They're all gathered around the firelight now, a perfect circle. The Etherics who lingered on their food are finishing. After the bread and meat she ate some of the white clouds she saw the Etheric boy eating. Not everyone ate them, just Etherics scattered here and there, and usually they were sitting alone.
They burned her throat going down, more than the burnt meat and bread did. But she doesn't feel spice on them. Nothing comes off in her palms and fingers and when she's done eating them it's like they were never there.
Shouldn't I be thirsty? She isn't at all, even though she can't remember the last time she drank anything.
Brush Cut never left his place standing near the fire. He raises his arms, slowly, so they don't cut through the smoke. Instead they play with it as it curls around them, hugging them close.
The Etherics aren't saying words anymore. They're using signals, hard and soft body language to show how they feel about moving closer. As the green fire burns and the food settles in them their bodies all soften, close in on each other and coil, except for the girl with the back curled hood. She's stiff, empty space all around her, the length of anyone's arm, even the most slender. And as the Etherics stop moving, their heads slowly begin to turn, so by the time they're full still they're all looking at her. So is Brush Cut. In the green fire light, right across from Troud, many things swim in his eyes.
The Etherics look made of stone and that's when Back Curls speaks, her body stiffening even straighter, her kneeling legs bent perfect. Her voice is like a river overflowing its banks. Troud pulls back, thinking it'll extinguish the greenfire in its swell. She hears it echo down through the air vents and imagines it reaching the Pale Sliver. It could, she thinks, and it might make her happy, even though she likes silence.
She describes a place. It sounds like a back alley, but tighter. And there's no one there, no one even close. The dark towers are packed dense, she says, like a bed of nails. There's something about a beast, so close to the far mountain peaks he's almost hugging them.
She's talking about a star number, Troud thinks. How do you watch a song?
"It's behind," the girl says. "Behind everything, but before the wall, the mountains, and the beasts beyond. Behind everything, but before the wall. Where palaces meet dark towers. Under the point of the monster's tail."
There's a whisper in her ear. "It must be wedged behind something they can't see. The Sliver's trolling them again, but they'll never know." It's Dirty Waves, and though he's speaking soft, everyone looks at him, even Back Curls. There's fire in her eyes, her own fire, mixing with the greenfire light.
Troud stares at him with her own fire too, as much as she can bring, because she wants to hear Back Curls more. He smiles (does he ever not smile close to her?), leans back, his fingers spread into the stone fragments around him. His right hand is rubbing one of the bone whites, slow, then fast, lazy, then urgent.
When she's finished talking, Brush Cut's eyes are flint and sparked. She sees them burn through the smoke on the other side of the green fire. They rove back and forth as he thinks.
Back Curls stands. She flows from her knees to her feet without her hands touching anything. She turns to leave and as she does Troud finally sees her face. Her curls are flaxen yellow and her face isn't the ethereal white of the Etherics. Behind the hood it's milk white, soft and smooth.
Then she's moving for one of the vents, a different one than Troud used, her face hidden by hood again, only the flaxen curls peeking out, and then she's gone, her soles disappearing up the ascent of the hollow.
