Pyna pauses.

Hard-by where the market-round breaks into a delta of differing pathways which wander off and into all cardinal directions. Snaking out senselessly into the mushrooming settlement.

With a sudden silken-gentle motion, she traps Umin’s wrist in little fingers of cold flesh, unyielding as marble and yet supple as something newborn.

Arrested mid-stride he puffs out a startled little breath.

It is in this fleeting between fear and some sensation murkier, that he smells the iodic salinity of the torpidly lapping and not too distant Great Lower Sea.

But it is the low, vast and papery rustle from the direction of the still distant Gate that unnerves him.

Like the concerted flutter of a million burning butterflies; the guttering fires of angry little flags, of a thousand, thousand torches and tallow-sticks.

Husht Love.

The Sea is thick and the breath is thin.

Come, before we call upon the Lordly Meshmin.

She plucks him now onto a parallel path.