Gil wakes up scream­ing.

The black­ness of the tent doesn’t help—it looks like the black­ness of the Under­world abyss. He keeps on scream­ing, gulp­ing in air, flail­ing his arms and legs until he feels Kiddu pin him to the ground.

He can’t see her, but the feel­ing of her skin helps reas­sure that he’s back in his own body. He breathes slower and lays back into the sand.

The tent­flap flies open, let­ting in a tri­an­gle of starlight.

The war­rior throws the tent flap down. His foot­steps soon fade away, just as Kiddu lets out a loud yawn.

But it isn’t. He lies awake with his eyes open, star­ing at the hint of starlight flow­ing in beneath the tent’s can­vas.

When Kiddu begins to snore, he gets up, dusts him­self off, and tip­toes out­side. He can’t stop shak­ing. He needs to make sure that the sky is up and not down.

He steps two paces out of the tent.

Hat­van is sit­ting in the sand, right next to their tent. His big hat is sloped down, cov­er­ing his face entirely.

Kripa jogs over from where he had been prac­tic­ing moves with his club.

One of Hatvan’s hands mate­ri­al­izes from out of his robe sleeves. He holds it up gen­tly.

Kripa tow­ers over Hat­van, who still hasn’t both­ered to look up. The big war­rior finally turns to look down at Gil.

Gil spends a full minute star­ing up at the sky, all the while try­ing to ignore Kripa’s glare. He traces the glow­ing rib­bon of Yanu’s River across the dome of heaven, forc­ing his mind to con­form to the upside-up real­ity in front of his eyes.

When he’s sat­is­fied, he ducks back into his tent to find Kiddu stretched out diag­o­nally across the ground. She had rolled well into his own sleep­ing space. He lies down, con­fin­ing him­self to a cramped cor­ner and putting his back to hers.

That only works for a minute. Then she rolls back over and puts an arm and a leg over his body.

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