Umin has little recollection of their return journey.

The arduousness of his travails at last overcrowing, he remembers being suddenly embraced by slim and supple limbs with the inevitable strength of marble. Then being charily borne aloft, like a windy shred of unhomed cloth. 

Moving with inhuman haste through the overarching darkness, at the last sinking into musky and downy linens, their entangling warmth intoxicating. A mellow, sensual anchor pulling him down onto the dream-roads. 

Umin stands upon a quay. 

The sea is ravenously dull and opaque as mercury. 

In a blink then at the rails of some species of baroque watercraft, all polished curlicues and hardwood flourishes, sluggishly cutting the dull ocean’s soupy iron-dark breakers. 

There is something important in the architecture of this craft, its odd proportions, reeking of salt and metal-craft. Something that slips from Umin’s understanding like a tricky fish-skin dancing through the fingers.

Ure stands abreast, tall and unruffled by the plucking wind and wearing his characteristically toothy grin. 

Umin’s childhood companion and fellow guildsman gazes into the indiscernible middle-distance for a little while, listening to the low, mournful howl across unseen sails, before regarding Umin, his expression unchanging.

Sad old friend, sad.

You were never supposed to be a part of the bargain then…

Umin’s tongue is inert, a blot of mealy meat between his teeth, as Ure reaches out and with a careless flick, hurls him like a punctured sack, swirling out into the thick and quicksilver wrack.

Here in the Below, there is no cock-crow to herald the morning sun-glow.

Umin wakes with a lightness that he has not felt since he can recall, despite his unnerving and now fading dreaming. 

The frost-glow from Pyna’s stone glimmers dim and reassuring, from somewhere near at hand.