched.

“Sorry.” My voice drowned in the sound of the lake.

Hinte looked away again, and I breathed relief, but it was tiny.

When I followed her gaze⁠ ⁠—⁠ or tried to⁠ ⁠—⁠ some shadows moved. I tilted my head at nothing and might have looked silly, darting my eyes all around⁠ ⁠—⁠ but it was just ash, stuck onto my brilles, the clear scales covering both my eyes.

With my wing’s alula, I unhooked the glass canteen at my foreleg and swung it up to wet my tongue. Flicking up to my brilles, I licked the ash off and spat out. The taste stuck around, but I was used to it. I let some blood flow into the scales, and they clouded. I stopped the flow, and they cleared up.

Now I could see… better, I guess. At least I’d grounded the gritty feeling on my eyes.

Hinte was moving again, and I missed it. At the very edge of my sight, she was turning and looking back at me.

Somewhere, Hinte’d gained and mastered the skill of glaring with only her frills.

Those wide-eyed, inexpressive goggles should have looked hatchly, or at least neutral. Maybe it was the way they caught the molten glow of the glass, or maybe it was the dark of her face-scales that made them like bodyless eyes floating in the dark; but you knew she was glaring, even with her curling frills half-shrouded.

Even without the goggles, Hinte had a certain intensity of gaze I’d seen before, on a dark-blue-scaled, silver-eyed face like mine; only instead of glinting ice, hers was all fire.

Lifting myself into a striding high-walk, I stepped to the figure with burning amber lenses. This wasn’t a manifestation of the serpentine lake, prepared to swallow me completely; it was my friend.

Hinte, cloaked bright-white in perfect counterpoint to the shadows, was a like a beacon, someone who could guide and reassure me. Even trapped near-blindly in the darkness, even suffocating in the noxious air, the sight of Hinte could ease the awful dewing, just a little.

So why did I feel compelled to return her glare?

I smiled and said, “Thank you for waiting.” It came natural.

Maybe you could hear a sigh, but you couldn’t have seen it. Hinte only said, “Pay attention. You are lost in your thoughts twice a ring. And every time, you get lost in the lake as well.” She curled her frills again.

Cringing, lowering my head, I only saw her turn by the movement of her forelegs. We walked on again. Hinte was slowing now, low-walking, with lots of turns and glancing around⁠ ⁠—⁠ she’d found something, then. With a frown, I followed.

As she walked, Hinte switched between scanning the vog ahead and glancing down at her feet, like a tic. She avoided the crags or holes without a second thought, exuding a certain care that you wouldn’t even know existed if you only looked at me.

Abruptly, Hinte stopped, and I didn’t almost bump into her again. In fact, I backed up several paces, so you could never mistake that.

Meanwhile, the wiver was stopping, crouching and reaching into her bag. What came next was the cracking of punched dustone, the hissing of revealed glass, and a familiar atonal hum like teeth chattering, claws scraping and glass whining.

At an oblique angle, I sat and watched her claw into a sort of thick bump in the lake skin. Hinte would give me funny looks when she saw me watching; but right now, she was so focused on digging out another one of those annoying humming stones, she wouldn’t even notice. I peered at her, sifting her visage for clues.

On her short muzzle, Hinte’s lips rested in what wasn’t quite a frown; her face was set in a way which made that determined, unsmiling line of a mouth look natural. Below her mouth, rows of hornscales spiked her muzzle, and behind her head stabbed two larger horns⁠ ⁠—⁠ as long as my forefeet. They looked masculine. Where I came from, priests would disbud a wiver’s horns a few great dances after she hatched. I touched a frill to the smooth line of my own jaw, and to the flat disks behind my head. It was proper.

They didn’t do it that way in the forests, though. How did they manage there, if both genders looked so similar?

Was I getting lost in my thoughts again?

The plate of dustone I was on shifted again⁠ ⁠—⁠ Hinte’s digging disturbed the flow. Cracks etched out illegible screeds on the lake skin around my companion. Where before the slit eye breaks in the skin looked ravenous, these only looked perplexed.

Not wanting the ground to fall out under me, I stood and started high-walking, over to the wiver foreleg-deep in the burning lake. Maybe you could question my plan of walking toward what was tearing open the lake skin, but the wiver didn’t seem worried; and she’d never given me a choice besides trusting her.

I resisted glaring as I high-walked toward the bright-white wiver, but I could say that was because Hinte’s… masculinity⁠ ⁠—⁠ or image of masculinity⁠ ⁠—⁠ gave her a creeping familiarity. It made it so easy to act like this, like we, were a continuation of⁠ ⁠—⁠ something else…

Suddenly, I unleashed another dust breath attack! The air in front of me filled with dust and I laughed⁠ ⁠—⁠ but it choked as I stumbled, even more blind in my own dust cloud.

Hinte, still digging, didn’t see any of that. I grinned, my brilles flushing triumphant, my frills spreading, and it all lasted until I almost ran into Hinte again, scraping to a stop one step away from her, my fangs dewing with sickly embarrassment.

“Um, Hinte-gyfar?”

She didn’t stop digging. “What is it?”

“About earlier… where–where were you? I was looking for you and you’d just… left me. Why?”

“I stopped and killed the glasscrab.” Hinte whisked an idle wing toward my bag. “You did want them, right? I thought you might, and there had been one creeping around.”

“Well…” I looked up. “It’s just, it seemed like you were angry, throwing the glasscrab and all. Did I do something wrong?”

More dustone cracking. During a lull, Hinte asked, “Did you do something wrong?”

I twisted my head, peering at Hinte, then slowly said, “No?”

“Then why are you asking?” Hinte glanced over for just a moment, head atilt.

“I⁠ ⁠—⁠ nevermind.” I looked away. “So um.” I clouded my brilles, tongue working in thought. What to say, what to say. “Do you learn your alchemy stuff from your grandfather?” I’d never met Ushra, but I’d⁠ ⁠—⁠ heard of him.

I watched Hinte. It was something I’d learned early, how to use small talk to test someone’s hidden dewings.

Hinte hummed and said, “When he has the time for it.” I heard a sharper snap than any other. “Not very often. He has duties as a head alchemist and⁠ ⁠—” Hinte stopped, and peered back at me, before nodding and continuing, “—⁠ other projects, which I cannot help him with.” More cracking. “It is the same to me, I’ve learned the generalities and he will only teach me his specialty⁠ ⁠—⁠ medical alchemy. Healing is boring. I have my own projects.”

I breathed small relief. She wasn’t that mad at me, then.

Looking away, I pushed a little farther, adding, “Like these weird stones.” She didn’t stop me, so I asked, “What are the stones for, anyway? And why don’t you sift for shiny volcanic glass or fancy metals like everyone else?”

It’s all supposed to pay really well⁠ ⁠—⁠ the whole town was built around the Berwem for just that reason. Maybe the stones were even more valuable? But then everyone would be digging them up too.

I added, “Is it an alchemist thing?” But even then, I would have heard about it, with all the alchemy scrolls I’d suffered through.

Cracking. “How many times have you asked those questions?” Hinte glanced back again, and didn’t turn away, as if tired of looking back and forth.

I counted on my toes. As we walked to the lake⁠ ⁠—⁠ that’s one. When we found that glowing rainbow-colored stone by the big pit⁠ ⁠—⁠ that’s two. “This is the third time, I think. But you always stay silent or say they’re for your studies or projects or something. Why can’t you tell me the real reason?”

Hinte turned away again. She said, “I am busy. I need to focus.” Like usual.

I huffed and turned away. Like usual. But, unanswered questions or no, at least I was helping my friend like this. That’s⁠ ⁠—⁠ what I wanted, right?

Was Hinte my friend? I liked spending time with her. But sometimes it felt like she only tolerated me.

Were we friends? Were we only companions?

At last, there came a final crack⁠ ⁠—⁠ followed by even more humming.

I still sat behind Hinte, watching, while I twiddled my foot’s halluxes, and fluttered my drooping frills. “So, you found another stone?” I asked.

Hinte glanced back at me without glaring. I might have said she smiled, but the absence of a frown was starting to look like a smile, after so much time alone with Hinte.

As she looked at me, instead of the usual molten glass glow⁠ ⁠—⁠ though there was still that⁠ ⁠—⁠ my companion was now lit up in a wavering blue light. The glow sloughed off the blue rock she’d just ripped from the dustone. The screeching hum had doubled after Hinte freed it⁠ ⁠—⁠ some awful thanks that was.

The dark-green wiver would’ve punished it with a squeeze of her claws, and this would’ve cracked the stone, and caused two dozen tiny creatures that weren’t insects to swarm and panic across the stone’s surface. I hadn’t seen this; I knew from seeing it a half-dozen times before.

Hinte’s mouth moved to answer me, but the noise of the new stone drowned her murmured answer.

Instead of asking for her to repeat, I stood up. After all, communication lay the in asking and answering, not in the question or answer. I’d had it drilled too many times to forget it.

By now the dark-green wiver was finishing her work, and slipping her tongue back into her mouth. She wrapped the stone in stinky black cloth and slipped it into her bag. Her forelegs cracked with vitrified glass as she moved, and dust had kissed the black cloth where she’d held it.

Hinte stood, stood high, her legs vaulting her into an almost vertical high-walk, and I mimed her. Finally, we were moving again. It fledged a small difference⁠ ⁠—⁠ the lake wasn’t any less thought-numbing⁠ ⁠—⁠ but just moving my legs instead of sitting perked my frills up a notch.

Ahead of me, Hinte was padding across the lake skin with quick, purposeful strides. She could hold a high walk longer than me, than anyone I knew.

That was more my fault than any great skill on Hinte’s part⁠ ⁠—⁠ though she had some of that, too. Having spent her whole life on the surface, she had a wealth of adroitness in her gait that had eluded me, not to mention how she walked over the retiring lake skin as if it were actual ground.

I tossed my head at the thought, a frill brushing against my black headband. Where I grew up, walking didn’t matter. If you wanted to get somewhere, you flew there. When you needed to walk, you could slither for all the difference it would make!

When I looked again, Hinte had already stridden away. Not that she tried to, though she wouldn’t try not too, either. I had slowed down, and she hadn’t noticed.

I whipped my tail, and maybe a little growl thrummed in my chest. I walked toward Hinte, measuring words in my throat, peering for reasons not to say them.

A question tried to bubble up. “Why⁠ ⁠—” was what came out before I stopped. I saw Hinte turning, and now the question had to be finished. Every continuation sung to me: Why are you sifting crysts? Why were we still in the lake? Why wouldn’t you talk to me? Why can’t we be friends?

“—⁠ did the fired accountant cross the river?” I finished

I cringed as I said it, but I didn’t break eye with the wiver until she turned back away, wordless and sighing.

Hinte would expect me disappointed, so I hid my relief; but my tail swayed, my wheezing breaths came easier, and there was a slight tug at my lips. Still, it took effort⁠ ⁠—⁠ familiar but unpracticed⁠ ⁠—⁠ to hold my fangs dry and my face unreadable.

The relief soon flowed out of me, and then I could release my hold on myself, and relax. I’d found Hinte, and we were together and doing things again, moving. It was okay.

Maybe I should look around me, watch the six strides I could see. You could call these new sights, after all. I took them all in with a sigh and barely a clearing of my brilles; nothing like the slack-tongued stares I’d given all of this when I first stepped into the lake.

Once, the rugged dustone crags and glowing liquid sand had been novel⁠ ⁠—⁠ impressive, even. But the gnarled ground and glass veins looked the same everywhere, only the distribution ever changed. So as my throat burned and my canteen emptied, the wonder faded.

You could say my eyes glazed over, but I was better than that.

Now, it was either watch the clouds swirl or watch Hinte do her determined sifter thing. It wasn’t much of a choice, honestly. I watched how she flicked her tongue out every few heartbeats⁠ ⁠—⁠ unlike me, who couldn’t bare the stench of this place. Or how her frills still adjusted as she walked along, even though I could hear nothing. I extended my own frills just to check again. Nothing! The lake skin rattled, our footsteps cracked the dustone, and my heart tapped in my breast⁠ ⁠—⁠ except I didn’t need frills to feel that last one.

I stared at her scaly ruffs, as if I could decipher the point of it, what she listened for. It felt like I had all of the pieces in my wings, I just needed to put them together.

But did I have to puzzle out every last thing she couldn’t be bothered to tell me?

My staring turned to gawking at the size of her frills. Even expanded, they extended less than a forefoot’s length from the top of her neck. They made my frills look huge. I folded mine back, pressed mine back until they might as well have merged with my scales.

My gaze shifted, catching her wings folded at her side. Like me, the hands of her wings rested beside her head, with long fingers that creased the membrane between them all along their extent. Her wings jutted back about a leg’s length past her haunches, but mine went further, even with Hinte being longer than me. That difference fledged a smile, my wings twitching and half-spreading, my hindlegs digging a little deeper into the ground.

I didn’t just want to compare our wing lengths. My half-spread wings bristled with an abstract sort of itch I could only scratch in the air.

Flying. I could fly right now. I should. My wings could move me faster, take me farther, than my legs ever would. But… I came here with Hinte. She wasn’t flying, and I would get lost in the lake without her.

“You are staring,” came a jagged voice ahead of me.

I jumped and gave her an indignant lift of my head⁠ ⁠—⁠ but the flush of my brilles and the sick sweetness on my fangs gave me away.

“Focus on the lake, Kinri.”

I bristled my wings, and frowned. After Hinte’d turned back away, I leapt high and flapped my wings until I was gliding in a lazy circle above her. I wasn’t hiding; even if she ignored the crack of dustone, she must hear the beating of my wings or at least see the mad dash of the stirred dust below.

My alulae twirled and my tail swished behind me. I was flying again! That’s what mattered. I bounced in the air a little. And I might have done it twice, if the motion hadn’t sent an awful throb through my skull. Now that I focused, there gnawed a weary ache on the fringes of my mind. It quivered with every flap of my wings. Ignore it.

Hinte’s dark-green frills wrinkled a breath before she turned in full. “What are you doing?” she asked.

I tilted my head. “Um, flying? It’s so much better than trudge-toeing over this lake! Come on, it’s high fun!”

“No. I didn’t come here to have fun, I came to sift. And I need to see where I am going, and I need to feel the crysts. On the ground.” She turned away.

“Oh… Well, can I fly, at least? Please?” I held out my forefeet.

“No. You will only tire yourself out. Walking is easier.” She started away.

Would I? In the sky, we’d all been trained to fly for long rings or even days at a time⁠ ⁠—⁠ but that had been soaring and gliding. Flying over the lake, with all the threshing, turning and twisting, just might tire me out.

So I relented, and my frills fell with my body. I crash-landed. My knees bent, but I flapped my wings one last time, lifting me to a high-stand.

Hinte’s pace was slower as I caught up. Slowly, barely, I followed her.

If my feet cracked just a little harder, if my claws dug a little deeper, it was only the strain of high-walking wearing on me.