The Matoran stared at him: "What?"

His companion pointed at the charms: "You can't come in without hitting those," he explained. "But you're too short to reach 'em."

"Why do I need to do that?"

"You're full of outside."

"Of what?"

Another vague gesture: "Outside. Stuff that likes to cling to you - bad fortunes, bad thoughts... That sort of thing. You don't want all that getting into your house, so you trap it up there."

Ehrye looked up again. He wasn't too convinced.

"So do you want a chair to stand on?"

"Why does it get trapped there?" he insisted, completely ignoring the other's offer.

"Because that's what they're made to do."

"It's just a bunch of plants and bones."

"It's offerings to the Famines," Gelu corrected, ears slicked back, peeved. "That's reason enough."

"I've never heard of those."

"You were stuck in a metal box your whole life so I'm not surprised," the Koniri growled. "But since you got out of there and have no doubt been dragging your outside along with mine around this entire time, you'll do me the favor of not dumping the whole of it in my house."

It was enough for the smaller being to shrink in his shoulders with a contrite look, hands fidgeting in a mixture of annoyance and shame that had often characterized his courier days.

He mumbled something about not needing to drag around furniture just to make him tall enough to hit some chimes, that he was used to being dangled from the slopes of Mount Ihu and hanging from some larger fellow's hand would have been more comfortable than from a rope that scratched his hands anyways; not needing to be told twice, Gelu wrapped his arm as carefully as he could around the mechanical waist and raised him up to the offerings, putting him right back down after the white hand had gone through them.

"Good hunts and quick deaths," he muttered as way of blessing. Ehrye saw it fit not to talk back about it.

The hut was nicely insulated, a mix of wood and frozen snow with thick animal hides covering the pavement and the windows. Most of the voluminous cabinetry seemed to have been carved by hand; no wonder the Glatorian insisted on maintaining his domicile in Iconox instead of moving to New Atero.

Gelu left the Matoran to look around this slice of a world until now unknown to him and went to spark a small fire in his hearth, feeding it until the air seemed to warm up a little. He moved then to a shelf full of small objects and began searching through trinkets and leather satchels, shaking them lightly or feeling them up to recognize their contents without needing to open them.

His guest busied himself with a search of his own - for a telescope, a chart of the skies, something that helped with calculations.

"You told me you had astrological instruments," he noted.

"I never said that," the Koniri rebuked: "I only told you that we of the Ice Tribe do foretelling too. At no point did I mention anything about stars or the such."

Ehrye failed to keep himself from scoffing: "How are you supposed to get any predictions if you don't check the stars?"

"With these," was the answer as a small sack was finally plucked.

He didn't miss how the movement had immediately piqued the little one's interest. He kneeled as the Matoran approached to let him see better: he shook the satchel once, twice, until upon his palm fell at last a few cubical objects of a worn yellowish color.

The other squinted at them, puzzled. Then realization hit him, and he recoiled in utter disbelief: "Bones!" he cried. "Bones are things of the past! They can't see the future!"

"Not all of them - and not metal ones, that's for sure," Gelu snorted. He lifted one up, showing off its uneven sides to the disgruntled being: "All bones are good for something, whether that's making broth, feeding plants, working as medicine, or getting utensils or weapons out of them. These are astragalia, and they're good for either playing or foretelling."

"I don't see how they can do either," grumbled Ehrye.

"Oh, don't pull my leg. You must have had games of chance where you're from, no? Guessing numbers or the such?"

"We had better games. Like Akilini."

"Which is?"

"We threw disks at each other."

The Glatorian pulled up his lip again with an unenthused click, eyes half lid: "Very sophisticated."

Bristling and steaming, the Ko-Matoran hastily changed the subject: "And how are you supposed to get predictions out of them, anyways? They're just bones."

"Ankle bones, to be precise - you use them like you would for playing: first they're shaken," (and he made a show of rattling them in his hand) "Then thrown," (at which point he let them fall onto the carpet, waiting until they stopped bouncing) "And based on whichever faces are skyward, you get your future."

Ehrye watched the response on the ground with a furrowed expression, arms crossed against his chest.

"So what's this?"

"Nothing."

He turned to the Koniri as if he'd just been stabbed in the back: "You just said they should tell the future!"

"If you ask them," Gelu specified. He poked lazily at the little cubes to get a better look at them. "As it is, this either means there's gonna be freezing rain tomorrow or that I just got a 3-5."

He collected them into his furred palm and offered them to his guest, who not only recoiled away from them but even made a point of taking two full steps back, as if the simple act of invitation had been a capital offense.

The Glatorian did not move an inch.

After about a minute, the Matoran groaned loudly.

"Quit acting like a spoiled kid. Make a throw."

"I'm not touching those!"

His host shrugged: "Have it your way, then," he muttered, hand hovering over the satchel's opening.

His bluff worked as the white Mahiki paled even further: "Wait - wait, wait!" Ehrye was quick to go back on his words, scuttling forward and reaching for his wrist: "Ok, I'll throw them, I'll throw them! But at least tell me how to do it right to get a proper prediction..."

"Think about a question, shake 'em, throw 'em, and then see."

"And how do I tell the response from simple numbers?"

"I'll just tell those for you for now. If I had to explain the whole thing we'll be here all day, and I know you don't have that kind of time."

The Matoran mumbled something, clearly unhappy, but didn't insist.

He begrudgingly accepted the astragalia from the furred palm, trying to shake them first in his fist like Gelu had and then resorting to cupping both hands around the dice; he threw them hard against the ground, waiting for them to cease their rolling.

The result was 2-2.

"Not too high a score," Gelu noted, "But a pair on your first attempt is pretty nice."

"What's it mean?"

"Cloudy skies with no precipitations."

"I didn't ask about the weather!"

"Shouldn't have used masillabune astragalia, then," the Glatorian simply replied. His mechanical ankles squeaked as he stood up again and went for the shelf.

"Shouldn't have- there's different types?!" Ehrye widened his arms angrily. "How was I supposed to know that?!"

"By asking nicely, or by having common sense."

"Common sense!"

"You have only one constellation that solves all your riddles?"

The Matoran shut up.

"Exactly." Gelu sniffed at a few satchels, weighting them in his hands. "What did you ask?"

"That's my own business."

The Koniri carefully folded a quip about having some kind of grudge against being helped and stuffed it in his ribcage for a later occasion: "I'll just have to guess then. Catch..."

Ehrye struggled to grasp the small leather bag launched at him when he saw it fly right at his mask, as he did for the second one, taken by surprise by there being more; the third he clasped between the first two with a bit more success, even though it slid down his arm and he had to catch it in the nick of time within his elbow.

The fourth he missed entirely.

He fully blamed his occupied palms.

"Masillabune astragalia are for the weather," the other explained in the meantime: "Peccary for hunting, mosco for foraging, aplotér for traveling, hyrax for health... There's a few more for crops and offsprings, but I don't think you care for those."

"Which one's which?"

"The satchels are embroidered with the initials. Ah, wait - you can't read our alphabet, can you?"

"No I can't!"

"Alright, uh..." he drummed his fingers on the wood for a moment, claws clacking against it. He lifted one at last to try and draw in the air as he attempted a couple of descriptions: "Mosco has two letters - the circle with a downwards trident and a smaller one without anything around it - and the peccary's has a line and a left comma, both down."

Ehrye shifted the leather pouches to inspect the threaded letters: "Hold on, hold on - you already gave me the mosco bones! It's right here on the... No, wait, this is for mosco. On this other one the second circle has a fork down and a line up."

"That the masillabune ones."

"So that's an... Ah, alright, I've got these three then. Which one's this? It's got two commas at the top and two at the bottom."

"H for haryx. Aplotér's got an A but no M."

The Matoran laid the satchels in front of himself and opened a few to compare the bones of such strange-sounding animals. They were all exactly the same: somewhat cubical, light, yellowish, of that gross uneven texture organic ivory had, with little inexplicable symbols carved into them. Utterly indistinguishable.

He splayed them down on the carpet and frustrated himself trying to find differences between them.

Gelu watched him for a little when he finally left the shelf.

"Found what you need?" he asked finally.

"No," Ehrye grumbled: "They're all identical."

"These animals belong to the same clade, of course their bones will look similar."

"How do you tell them apart?"

"By labeling them, mostly." he crouched again, effortlessly dividing the mixed up astragalia back in their original groups with a single hand and bunching them all near their respective pouches. "There. So as I told you, weather, hunting, foraging, traveling and health. Any of these match that question you don't want to share?"

The white Mahiki darkened further, and the small biomechanical being angrily let himself sit with arms and legs crossed: "No."

"Are you going to tell me what it was, then?"

"I said it's my business."

"I could care less about the specifics of it," Gelu shrugged: "But if you give me a hint maybe we can finally start getting somewhere."

The Matoran squirmed in place, gumbling in a whirring tone to himself for a little while in a decidedly unpleasant manner. He flapped his knees, tapped his fingers against his armor, looked around the hut, turned his angry eyes back to the Koniri's unbothered ones; finally, with a sigh and a mumble, he relented: "Predictions."

"You wanted a prediction about predictions?" the other specified.

He nodded.

Gelu's ears rose and fell with an easy motion, short tail thumping twice: "Well, there's our problem solved: I don't have those."

"What do you mean, you don't?" the smaller being all but wailed: "You've got all these!"

"These are average things for average people to ask about. Astragalia about foretelling come from furred fiomias - way too dangerous to hunt on the regular; anything from them is awful rare, passed down through generations, so you'll only find their ankle bones in families of seers."

To say Ehrye looked devastated would have been an exaggeration, maybe; but the feeling he was currently going through came pretty close nonetheless.

So he'd traveled all the way here to Iconox, up the Quartz Peaks, for nothing? So he'd sat down in unpleasant silence for hours next to Kirbold on his uncomfortable wagon, with heaps and heaps of foul-smelling things he didn't even want to find a name for that he had to load and unload to bribe him into letting him come along, all to just get shown a bunch of rotting bones which turns out wouldn't help him get anywhere either way?

He should've realized it sooner that the Ice Tribe's clairvoyance practices were nothing but a sham. He should've figured it out from those stupid chimes... What can one expect from a people that hangs teeth and nails to their doorframes to trap some nebulous 'outside' in them? He tightened his fists around his arms.

All this time and effort. Wasted.

A feeling known but not remembered coiled around his lungs.

Destiny was supposed to be looser out here, Turaga Nuju had said - it was supposed to be more lenient, to let them do what they wanted; and yet, even as far across time and space as they were from those long gone days of Metru Nui's splendor, it stuck to him desperately just so it could prevent him from becoming a seer.

His digits shrieked quietly against the protodermis as he clasped them as hard as he could around himself.

It was unfair.

It was just unfair.

A sniffle left him.

Gelu's ears dropped, though he didn't say a single word about how clearly upset the Matoran was. Instead, he settled on silently putting the astragalia back inside the pouches with his free hand.

His apparent lack of care irked Ehrye all the more, just as much as any attempt at consoling him would have; his angry eyes followed his motions as if they could have punctured through the thick fur and stabbed into his fingers in retaliation for everything that kept happening to him. It was this sudden, acidic focus that made him notice the small box in the other's unmoving palm, white and black and small and propped up against his hip.

"What about that?" he spat.

The Glatorian's ear flicked inquisitively.

The gesture worsened his mood: "That," he insisted, pointing harshly at the container in the larger grip. "You've been hiding that the whole time, hoping I wouldn't notice it. It's more of these, isn't it? Some kind you didn't want to tell me about?"

Gelu followed his finger.

His expression became... Strange.

"Oh, these are..." he muttered, tone soft, wistful: "These aren't really for anything."

He pulled the box out in the open without much fanfare or reticence, ticking his claws on its lid with great care, almost playing a tune, as if delaying the inevitable. When it clicked open, the light polished wood revealed more of the same cubical bones - just whiter, maybe shaped a little differently, maybe carved with different symbols.

It wasn't like Ehrye could make anything out of them either way. He squinted at the Glatorian's face awaiting an explanation that was taking its sweet time coming.

Agori visages were hard to figure out. They had all those moving bits to them, all those minuscule changes that were meant to clue the observer into whole thought processes based entirely on how a muscle may or may not have twitched: of course biomechanical beings, used to the lack of mobility offered by masks, mechanical snouts and artificial soft tissues, would find themselves struggling to keep up with that sort of silent language, especially when those speaking it (though perhaps "mimicking" it was more appropriate) went from one expression to the other so quickly and so abruptly.

Yet Gelu was stuck now in a simple, blank face, staggeringly easy to read: he was thinking, letting the cogs of his brain churn slowly amongst the rust and dust coating them.

He plucked a bone from the box. Instead of throwing it, he held it in his palm.

"It was my father's... Cousin, who got them," he spoke finally, more murmuring to himself in reminiscence than responding to his interlocutor. "One of the times they'd all gone up North, to my mother's side of the family - went out hunting with them. Found these in the lower fins of a ritina while butchering it."

His thumb traced the clean designs carved into the ivory surface.

Ehrye waited for him to continue, anger bubbling a little less violently underneath its armor as he watched him.

"They don't use them near the coast, you know?" Gelu said. The Ko-Matoran didn't know. He stayed quiet either way: something told him there was no point in answering. "They read entrails, like elder Usine. So they let my father's side keep them whether they really were astragalia or not."

He rolled the die between his digits.

"My oldest sister wasn't even born back then."

So those bones were older than him. Older than his whole generation.

They were so clean, though. The Ko-Matoran glanced down at the other ones, all yellowed and with their carvings all faded as the surfaces had slowly been smoothed inwards after ages of use. Those had to be even more ancient.

Either that, or maybe the dice for 'normal things' were just used a bit more often.

"What are they for?" he asked again.

Gelu gave a weak shrug: "Nothing," he repeated. "We don't have ritinas to hunt down here, and they didn't use them up there, so they weren't for anything. We could make them be for anything."

"And what did you make them be for?"

"... Family matters. Of our Northern relatives, I mean, since it was a long journey by theirs and we didn't have many occasions to keep in touch. We wrote their initials where we could, and we'd throw 'em before visiting them to figure what they'd been up to. Births, weddings, injuries... Deaths..."

"And did they work?"

He swallowed for a moment.

"Yes," he replied: "Usually, yes."

Ehrye studied him. He studied the Koniri's half-lid eyes, their gaze that stared into the ivory veins as if seeing beyond and within them, the way he kept turning that stupid piece of calcified carbon in his hand like it held the secrets of a whole universe.

It was so white and clean.

Its carvings so clear.

He looked at its similes within the black and white wooden box.

So white and clean.

So clear.

The letters carved into them - initials of names, he said... He tried telling them apart, struggling to make out those messy lines jutting everywhere around a circle instead of within it.

"Haven't thrown these in a while."

The Matoran's blue eyes raised back to the other's face with a furrowed expression, trying and failing to meet the still downcast rhomboidal pupils: "Why not?"

"Don't really have a reason to anymore," Gelu murmured softly.

His grip tightened.

"As far as I know."

His eyes didn't move from the small bone.

Ehrye followed them.

He couldn't pinpoint why, but he had the strange feeling that the other was almost scared of that die - of his own belief that it could tell him exactly what he needed to know.

As if he feared that nothing good could come from its responses, no matter what.

He stared at the thin cracks in the ivory.

If he was so scared, maybe there was a point.

Maybe he'd been too quick to dismiss all this as a sham.

The Glatorian had pointed it out himself, hadn't he? Even astrologers can't tell the future by using only the same handful of stars. And memorizing their names, their patterns, learning to recognize them and the constellations they were part of, keeping track of their journeys... It couldn't be more difficult than how the Koniri studied their ankle bones.

It probably wasn't even too different. He'd gotten some foretelling basics in Mata Nui - re-learned them, no doubt, collected them again from the depths of his amnesia - he could figure it out, if he got an idea on how astragalia worked. If he got the chance to practice.

He focused on the die again.

Then on the ones in the box.

So white and clean.

So clear.

They weren't for anything anymore.

"Could someone use them for something else?" he asked.

Gelu remained still, expression unchanged, blocked in his torpor; his body reacted in his stead faster than lightning, ears shooting backwards sharper than knives, fur raising itself into a fierce crest all along his back and skull, claws twitching forth ever so slightly, just enough for the Matoran to recoil as he noticed the motion.

He inhaled through his nose to suppress a growl threatening to bear his teeth. It worked only halfway.

Ehrye shivered when the Glatorian actually looked at him.

"You can't change an astragalia's purpose," he answered somberly. The box gave an intimidating clack as he placed the die back into it and shut it hard. "And I have no intention of giving these away."

His prosthetic legs strained and creaked as he stood from just how heavily he pressed against his soles. He placed the container once more on its shelf - not harshly, not enough to damage it; but the sound of it hitting the surface echoed sternly through the emptiness between them, making the Matoran shrink in his own chest.

Right, of course. Of course. Damn hastiness of his, always making him reach for things he wasn't meant to touch.

Nevermind. It was Destiny, evidently.

While he spiraled into confused thoughts (a mix of anger, shame, and other feelings he was having trouble finding names for) accompanying them with the frenzied tapping and scratching of his fingers against white armor, the Koniri took in a deep breath, and forced himself to count starting from one hundred.

When he got to one hundred and fifteen, like magic, the cloud of poison melted off his shoulders and finally allowed them to relax.

"You can have those ones," he called back to the other, voice casual and calm, nonchalant almost. His hand had raised to vaguely point at the other satchels on the floor, though he continued to show his back to both them and his guest. "If you want."

Ehrye watched his ears to understand if he was sincere. They were still pulled back, but didn't twitch.

"I don't really need them," he replied feebly.

"I hunt." Gelu said matter-of-factly: "I can get new ones in no time. Or ask somebody for spares if there's really no other way."

"I mean - these things, they're not..." The Ko-Matoran looked at the piles of astragalia before him, weighing his words with as much care as he could. "I don't... I wouldn't have a reason to use them."

"It's still foretelling - if you want to learn you'll have to start somewhere, no?" his host commented. He'd turned around now - eyes half-lid, ears raised. No smile, but his lips didn't ride all the way to his gums when he spoke: "Get the carvings and responses down. Make a few throws. Practice. If it keeps not agreeing with you, you can just give them back and continue with astrology. Or you go to elder Usine."

The smaller being bristled, but bit down on his metaphorical tongue.

He wasn't saying he wouldn't manage to do it. He wasn't saying his people's method of prediction was wrong.

He was suggesting the exact same thing that Ehrye had come all the way here from the beginning for: to learn. To find another way, any way, to be a seer.

Stars hadn't seemed to work.

His eyes fell back onto the satchels.

The bone felt light in his hands, and uneven, and unpleasant, but the longer he traced the symbols on its sides the less awful the sensation seemed to become.

He met brown eyes cautiously. When the other's expression didn't change, he wrapped his fingers around the astragalus and held.

He still didn't know how to read them, he mumbled to himself.

"Kirbold's a better teacher than me," Gelu offered.

The Mahiki soured, the less than pleasant trip up the mountain peeking through his memories: "As good as he at conversations?"

A snort: "You can't yank his tail and expect him to be glad about it."

"Even with whatever that means, I don't think he's going to help me learn much of anything."

Gelu huffed in amusement again, quickly rubbing the tip of his nose with a finger in a manner that seemed too deliberate to be just a meaningless tic: "Depends on how you ask."

-

The little one arrived just in time not to be late and got to work as quickly as he'd promised he would have, helping him stock exsidian ingots and frozen meat onto the back of his carriage.

Bringing Gelu along was a surprise.

Kirbold's eyes squinted as his ears flew back, though his fur remained flat for the time being: "The kid's with me first," he informed him. "If you want business with him you'll have to wait until he's done here. And if it's a long deal you'll better be ready to get him back down yourself, 'cause I'm not making another double trip just for him."

"Not to worry - the only one I've got business with would be you," the Glatorian replied. He raised a couple heavy bags beside his head, where the other could see it properly. "Meat and fur for New Atero."

"I've got that already."

"And now you'll have more."

The Koniri sniffed.

"Fair enough." and as his face relaxed again he nodded to the wagon Ehrye was hard at work stacking full of similar sacks: "Pack it on, I'll get the money."

"Give me a ride down and I'll do you a discount."

"Hm. Deal."

They shook on it.

He'd almost forgotten how quickly a job could get done with three pairs of hands at work. He briefly wondered if he should have taken to hiring a couple helpers now that he'd tentatively expanded beyond simple mining and into more varied trades, seasonal or full-time - maybe even employ some amongst these awfully laborious mechanical people; the rougher half of his self butted into his musings with a disgruntled growl, reminding him how little he fancied strangers hanging around his wares and his cart, and he grumbled between gritted teeth a reminder that a duty well done is one done alone.

A pang of pain in his back so potent that he had to stop and hold still right where he was, stretched on hands and knees with a strangled snarl and a tail so stiff that if it had been any longer it might as well have been a broomstick, brought to his attention the unpleasant reality of not really being in a position to disdain help.

He pointedly ignored his aching spine's commentary.

"How are things over there, father?" Gelu mocked him from the other side.

"Mind your own troubles, infant," Kirbold barked at him.

By the time he'd managed to crawl to the back of the carriage again his bones were back to agreeing with both him and each other, and almost all of the wares had been packed safely.

He nodded at Ehrye with a sort of stern approval, not flinching in the slightest as he watched the little one almost drop a few pounds of frozen meat on his foot with a jolt at the gesture: "You're a real speedy one, aren't you," he told him as way of a compliment. "You'll always find someone in need of you."

The Matoran gave a high pitched hum and fidgeted with his fingers.

"Not like this one here," the Agori continued as he waved at the Glatorian lifting the last of the exsidian, "Who has nothing better to do than lose fights and get tir nose into others' business."

"I drive well," Gelu replied while placing the whole thing down.

"Eh, and see what good that is now."

"I could save you the stress and lead the whole thing to New Atero for you, that's what good it is. If you let me latch Melsae on I could even get you there twice as fast."

"And then I'll have to pay for that beast too, won't I?"

"Offer me two drinks and I'll call it fair."

Kirbold twisted his nose.

"Well, damn your family," he relented as they shook on it, sounding almost resigned. "You and that awful cousin of yours know how to strike a good bargain."

The younger man turned to Ehrye with a tilt of his head and his brows lifted, as if proving a point.

His sand stalker (thin hooves bundled up so that the snow wouldn't freeze them) trotted at his side quickly when he whistled for it. Kirbold's aplotér immediately gave a loud snort in its direction, visibly wary of the unfamiliar creature approaching, but after a couple warning stomps allowed it the benefit of the doubt - in no small part thanks to the Glatorian's lightly purred reassurances as he bound the two beasts of burden together to the front of the cart.

In the back he could hear the two shorter beings huffing and grumbling, busying themselves with tightening the goods with ropes so that they wouldn't risk moving too much or falling out during the journey across the unpaved roads.

He hopped onto his seat and crouched, shoving his head over it to peek his head at the other two: "What's the bones' opinion on the way down?" he hollered.

"Haven't asked them yet," the other Koniri grunted.

A flick of an ear in Ehrye's direction startled the Matoran: "Let the little one try."

Kirbold stiffened with an awfully loud scoff.

"He's got a good wrist," Gelu continued with a shrug. "He threw for the first time in my house and got a pair right out the gate. Not a very high score, but - pretty promising sign, I'd say."

The Agori shot a side-eyed glare at the biomechanical being.

Ehrye remained frozen in place, not daring to speak or move a muscle. He watched the other size him up with a suspicious wrinkle of his nose, ears pulled so far back that they seemed to be sliding along his spine; they tilted lightly with his head as he considered the Glatorian's words, his options, what he knew of his momentary hire.

He snorted suddenly, warm breath grazing the Mahiki and condensing some of the cold air upon it. His hand rummaged through two of the many satchels tied at his hips: it emerged as a tightly closed fist which he held up in an almost menacing manner, as though it was about to fall upon the poor Matoran with the might of an avalanche - though the impact never came.

Kirbold's astragalia were many, their sides brightly colored in red or green; they crowded the furred palm, almost falling off it as he showed them to the white armored being in an act of trust that, for one as superstitious and skittish as him, was rather outstanding.

"Ask exactly this," he instructed, free index finger pointed sternly at the Kanohi: "Will the road ahead be sweet, the weather fair, and the journey quiet."

Ehrye nodded, eyes wide, trembling with anxiety. He struggled to hold onto the small bones as they were passed onto his own too narrow hands, repeating the Agori's words over and over under his breath so he wouldn't forget them: road sweet, weather fair, journey quiet, road sweet, weather fair, journey quiet, road sweet, weather fair, journey quiet...

He cupped the dice tight, so tight that they didn't even shake as he looked for a clear space on the back of the cart under the old Koniri's scrutinizing glare. He dared glance upwards, searching for a less judgemental presence: Gelu met his eyes with a half-lid gaze as he joined the shorter beings again, and only offered a relaxed raise of his ears as encouragement.

It was... Debatable, how helpful that was; but the Matoran did steel himself as best as he could, and started shaking.

Road sweet, weather fair, journey quiet...

He threw.

The astragalia rolled, clattered, rattled, turned, twirled, and finally stopped.

Immediately Kirbold went to inspect them, leaning so close that one could have rightfully assumed he was determining the response from the bones' scent. The Glatorian also joined him, effectively impeding whatever attempt of Ehrye's to parse how he'd done by their reactions, and the small being found himself stuck waiting behind them as dread gnawed at his gears.

A movement caught his eyes just as he was about to spiral: a flicker, a sudden lift of the Koniri's short tail. (For the briefest moment he wondered why it lacked the black tip he'd seen on Gelu's.) It being so white helped it stand out starkly against the blue leather he wore - another inscrutable Agori obsession, wrapping oneself in fabric no matter the weather - magnetizing the Matoran's focus.

He watched it carefully for clues, heartlight sizzling in his chest as the tail gave another flicker, leaning down again with a certain tension. It remained low as the body around it crouched further; then, very slowly, it began tilting left and right.

Wagging cautiously like a Hapaka pretending it didn't want a treat.

"I told you," Gelu smirked, "Little one's got a good wrist."

The other answered with a wordless grunt, doing his hardest not to admit he was pleased with the outcome. He tilted his head and flicked an ear.

"Not too sure about these ones," he finally said, lightly tapping a claw on a couple dice: "You're no type for interesting conversations."

"Must be about you two, then."

"Bah! What would I be talking about with him?"

"Astragalia," the Glatorian answered. He moved to the front of the cart before Kirbold could argue further, waving a hand: "It's a shame such a good thrower can't even read them, don't you think?"

The Agori stilled at his words. He turned back to Ehrye with a furrowed glare, making the Matoran shrink back in his shoulders as he was sized up and down again; a harsh huff left his dark nose in a large, heavy cloud.

He pointed at the bones: "What do you know about these?"

The younger being fidgeted: "That... That there's, uhm... Different kinds?..." he tried.

"Such as?"

"M... Masi- Masillabune, for, uh... For..."

Kirbold hushed him with a wave and a frustrated sigh, eyes rolled towards the sky as though something could have descended to his aid at any moment: "Fine, fine - I'll teach you," and after he'd wrapped the cubical bones in his furred palm again and hoisted himself up on the back of his wagon he extended his free hand to the Ko-Matoran, grumbling between his teeth: "Beats small talk, anyways."

The vehicle gave a jolt as the beasts started, Melsae pulling a bit too eagerly for her companion's taste; a low whistle got the sand stalker to slow down, and the journey began a smooth descent from the snows of the mountain to the desert sands.

"Don't let her give Cikic trouble!"

"No need to worry about that," Gelu snickered lazily without even turning to face the snarling Koniri: "Leave the beasts to me and think of your student."

A groan made him laugh even louder.

Sat as comfortably as they could in what little free space there was in the back of the wagon, Kirbold let the astragalia rattle on the wood between him and Ehrye, shifting them in two orderly bunches under the shining blue gaze.

They must have been even more striking in their heyday, the Matoran marveled: the red and green which colored them had seeped into the bone so deeply that the pigment hadn't faded despite their scuffs and smoothed edges telling of frequent use, and only now that he could see them up close did he notice that the carvings too had been filled in with a paint so blindingly white that not even the shadows seemed able to darken it into grey.

He almost reached for them, but hastily pulled back his hand before he could hazard a touch.

If Kirbold noticed, he made no big deal of it.

"Masillabune's for the weather," he only mumbled as he stretched.

Right, right... Ehrye looked back to the astragalia and gestured to the smaller group: "So the green ones?"

"Blue," the Koniri corrected (despite the dice being indeed green). "But yes, them's the ones. While the pinks over here-" (which were red) "-Are aplotér, for traveling."

"Hm, right. Gelu said that..."

"Ah? He told you, then?"

"Just - just a bit, not much, we didn't really... There was no time to do much else, aside from one throw... And I - he had to read them for me. I don't... I don't know your alphabet, or your numbers."

Kirbold pulled his lip up to noisily suck in a breath, air hissing around his exposed canine as he huffed: "Of course, of course," he grumbled to himself. A hand raked across his face while he muttered: "How am I supposed to teach anything when he can't read...?"

"I learn fast," Ehrye bristled.

"You can't even tell green from blue," the other scoffed. When the Matoran's mask furrowed further he picked a die and threw his arm out, dangling it next to the Glatorian's face: "What color's this?"

"Green." was the immediate answer.

The Koniri froze. He picked up another one: "This?"

"Still green."

Another one: "This is pink."

"Red."

"It's pink! You're just in the dark."

"I'm in the only part of the cart that's out in the sun. That's red."

The Ko-Matoran snickered.

Kirbold shot him a glare.

Dropping the subject with a harsh throw, he let the die in his hand rattle across the wood until it finally settled. Ehrye leaned in: all that met his eyes just more circles, lines and commas he couldn't have coaxed a meaning out of if he'd tried.

"Twenty," the old Agori huffed. "Could've been better."

He picked up the vermillion bone and held it out between his claws, rolling it from one side to the other slowly enough so that the mechanical being could see each one clearly.

"Notice anything about the numbers?" he asked.

The Ko-Matoran squinted, and raised a finger towards the right half of the symbol, a semicircle with a horizontal line hovering above it: "This is on all sides."

"That's zero - well, cut in half, but there's not enough space to show it in full. These astragalia's faces are carved with numbers from 10 to 60, so each cipher you see on them has a zero on one half and another number on the other, to turn them into tens."

"But if you can write them larger you just put them near each other, right?"

"Sure thing."

That was a pleasantly familiar detail in the face of everything else being so alien.

"So which number does this make?"

"Forty," Kirbold replied. He picked up another bone and handed it to the Matoran: "Roll it to the left, to the left, left... See, there's your regular four. Compare the shapes there with this left half, you'll see it's the same symbol."

Ehrye did as instructed. Indeed, despite one showing an incomplete version, both faces sported the same circle sprouting a trident upwards; what looked like a small oblique line with a dot to its right filled up the otherwise bare lower half, almost reminiscent of a Matoran Q written in shorthand.

That little oddity confused him for a moment before he realized the digit was shaped like an Agori M flipped upside down: it must have been a way to differentiate them, since dice had a habit of landing askew. Though he still found that precaution weird - it wasn't that hard to guess that it was supposed to be a 4, considering this was a number's game. Unless they had dice with letters, too... Like the ritina ones. But those were special, weren't they? He tried to look around for letters, squinting at the bones.

Snapping fingers interrupted his search: "Focus, kit," the Koniri reprimanded him: "One thing at a time. The sooner you get these down, the sooner we can move on."

The white Mahiki darkened at the moniker, but the organic being was right; so, as much as he didn't like it, Ehrye did as he was told.

Agori numbers really weren't as hard to read as they first looked to be, he was pleased to find out. They followed the same fundamental design as the letters, but much less erratic and always perfectly specular, identical on both sides: on Kirbold's own suggestion he took to memorizing them in reverse, beginning from the double tridents of 9 and slowly chipping away at their details starting from the lower side - taking care to remember that 7, 5 and 2 all shared a peculiar 'floating' pattern, not connecting one of their horizontal lines to the circle.

He hadn't expected such a variety in dice either. Aside from the two he had already been shown going from 1 to 6 and 10 to 60, there were others instead carved with multiples of various numbers, or only two or three repeating across the uneven faces; a couple did have letters etched onto them (and indeed on one of them he found an M, with an oblique line and dot at its right sitting above it to differentiate it from the number it looked so similar to), though he couldn't even try to imagine what they may have meant; a couple more still had drawings that ranged from a few strokes to a few dozen, the result so unusual in its style that he had a hard time making out what they were supposed to be.

The simpler ones were apparently called 'seeds', based on a game played with cards - a three pointed star, a stylized shovel (or spoon?), a coin bearing an incomprehensible incision within, and what looked like a very ugly flower, all accompanied by stylized numbers and letters at their side.

The others, though...

"Those are the Famines," Kirbold told him casually, taking a moment pop his feet off his ankles and massage the sore stumps while the Matoran was busy squinting at the die as hard as he could to make something, anything out of the strange carvings.

Ehrye lifted his head: "The what?"

Worn claws clacked softly against the bone as they pointed at each drawing: "Field, Familiar, Forage and Ferret," the Koniri explained. "The four Famines."

"A lot of Fs..."

"Yes, well, alliteration helps sticking it in your brain."

"What are they for?"

The Agori replied to his genuine question with a dumbfounded stare, a harsh flicker of an ear and something like a disbelieving cackle: "Do you hear me asking what your Great Spirit is for?"

Ehrye blinked.

He blinked again.

And then another time, for good measure.

"But you're... I thought," he babbled aimlessly for a while until he managed to string a few words together into something close to a coherent sentence: "Didn't you...? The Agori, I thought you had the Great Beings."

"Before they deserted us, sure," Kirbold growled, fur raising into a crest on his head before flattening again.

"So these four, are they...?"

"Oh, cripes, no! They're way older than those cowards."

"Older?"

"Pro Certavi amore--"

"His world's one hundred thousand years old," Gelu reminded him: "They didn't have time to make new gods."

"Make?" the Ko-Matoran cried out. He scrambled upright, trying to push his head out to face the Glatorian without dislodging his mask: "You can make gods? You made the Great Beings?"

A soft palm pushed him back to his place with a bit too much force, almost causing him to fall over on a hard pile of exsidian if not for Kirbold's outstretched arm catching and righting him up in the nick of time. An angry rebuttal was stopped at the base of his throat by what sounded like purrs and chirps trying to shush Cikic's antsy guttural bellows: evidently he wasn't as used as sand stalkers were to sudden yells, and Ehrye must have given him quite the fright.

Considering the glare the Koniri still keeping hold of him was shooting him about it, his assumptions were pretty likely.

He was sat back down less kindly than he would have liked. He didn't dare complaining about the other's lack of manners; he could see his lip twitching, fighting against the instinct to ride up his gums and expose his canine in a lopsided snarl.

It didn't last long, fortunately: the sight of a being somehow smaller than him doing its best to curl into a ball, shining eyes alight with guilt, did eventually smooth down the Agori's furiously scrunched up face and pull his ears to the front from where they'd yanked themselves on the back of his head.

So all Kirbold did was huff at the white Mahiki, pluck the die from the mechanical hand still coiled around it, and mercifully spare Ehrye from a reprimand.

"That's a figure of speech," he said instead: "Gods aren't 'made', that'd be too simple. They've always been around, as far as we know. Either you find them or they find you; and whoever does that first gets to choose their name. That's the reason why the Great Beings are called like that."

"Because they came to you?" the Matoran asked.

He nodded, rolling his neck: "Showed up out of nowhere and introduced their merry band to the whole planet, or so they say."

"You weren't there?"

"Nobody's that old! It was a long while ago."

"But you said the Famines were older."

"Of course they are. The Great Beings were all about progress, sciences, new stuff like that - but you can't build anything if you don't start from the foundations. Everybody's got their own idea of what gives us the will to live, and you know what we Koniri think about that?"

"What?"

"That what keeps us alive is food! And there's no place like our homelands to fear starvation worse than anything else. That's one of those things that nobody can get away from - Agori, animals, plants... Even you people, I'm told. That's why the Ice Tribe found the Famines at the dawn of time, and struck our bargain with them."

"Gods of Hunger, then," Ehrye mumbled: "Enemies of Prosperity..."

"That's a bit too far now," Kirbold replied as he stretched his legs, tail thumping on the floor: "It's not like they want us to starve to death. They need us like we need them."

Much like Mata Nui had needed them, the Matoran reasoned; yet it seemed absurd in this context. "I don't see how that would work."

A scoff: "Didn't you listen? Everybody feels hunger. That includes the Famines, and if they let us die out they'd have no more offerings to chew on."

"But - but if that's the wind chimes, that's so little! And they're gods! They're infinitely bigger than you!"

"Exactly!" the Agori nodded: "Worse, they've got appetites like pups! Eating everything they can get their hands on if you don't give 'em rules! They could've turned the mountain into a wasteland that would've made Bara Magna look lively if we hadn't found and fed them with the scraps we had... If we lived in a place that gave us plenty of food at barely a quarter of the work, maybe they'd have a reason to be much more demanding. But then again, if that were the case, we probably wouldn't have found them in the first place."

"And why would that be?"

"Because what's the point of feeding a Famine if you have no reason to fear it?"

Ehrye hushed and ruminated on those words, gently twisting the die in his hands as the snow white effigies changed as each face was turned towards his eyes.

He hadn't followed Kirbold too closely when he'd assigned a name to each drawing, and the carving style was too different from what he was familiar with to help him make out anything that could have clued him in on their identities; none of these lines meant anything to him any more than the numbers and letters had.

It was a weird way to see divinity, just like bones were a weird instrument to decode the future with.

He wasn't sure if he would get it.

If he could get it.

His finger scratched idly at what looked like some kind of arch on one of the sides: "Which one's this, again?"

"That's Death."

"Oh." case in point. "Weird choice with the, uhm..."

"The bow?"

"Yeah."

"Why? What do you folks put in Death's hand?"

"I don't know. We don't really give it a body to hold things with. Viruses, I guess? Or a scalpel..." he rolled the bone listlessly until a detail caught his eye, his head tilting quizzically to help him get a better look. He held it up to Kirbold's head: "This one looks like you."

The Agori twisted his hand without force and squinted.

He huffed out a laugh: "Ah, we all look the same to you, don't we? Can't say I blame you, we've got the same trouble with the Gaquri. This is Life, in the shape of Mabara Bitri."

"Mava-who?"

"Legend of the Core War!" Gelu howled all of a sudden: "Faster than the crack of thunder! The greatest of wandering cooks!"

"Aye, aye, you don't need to sell her!" Kirbold barked, banging at the back of the Glatorian's seat much to the younger Koniri's amusement as his rough laughs were joined by Cikic and Melsae's complaints about the noise.

"Who?!" Ehrye repeated - a bit frightened, to be honest.

Louder cackles had him curl further into himself - until the older Agori smacked the back of Gelu's head hard enough to make him cough, and his voice finally fizzled out in hiccuping wheezes.

The miner huffed before turning back to the Matoran: "Mabara Bitri," he enounciated as clearly as he could: "Our tribe's second saint."

"But Gelu said something about a cook, and the Core War..."

"She was one, back then. A wandering cook, the most important position in our army."

"For... The Famines? Because you need to feed them?"

Kirbold broke into a lopsided smirk: "We need to feed ourselves first," he replied. The Mahiki heated slightly at the obvious answer. "And we were many, spread out rather thin across the battlefield - wandering cooks took turns moving from one platoon to the other, leaving us rations and stocking up on supplies as they went."

Not too dissimilar from an errand runner, then - aside from being infinitely more appreciated.

"What a woman," the Koniri continued whistfully: "You could've been hiding so well that not even the cold could catch you and suddenly there she'd be, right behind you, ladling boiling hot stew into your bowl before zipping away to the next poor soul in need. Truly a saint of life."

"She sounds very skilled."

"She is! A shame she's chained herself to o'mina Usine, but I suppose the old lass needs her most."

Ehrye perked up: "She's alive?"

Kirbold's ear tilted: "Should she not be?"

"You talked about her like she was dead."

"No I didn't."

"Yes you did! With all the past tense and the talk of being a saint, like that dead Glatorian they talk about in New Atero!"

"A saint's a saint alive or dead! The canonization, now, that is a posthumous thread to spin, but we'll get there when we get there. And the past tense is 'cause she's not a wandering cook anymore."

"So what does she do?"

"I told you, she's stuck herself to o'mina Usine, the elder."

"But what does she do?"

"What do you think the spry ones do for their seniors? Hunt, cook, keep the house, chop the wood, make sure she's clean, take her around, help her with divinations--"

He jumped in his seat as the Matoran gave a sudden sharp noise, spine tingling and locking up in pain at the harsh movement; uncaring to his plight, the mechanical being had already sprung to his feet a second time and leaned his head onto the driver's seat, arms poking through to grab and yank at Gelu with mild success while hissing: "You didn't tell me your elder was a seer!!"

A much larger hand grasped the whole of his Mahiki effortlessly to muffle him: "I did tell you," the Glatorian growled, "If the astragalia didn't work out I said you could go to her, remember?"

"How was I supposed to know that meant she could foretell?!"

He would have shaken him even harder if something hadn't collided with the back of his head, cutting off his vision and prompting him to let go of the organic being entirely as the impact had his brain fizzle out for a couple of seconds.

He blinked hastily when he came to again, finding himself sat back on his bum with a disembodied foot at his side. Said foot was swiftly lifted and smacked on the top of his head.

"Weren't you taught how to behave on a vehicle?!" Kirbold snarled in a way that was eerily close to Nuju's angered squawks, "Like how you shouldn't go around strangling your drivers before you find yourself crushed off a cliff?!"

Ehrye squirmed as massaged his metal skull and replied in tone: "We don't have drivers! And it's his own fault I did that! He didn't tell me that getting private lessons was an option!"

"Sounds to me like he very much did!"

"I did."

"You hear that?"

"But he-!"

The Agori's ears shot upwards all of a sudden, sharp and straight as arrow points, while his eyes widened until they looked to be bulging out of his sockets: "Ahhh pa-pa-pa!" he chattered in a suddenly higher voice, pointing at the white Mahiki; and the Matoran froze, stunned silent and attentive like a little snowman.

His blue eyes followed the dark furred digit as it shifted sharply left and right, then up, right between the brown eyes, where it stood for a moment or two.

Then it lowered with a brief sigh, and with it lowered Ehrye and Kirbold's shoulders, both beings feeling much calmer.

The Ko-Matoran blinked.

What in Karzhani had that been about?

"Can't believe that worked," the Koniri himself muttered, apparently just as surprised.

"Did you hypnotize me?" Ehrye squinted.

"What? No, it's just a thing we do to distract children from their tantrums. And speaking of that," the Agori was quick to follow up before the smaller creature could protest the comparison, "What's your deal, hm? First the astragalia, now Usine... What, do you gamble? Do you have plans that need some kind of specific prediction?"

"I - no! It's my business!"

"So it is a treacherous thing, isn't it?"

"No! It's... I said it's my own business!"

"Awfully secretive business. Aren't your white armored folks foretellers too? Astrology, that's what you said, no? Sounds cleaner than her practice. What is it you want that you can't even ask your own kind?"

"I don't want to ask anything! I just want to tell for myself!"

He slapped his hands in his mouth; too late.

A sharp canine peeked at him from beneath a furred lip, coarse tongue clicking against it.

"How old are you, again?"

That... Wasn't a question he'd expected. Ehrye fumbled with his fingers a little, wondering if he should count a life he didn't remember.

"Two thousand," he mumbled in the end.

Kirbold further twisted his mouth to reveal his gums, though he whined instead of growled, and laid his chin into his own palm: "Explains a lot, aye," he sighed. His free hand passed over his face, mussing up his fur in a way that made the patterns on his cheeks look smudged: "And why in Plude is a kit like you so desperate to pursue this kind of career?"

"I--! I... Wasn't allowed to," the Matoran grumbled. "Got told I didn't have the stuff for bein' a scholar, let alone an astrologer."

The Koniri hummed: "So you'd rather try bones and butchering?"

"Butchering?"

"Usine reads entrails." (Gelu threw in a casual "I told you that, too", which Kirbold ignored.) "You know what that means, right?"

"I... Uhm..."

"It means she cuts open animals and pulls their intestines out with her hands. Is that what you want her to teach you?"

The white mask grew somehow paler.

There you go.

The Koniri plucked the cubical bone from the now much weaker mechanical hands, placed it back in its proper satchel, and picked a few others - only the numbered or seeded ones.

"How about I teach you a few games with these first," he proposed with a sigh, "And then we see how to get simple answers out of them?"

Ehrye nodded, still looking a bit nauseated.

"Att'a boy. Let's start with poker..."

-

Elder Usine sat very straight.

Through her stillness she commanded an air of severity that was almost frightening. It made her seem incredibly tall, despite Agori not really reaching great heights and her chair further keeping her from stretching upwards. Her hands were folded carefully over her lap, sometimes twitching harshly - though she was careful not to let her claws, which she could no longer retract, tears through her clothes; around her arms and waist latched thin metal beams like upside down ribcages, holding her muscles in place as they connected through cables to an apparell on her back which could have easily been mistaken for a Skakdi spine. It had saved her life ages ago, when her vertebrae had been cracked and her nervous system grievously damaged, yet the procedure had only been halfway successful: the nerves on her legs had responded badly, turning even the slightest strain into a synonym of blue hot anguish, and though her lower limbs could and did still sometimes move nobody dared ask her to stand, or worse, walk.

Her gaze, of a rich brown that burned holes through her pale fur (the dark marks upon it broken up ever more frequently by white hairs that defied even her summer coat), was firm and steady, as if her eyes had been marbles fixed on the inside of her skull.

Turaga Nuju held it with a furrowed glare of his own. Ehrye, behind him, shifted uneasily on his feet.

"Which of you asked of me?" spoke Usine.

Nuju turned to the Ko-Matoran; he coughed slightly, and replied in a half-whisper: "Me, o'mìna," with the dreadful feeling that he had misplaced an accent.

She gave a short hum: "Close. It's ò'mina." she corrected. Her immoble eyes turned to the grey Matatu: "And you?"

"This is Turaga Nuju," Ehrye explained quickly: "He's - he looks over us Ko-Matoran of New Atero, and he's our lead astrologer. And he only speaks the language of the fliers."

The Turaga warbled a greeting.

"Queer." the Koniri commented, head tilting and words tinged only with an honest, placid curiosity. "This boy is your ward, then."

Nuju nodded.

She turned to Ehrye again: "Come out from his shadow."

One of her ears drooped as he followed her command. He watched her nose twitch towards him, as if trying to get a read on him through his smell alone.

"Kirbold told me about you," she said. Her voice had a strange quality to it - like a knife carefully held in cotton. Her hand twitched; he caught something on the cage around her arm change color for barely a blink. "He mentioned you have a good wrist with astragalia, and are desperate to become a seer."

The adjective had him shrink in his shoulders, not daring to meet Nuju's eyes about it: "Yes, o'mina," he murmured.

"You do know how I foretell? What my practice entails?"

"Yes, o'mina."

"And you still wish to pursue its study?"

"Yes, o'mina."

Another quick hum. "Does your Turaga know?"

A metallic gulp. "Yes, o'mina."

Usine flicked her ear slowly, with method; the motion gave the idea that she had once had a habit of smoothing it down with her finger to think. Rhomboidal pupils moved again to Nuju.

"Ours is disgusting work," she said plainly: "I have no reason to lie to you about it, or pretend that reeking of death as I sop my hands in guts and blood is something the Koniri find more pleasant or clean than the sight of the stars. Part of this trade is indistinguishable from that of a butcher and by a butcher I was taught; the same would be of your boy. Do you allow him to learn?"

He was going to say no.

He was going to say no again.

He wasn't fit to be a scholar, let alone a seer!

Even now, he was going to say no.

He was going to say no.

Nuju nodded.

Usine nodded back, seeming pleased.

Ehrye stood, stunned, between the two of them.

A gust of freezing wind rushed into the house with a horrible clatter of bones and shells and branches, and then a door shut hard.

The old Agori's ears flew back: "Birì!" she called.

"O'mina!" replied a younger voice: "A moment to be yours!"

"Chew your seconds!" she yelled back. Her stern demeanor did not waver as she returned to her guests: "She's back from a deal with Ferret and Forage," she explained matter-of-factly. "Wait just a bit more. She'll be quick."

There was a great commotion in the room behind her - cracks and thumps, fluids gushing, the awful (thankfully short-lived) shrieks of metal against bone - as if a blizzard had taken over it; but before they could settle into that uncomfortable symphony it was over, replaced by the wet sounds of cleaning, and before they knew it they were no longer just three.

Mabara Bitri had grey eyes.

They were frightfully lively, the brightest stars which pin the edges of a constellation in place; pale marks on her cheeks burst out the corners of her mouth like scars, and instead of the left-buttoned blouse typical of her tribe she wore a long stained apron and a sort of dark sleeve wrapped along only one arm, tucked into a glove.

She leaned down to gently bite Usine's ear as greeting, extending her own for the older woman to do the same. Then she fixed her shining eyes upon their guests.

"Our boy and his keeper," the elder introduced them.

Nuju nodded with a sharp, short whistle; she leaned forward like a fox bounding onto a shrew, grasped his hand in both her own, and shook hard enough to rattle him: "The astrologer, yes!" she cried.

Then she turned to Ehrye, her ears shooting up and joining at the peak of her head almost in the shape of an arrow point, and she did as she had for his Turaga, looking into him intently as her long canines peeked through her smile.

"And you're the lucky little one," she grinned, "Good at dice and speedy as well! We'll like you, we'll like you lots up here."

Maybe he should have thanked her, but he was still thoroughly shaken from her greeting and what tumbled out of the Ko-Matoran were: "D-do-don-don't-t-t sh-sh-sha-shake-ake of-f-f-f m-m-my-y-y ar-r-rm-m p-plea-ea-ea-se-se-se-"

"Birì." Usine called.

The Koniri stilled immediately, attention fully turned to her elder.

"He's metal."

"Ah!" and she let the Matoran go. "Better not unscrew that."

"Better not. Prepare us the table, if you would."

Mabara Bitri leaped away to another part of the house as though she'd been sprung from a catapult, faster than lightning, grin still wide, grey eyes still shining bright. Usine let her pass in the way one stands aside from the path of a snow devil; only when a new orchestra of who knows what tools began its symphony behind her did she shift her arms slowly, with a bit of difficulty, to bring them by the side of her chair's wheels and find her grip.

"Come," she ordered her guests once she was steady enough to swivel around: "We figured it was only fair to show you a reading."

Nuju turned to Ehrye. The Matoran stood perfectly still.

Sighing as his eyelid trembled and his patience waned, the Turaga looped the blunt end of his pickaxe around his ward's waist to yank him forward with as much gentleness as he could muster.

His once errand runner stumbled on his feet, grasping tight onto his arm; but finally they managed to move forward.

It was a huge thing, the kitchen - or maybe it was of a normal size for an Agori house with more than two rooms. Biomechanical beings never needed much space for food, not even the few who chose to chew it, but their cohabitation had shown just how different the ordeal must have been for creatures that had stomachs.

It was packed, not an inch wasted. Everywhere they looked there seemed to be some kind of furniture that demanded space. The hearth took over almost an entire wall, while opposite of its fire stood (upon a central section of floor paved in a noticeably different manner, as if to allow fluids to drain from it) a large table that looked to have been recently cleaned; knives and spoons hung from shelves stacked with bones, containers, bundles of herbs, swaying above drawers filled with who knew what; lidded jars were secluded to a dark corner beside a series of stools - no, those were boxes, chests mostly buried into the ground, exhaling cool fumes as Mabara Bitri crouched before them to rummage through their contents.

How strange, Ehrye noted.

She had no tail.

The thing she pulled out with a triumphant smile did have one, and it was frozen stiff. She shut the cover in a hurry before the cold could escape the chest and scampered to the table, laying her strange offering before Usine.

A bowl and a towel were swiftly placed in the old Koniri's lap. She nodded in thanks and dipped both hands in the recipient, soaking them completely to wash her palms, fingers and claws with methodical care; one of them spasmed upwards without warning, throwing droplets of soapy water onto the ground, but she reined it in enough to submerge it again. Her aide helped her dry them and lifted them gingerly to lay upon the flat surface - just in reach of the knife.

Where had it come from? It hadn't been there seconds ago. Had Mabara Bitri fetched it? When? He hadn't even caught the movement. She was so terribly quick, and she moved so much. Looking at her as was like watching a Rama's wings flap while blinking rapidly, each minute change in position melting into one another until they appeared to be happening all at the same time.

Usine's voice snapped him out of his thoughts: "Wash your hands."

The bowl was already at his side. Ehrye hurriedly complied, scrubbing his fingers as much as he could; only when he was handed the towel did he think to ask: "What for?"

"Meat is dirty enough on its own," the elder replied: "It's always safer to be clean when handling it."

The Matoran froze.

"We won't ask you to do anything other than observe our reading closely. But in the case you did wish to feel the organs for yourself, we need to take the necessary precautions."

Nuju raised a hand and shook his head politely as soon as she turned to him: he would sit this one out.

She nodded. Motioning with her chin she pointed him to a chair where he could rest his legs for a while; the Turaga took it gratefully, watching like an owl from the branches the other three beings huddle around the strange creature on the table.

It had been a mustelid once, perhaps some sort of ermine or mink, maybe a weasel - not that Ehrye would know, between never having had an interest in Rahi and none of the ones he could recognize looking even remotely like the beast before him. The frost on its tubular body, colored in variations of browns and beiges, was thawing before the great heat of the hearth, glistening weakly as it evaporated; the limbs were short, thin and stiff, sticking out of the body much like swords stabbed into the ground to better show the wear and tear upon the pads of the pink paws, while the abnormally flat snout stared into the wall, its features unrecognizable to a point where he had no clue how anybody would have figured out the placement of its eyes or nose or mouth upon that weird burnt-looking mug.

It was even hard to see its ears! The most obvious part, with how they sprung out of organic skulls...

An elbow nudged the Matoran out of his silent investigation. Mabara Bitri, glove now stuffed into her apron's pocket and sleeve rolled all the way up her elbow (beneath the fabric was no fur, just skin - blackened and crisp like the trees of the Charred Jungle, twisting in strange taut patterns across the limb), pinned him in place with her brilliant eyes.

She smiled at him: "Are you ready?"

Ehrye stared at her stained canines, longer than any he'd ever seen, and nodded.

Usine gripped the knife. She murmured something very quietly as her caretaker wrapped her hands within younger ones, moving them as though they were her own: together they held down the animal and carved a long line across it, cutting it open from the neck all the way down to its tail.

Bloodless lumps and long curly worms spilled out of the furred body with a squelch as a horrible smell arose from the ensemble. Queasiness wrapped around the Matoran's legs, his footing suddenly turning unstable.

"There is a bucket to retch in," the elder informed him calmly. Her leg nudged said tool closer as best as it could. "Use it freely."

"Thank you, o'mina," Ehrye whispered.

He didn't really want to ask what 'retching' was, but he had the unpleasant feeling that he would have really liked to do it.

Mabara Bitri placed her elder's hands away from the mess before digging into it. Her fingers shifted expertly through the various sacks and strings that composed the little beast's insides, knowing exactly what she was looking for and where to find it: sure enough, she soon triumphantly pulled a soft almost egg-shaped ball from beneath two flabby segmented burlaps and tested it under her digits.

"Oh, the heart's nice and healthy," she noted, inspecting it up and down with her bright grey eyes. With a flick of a blade she severed it from the tube connecting it to the rest of the flesh and handed it to the older Koniri: "No spots, walls still solid - check the peristalsis, o'mina."

Usine pressed onto it a couple times, watching carefully as it followed the irregular rhythm she set: "Hm. A good start."

"What now?"

"Liver."

"Right away." and back went Mabara Bitri, fetching this time a brown slab. Something about the spots on it had her tilt her head: "Ah, this one worked overtime… But it did a good job, hm? There's no sign on the heart."

"Let me see."

"Here, o'mina."

Ehrye watched her twist the flesh and test the marred portions, ear flicking slowly as if smoothed down by a finger. To his surprise, she moved her gaze onto Nuju for a few long seconds; the Turaga furrowed his expression quizzically, but his silent question was not met by an explanation.

"Nothing we didn't know or imagine," she concluded. "Kidneys, if you would."

"Of course." now her aide dug out two huge lumps, of the vague shape of beans. She squeezed their lower end lightly and clicked her tongue.

"Stones?"

"Hard to tell, o'mina, but I'd say so. Have a touch yourself."

Usine's hand twitched harshly: the mechanism on her arm flashed a dark blue light, returning to a soft glow as the palm laid back against the table before it could raise any higher.

Maybe she had trouble with those kinds of movements? Mabara Bitri had been the one to manually place her arms where they were now, after all - and he the more he thought about it the more he realized she had always kept them close to her body, lifting them as little as possible outside of her sudden involuntary jolts.

He wondered if they hurt.

"Hm. There are."

Ehrye jumped as her dark eyes fixed upon him.

"… Is it bad?" he dared ask.

"It can be." she replied.

He almost made to check for himself, hand reaching out towards the flaccid sack-like thing to find those mysterious minerals they didn't want to tell him about before he returned to his senses and retreated it, nowhere near ready to experience the horrid texture of dead flesh for himself. He resorted to wringing his fingers anxiously for a moment or two under the Koniri's patient gaze, at last murmuring: "But do they mean something bad?"

"Liver and kidneys function as barriers," she explained while her claws dragged across the soft texture without tearing into it. "One traps external threats, the others filter internal waste. Impurities or damage upon them mark obstacles on the path one has chosen."

"So, it… Could be worse?"

"The liver's survived two serious poisonings!" Mabara Bitri chimed in cheerfully. "The older one was more extended, but we've yet to find any effects on the rest of the body, and the more recent's mild enough considering how visible it is. There's no getting an edible dish out of it but it still makes for pretty good news!"

"As for the stones," her elder continued, "They are small enough to either grow or disappear. The outcome only depends on your willingness to work against them."

White armored fingers tapped quickly against the back of a hand as the Matoran pinned the words to the back of his mind with a slow nod. It was an objective, something he had to deal with: an internal obstacle, born entirely of his own head…

He could fight it.

He wanted to be a seer too much not to fight it.

Something in his stance must have given off an air of determination, or something similar that Usine deemed satisfying. Finally her rhomboidal pupils turned back to the animal and she moved on with her reading: "Stomach."

Her aide fetched it immediately: "Large!" she commented as she passed it over. "Sturdy walls."

"Hm. Lungs?"

"Nice and soft, no tears."

"Bladder."

"Oof, now that's a bit weak."

"What's that mean?" Ehrye butted in.

The younger Koniri leaned down onto him, nose twisted in a wide playful grin that scared him into his shoulders: "That you're impatient, lucky one!"

From his chair, Nuju huffed, amused.

"Impulsivity," Usine replied, cool and concentrated. "Breath and appetite translate to ability and drive, and yours are fine enough; yet they will be of you precious little help if you burn through them so quickly."

She leaned forward, reaching thoughtlessly for the tangled wires: a choked whimper ripped through her throat the moment her arms extended slightly beyond usual.

Mabara Bitri was on her in an instant, muttering something into her elder's tense ears as she pulled the aching limbs back into a more comfortable position and dug her thumbs into her arms' muscles until the old woman's lips relaxed to cover her teeth again, undoing the horrible snarl the pain had frozen them in.

They exchanged a few more whispered, incomprehensible words; then, after receiving a stiff nod, she pulled the twisted guts into the other's hands as they slowly stopped twitching, like nothing had happened.

Ehrye watched them inspect the slithering tube closely, sniffling at it while they leaned down enraptured by each coil and turn. They spent a discreet amount of time on it, more than on any of the previous organs - muttering to one another animatedly, testing the flesh, commenting on its appearance, its consistency… They spoke Agori, or some variant of it, so he couldn't understand a single thing, but such a keen interest shook a strange anxiety in his chest. What were they reading in that gross cable? What was it telling them about him?

He dared scuttle closer, closer, almost enough to see the veins through the skin but careful not to let his Mahiki graze the furred arm. He caught the side-eyed glance his motion earned him, but was glad to find it did not sting through him; so he hazarded laying his fingertips on the table and pulled his head a little closer.

A chuckle came to his audio receptor: "Impatient…"

The Matoran squirmed: "It's talking about me," he mumbled, "I've got a right to know, no?…"

"Fair enough, fair enough…" and Mabara Bitri's bell-like laugh trilled again around him, tinkling like the many knives hanging from the shelves as they collided. "Would you say the reading's done, o'mina?"

Usine answered after a few seconds: "Hm. Yes, this should be all."

She tapped her claws twice, very softly; her aide, ever quick, cut the intestines from the rest of the body, picked up the stomach along with them, and rushed to another side of the kitchen to do who knows what.

"Doesn't it have a brain?" Ehrye asked, pointing at the animal.

"Of course," the elder replied.

"But you didn't look at it."

"Its folds are tangled with thoughts, drowning in them the responses we seek. The organs provide them more readily, as they answer to instinctive commands, unburdened by complex calculations; there is no reason to waste time running a fine comb across a mind to catch nothing but garbled hints."

"And chopping the head off is the easiest way to drain blood!" Mabara Bitri added without even turning to them.

Oh.

So that's why it looked…

And here he'd thought he was being clever.

Not even realizing that the thing before him didn't even have a head.

In his embarrassment, the Matoran only lowered his eyes away from the body and murmured: "Right. Of course."

"Don't pretend you understand." Usine told him, stance and expression completely unchanged as she stared down at him. She didn't sound offended or angry, or even just annoyed. "It was a fair question to ask."

"It was stupid."

"Not for you."

He could feel her eyes burn holes through him.

"This is a world apart from your own," the Koniri continued. "Unfamiliar and incomprehensible even to most of my kin, though they understand its foundations. We are a tribe of hunters, used to carving our way through creatures of flesh and blood. It's simply not the same for you."

"Then… It's hopeless?"

"Then, you will have to learn from the start." she corrected him. "As I told your keeper, part of this trade is indistinguishable from that of a butcher; that is the most crucial half of it, and the half you're precisely missing."

Ehrye thought back to the bucket.

"You will have to learn to skin an animal and take it apart. You will have to recognize its bones, its glands, the signs of illness and the oddities of nature. You will have to learn how to drain blood and cut meat. You will spend most of your early tutelage removed from even the palest idea of foretelling, devoting your efforts towards getting acquainted with the unpleasant feeling of lukewarm, squirming flesh."

He really wished he could retch.

"It will not be easy."

"It really won't, o'mina."

"I know."

She watched him stall. His hands were gripping the table.

Nuju waited.

"Are you still desperate?"

Mahiki almost translucent, he nodded.

Usine flicked her ear slowly, slowly, as if smoothing it down with a finger.

-

It was a good thing they hadn't taken any crabs, Orkahm mused as he snuggled deeper into the cape he'd been so graciously lent: aside from old reliable Pewku (who was too busy doing errands for the Turaga and ramming into the back of Takanuva and Jaller's legs whenever she saw them anyways), he couldn't imagine any Ussal treading through the snow as comfortably and surely as this aplotér beast was doing. Maybe he should have invested in one of his own… He made a note to ask the breeder about the species' opinions on crustaceans.

Tehutti, wrapped around him and shivering hard enough to rattle him, whined about the stubbornness of the Ice Tribe's elder, and how they shouldn't need to freeze to death every time they had business with her - which was a fair complaint, but after the fourteenth repetition it was starting to get awfully stale.

It was a relief when the houses came into view.

They stomped their feet to warm them as they jumped off the cart and onto the frozen but blessedly snow-less ground, and made a line for the first sapient creatures they saw - a small group of Koniri who tilted their heads at them curiously, as if they'd never seen a Matoran up close before. Which, in hindsight, was likely exactly the case.

"We're looking for Elder Usine," the Le-Matoran started: "She sent us one of those skin tablets for a deal with Turaga Whenua. We brought things from New Atero, and she was supposed to give us the… Uhm… What's the word - stuck? Stuck animals?"

One of the Agori flicked her tail: "Stuck?"

"Stuck as in… As in not alive, but not, uh… Bones? Yet? Or soft. Er…"

"It's dead animals that stand stiff and look like they're alive," Tehutti tried to help.

"Ah," another drawled, ears drooping, "The taxidermy models, yes… Good thing o'mina's found someone to get rid of 'em."

"Why'd she even have them?"

"Who knows? Might've been a courting gift."

"Like o'mina's the type to court."

"Someone mighty stupid could've not heard that before getting to work."

The once Archivist interrupted the conversation with a cough: "So where is Usine? Or Omina, if she's the one who has them?"

A furred hand pointed lazily at a building much larger than any other in the village: "O'mina Usine lives there," the Koniri explained. "You can leave the stuff you brought her by the kitchen door in the back, that should do fine. Last time I saw those awful Lebori things they were all around her room, so don't go get 'em yourselves without asking."

Clear enough instructions, Orkahm's beloveds.

"We were also looking for Ehrye," he added quickly before the group could leave.

To his dismay, his second inquiry was met not by another simple answer, but with furrowed brows and tense ears.

"A what?"

"Ehrye. He's a… Well, a friend."

"There's no Ehrye in Iconox as far as we know."

"But we were told he was studying here."

"You were told wrong, I suppose."

"But - are you sure? He's pretty easy to recognize, uh… As tall as us, white armor, Mahiki-"

"What?"

"He's got a Mahiki, a Noble Mahiki."

"Ma-what?"

"It's his Kanohi-"

"Can't you speak Agori?"

"Can't you speak Matoran?" Tehutti butted in angrily, grasping the sides of his Kakama: "A mask! Like this one!"

A few of their interlocutors raised the fur on their heads into crests, as displeased by his tone as he was of theirs; one Koniri however, after a second of puzzlement, smacked a hand onto her mouth and widened her eyes as a realization dawned upon her: "That's Birì's boy!"

They turned to her utterly baffled, one exclaiming: "She doesn't have sons!"

"Her apprentice, idiots! He's one of these ones!"

If Matoran had been in the habit of biting things, the two smaller beings would have probably tried to snatch at the finger she was so impolitely pointing at them with as if they'd been a pair of common shovels.

Their indignant thoughts had to however be put on hold as something bright and sharp rushed into their vision, canceling out the world around them.

"It's you!" cried out a voice like metal on metal: "A bit late, but in time!"

Some kind of fabric wrapped around their hands and shook hard enough to scramble their vision, mixing together blues and whites and pale dark lines opening before them to reveal chatty icicles threatening to close down on them with each syllable: "Come, come! He'll be glad to see you!"

When their bodies stopped clattering and they managed to still each other again, Tehutti and Orkahm found that they had moved somewhere else entirely: their cart stood by the wall of what seemed like a larger than average house, the aplotér driving it already snout deep in a bunch of hay to enjoy its well-deserved lunch; half of their goods had been spirited away already, and only by sheer luck did they catch a glimpse of their strange new captor as she jumped onto a stool, ran her hand through some peculiar wind chimes, and bolted through a door with a tightly clutched armful of tools and fabrics.

For a short time, they remained very still.

Then, unsure what else to do, they unloaded the cart of what was left, took turns standing on the stool to brush the chimes, and entered the kitchen.

Ehrye was completely taken by a headless fish he was struggling to cut open, only welcoming them with an absentminded grunt. He dug into its belly with a jagged knife held sort of clumsily in his unusually almost fuchsia hands, doing his hardest to keep the flesh intact while trying to remove both the bones and the skin at the same time - not really seeming to be succeeding at either task.

"That's a bit brutal," Orkahm commented.

The other kept at it with his head hung low: "It's not my fault - you've been doing this for over a hundred thousand years and I started five months ago!"

"I don't think we were even made a hundred thousand years ago!"

That finally got the Ko-Matoran to lift his head: "Oh! You're here!" he exclaimed; in a moment he was off the butchered river catch and over to his guests, helping them drag their loads a little further into the kitchen so they could rest a moment.

"Hello," Tehutti greeted him as they shook arms. "The pink is a weird choice."

"No, that's the blood."

"Oh."

"How goes in New Atero? Is it autumn yet? Was the road really marshy on the way here?"

"Don't make me think about it," the Le-Matoran whimpered pleadingly: "We barely had the time to get out of the sands and onto solid ground that one of the wheels got stuck and we had to shove it out of ankle-high mud all by ourselves or it wouldn't budge. And then it happened again, and again, and again-"

His companion shivered, nodding along: "Horribly paved pathways! That sort of thing would never fly in Onu-Wahi! And worse, the cold came down awful fast and almost froze our legs off because we were all wet!"

To their confusion, Ehrye lit up.

"I got it right!" he grinned. He turned to another door, fists pumped in triumph: "Mabara Bitri! I got the roads and the weather right!"

"Good job!" the sharp voice howled back, matching his excitement.

The other two blinked.

"I'm practicing astragalia too," the to-be-seer explained giddily: "Some stuff always ends up being a bit off, but I'm getting better at them!"

That meant just about nothing for his fellow Matoran.

They hazarded some mild congratulations nonetheless.

The task of loading the various taxidermied animals onto their cart was being handled by the strange Koniri who'd dragged them here (if she even had been a Koniri - all they'd seen effectively was just glimpses of teeth and stains on a long patch of blue), as they could tell from the sudden flashes of her bursting in and out of the room like a tornado, strange shapes accompanying her visits outside but not returning with her. Having already handled a fair chunk of their wares as well, all she had left them to deal with was the food reserves from Atero: not much meat, but mainly vegetables, fruits, herbs that didn't grow on the slopes of the Quartz Peaks.

After a bit of deliberation, they decided the best course of action was for Ehrye to show them where everything went as they took stuff out of the crates: soon enough all three were trotting left and right across the kitchen, shoving weird tubers in the correct containers or bundling up dried out stems to hang on the first free hook they found while the Ko-Matoran chattered endlessly about whatever unusual thing his peers pointed out.

After entire months surrounded only by people who found the weird food-related customs he'd learned to be utterly normal, it was only natural that he'd be so eager to share it all with someone who understood his bafflement.

"At least you're having fun," Orkahm commented.

Ehrye's entire body had a displeased spasm, like a mouth pursing after biting down on a lemon.

Ah.

"Aren't you…?"

"Everything stinks," he wailed dramatically: "And it's all squishy and wet and gross and drippy! My hands are always soaked, the nerves get caught in my finger seams, I've cleaned more digestive systems than I want to think about, half the stuff squirms out of my grip like it's still alive, bones are hard to saw through, and I can never get my cuts done quickly!"

A whirlwind swept through the kitchen again, blue and white all over with yet another strange animal in its grip: "Do them slowly!" cried out the tinny voice with bright grey eyes as it disappeared through the door.

"But you do them fast!" the Matoran cried after it.

Another blur, a sharp laugh: "It's all experience!" and off it disappeared again, into some other part of the house.

Ehrye pouted.

Tehutti, still gripping the table in the very real fear that whatever force of nature came and went as it pleased would hurl his not particularly notable body weight into the ceiling, cautiously leaned a bit closer to him: "You know - we did also come to check on you. If you don't like it here you can just come down with us," he offered.

His words seem to give his impatient peer pause.

He mulled over them for a quiet moment, absentmindedly pulling dried blossoms off a stem and into a bowl where they would later be crushed.

"I mean," he eventually replied, "I'm getting used to all that, so it's not like… It's not the end of the world, it's just gross. But doable. And I'm pretty good at a lot of other things, like collecting blood! Or descaling! And it's true I haven't started with real predictions yet, but I'm learning how to do them, I'm making progress. More than I used to with astrology, anyways. And I don't even have to run around in every direction like a scared Dikapi to do someone else's errands - Mabara Bitri does that, but she likes it, so..."

"So you like this?"

"What! Am I not allowed to like something?"

"You made it sound like you didn't."

"I said it's not fun, because I'm still stuck at the gross part!"

"So do you like it or not?"

"Augh!!"

"Don't stress him," a metal laugh startled them. "Our boy doesn't work well when he's peeved."

Mabara Bitri stood unnaturally still in the doorway, only the tips of her ears flickering rapidly with a certain amusement: her grey eyes glimmered bright despite the shade around her, their gaze stabbing through Orkahm and Tehutti like pins through a framed butterfly's wings. In her arms, stiff as a log despite the dynamism implied by its prowling pose, a large feline waited patiently to be delivered.

She bared her teeth into a wide, stained white grin.

Suddenly she was right before them, casting a long shadow over the smaller bodies.

"Sweet laborious things!" she chirped. Her voice had the clean sound of a polished, well sharpened blade. "You've already got the kitchen all tidied up and you didn't even have to! I would've done that on my own! I'd give you each some marrow to suck for your troubles but I fear that's not your style."

Orkahm fought every screaming bone in his body to agree: "We're good, thanks."

"Stay for lunch! I've got to start at it anyways!"

"No, really, we're good."

"I can give them this one to go," Ehrye interrupted her, pointing at the half gutted fish he'd abandoned in the midst of cleaning. "And they can get the last one of those stuffed things out of Usine's room, since you'll be busy with the preparations and they need to be off soon."

His fellow Matoran nodded feverishly.

To their great relief, Mabara Bitri seemed appeased by the compromise as well.

In a second she was outside again, and the room seemed to grow wider as the shaking wheezes they finally allowed themselves to exhale pushed against its walls.

Ehrye went back to his dead prey with the tranquillity of someone who hasn't seen their life flash before their eyes as they'd barely survived the judgment of a furred, bright-eyed, long-toothed beast; he grasped the knife tight, tugged harshly across the belly, and at last managed to carve through the fish in a manner close to seamless.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, pleased: "There you go."

As he watched him pull the bone out with enviable calm while the Le-Matoran hurriedly dragged him out of the room, Tehutti wondered - a little fearfully - if the household was rubbing off on the would-be seer.

Elder Usine's room was small and snuggled tightly in an overwhelming penumbra. If the Koniri's fur had not been white she would have no doubt blended perfectly into her own bed, made indistinguishable from the dark heavy covers above her by the shadows surrounding her at all sides. She looked to be sleeping, at least at a first glance: still, less than keen to try their luck, both Matoran agreed to keep quiet.

Just in case.

There was only one creature left in the room for them to take, something vaguely reminiscent of a Kane-Ra, not as huge as they'd feared it would be nor as heavy as it had initially seemed: lifting it came surprisingly easy, and its light weight turned out to be a blessing when they took to navigating their way back out a lot slower than they would have liked, to make sure they wouldn't bump into anything that could fall or make a ruckus, or damage the model. Their arms didn't even strain by the time they were in reach of the doorway.

That was when Orkahm froze.

Tehutti only noticed when he almost pushed hi into the wall as he tried to move forward. He shot him a glare, but the other ignored him completely, staring behind him.

Usine met his green eyes with a stony half-lidded gaze.

They weren't that distant from her, but the meters to her bed felt like miles.

She hadn't moved at all: she was still laying on her back, perfectly still, innocuous, frail. Only her eyes had opened slightly like pinprick black holes upon her face, but it was enough to cast a freezing spell upon the whole room.

"You are Turaga Whenua's aides?" she asked quietly. There was no drowsiness in her tone. She sounded alert, and cold, and soft in the way a pouch full of glass shards might be.

They nodded.

"Thank him on my behalf. I hope he is able to find a use for these beasts when I could not."

They made to move, but found themselves stuck.

They waited.

"Bring Turaga Nuju my regards as well," Usine continued. "His boy will make a good student."

Her eyelids fell, her breath deepened: in a vertiginous second the room thawed from the freezing air of command that had enveloped it, and Tehutti and Orkahm shuffled out of it as fast as their legs could take them.

-

"You were up in Iconox, weren't you?"

Tehutti jumped about two bio directly into the air, which was quite the altitude for an Onu-Matoran to reach.

Gelu's ears flew back. He had to remember these folks were used to bodies making way more noise than his own could feasibly produce, and approaching them without saying anything was more or less indistinguishable from ambushing them.

"Oh! You're… That guy," the once-Archivist said lamely.

"Yep, that's me."

"Hi."

"Hi. Glad to see the taxidermy exhibit is out of o'mina's house."

"Oh, yes, Turaga Whenua's very enthusiastic about it. They're pretty interesting, really! We hadn't considered any viable alternatives to stasis tubes for archival purposes, but since we might not be able to make any more of those we'll be asking the Jungle Tribe to teach us how they achieve this sort of effect!"

"Good for you. You saw Ehrye, I take it?"

"You know him?"

"Tell 'em to tell him he owes me a rematch!" Kirbold yelled a few bio away from where he was talking with a green armored Matoran. "I know he cheated!"

"He didn't," Gelu shot him down: "And they already came and went anyways."

His fellow Agori gave a disgruntled grumble.

The Glatorian turned back to Tehutti: "I'm a bit of the reason he's up there. How was he?"

"Oh. He was… Fine. He was fine. I just told Turaga Nuju. He was very relieved to hear that."

"You don't sound very sure about it."

"I am! He told us and all! It's just, er…"

The ruckus of a biomechanical body covered the rest of whatever answer he was trying to come up with, distracting the Koniri long before a hand tugged at his shirt to direct his attention to his side.

"Your females are frightening," Orkahm felt the need to inform him.