The masses arrive like birds called to warmth: more and more and more, all crowding around the call. Your ears twitch now and then as their bodies slide past yours. Voices mingle in the damp air, but only snatches of words meet your ears, and you dismiss them, content to wait for the truth standing before you. Why speculate now? Maybe because the stranger stands silent, as if he knows how many he expects to answer his summons. Again, the word ghosts through your consciousness (god). Is this what one looks like? Is this what your grandmother is like...?

The presence of someone nearby draws your attention, and one dark eye cocks back to fix upon a familiar face. "Zyanya," you remember, though you were a bit younger then, and a bit more stubborn. Your voice is a little deeper over the syllables now, and much softer. Something in the same family as a smile touches your face, and you nod at her, but your attention drifts away soon after. Or — maybe it's more apt to say your attention is stolen by the demanding voice of a younger colt across the meeting. Ears up, head up, you answer Iskra's summons with a wave of one wing, but you don't budge. Iskra stands surrounded by strangers, though one of them — the sunny boy — you recognize. No desire to join the group stirs in your breast. Zyanya's presence at your side is a more welcome silence. And anyway — a moment later someone else is shouting your name.

Head swinging the other way, you squint at the girl back on the bridge. From such a distance, you don't quite recognize her, but you think maybe she's from the Basin? You definitely recognize that bossy little voice, and with a snort you answer, "Come and see!" Challenge rings in your voice; your tail twitches, and you stare at the girl a moment, waiting to see if she accepts. It's only the sound of more familiar hoof beats that grabs your attention away — "Vesper!" darting through the crowd to join you. "What do you think it is?" she asks, but you can only shrug, embarrassed to voice the private theory hanging in your head. Dark eyes follow the path of the zephyr as it goes ahead, and for an instant you hate the stab of jealousy in your gut — that ugly feeling. (why her?)

She asks if you want to join Iskra, and you glance at him again, distracted already from his call. "No." The word isn't angry, isn't anything but blunt, as you glance from the boy to the god again. Where you stand now is good enough, for now. Maybe later you'll find him again and ask him what he thought of the stranger, but for now a cloud passes your mind when you think of him, a cloud absent from your present company. You direct your gaze across the gathering again, only just catching the big shadow of your father approaching from — somewhere. When did he get here? You acknowledge him with a look before you look at the main spectacle once more.

It's beginning to speak.

A waterfall of words leaves its mouth. Most of them go in one ear and out the other, though important bits stick — like god of Earth, like help, like Kisamoa and the gift bestowed to a girl you don't know.... Intrigue prickles through your mind like cold water, and without meaning to, you step forward once. Your head cranes up, up, to view the man over the backs of the crowd. Others already ask the question on your lips, so you wait silently for it to be answered before you speak, too.

VIRGA