About half an hour later, with the sun just barely above the horizon, they came to the place the coach master had mentioned. It was indeed a dried up riverbed that cut deeply into the plains, with a thin stream of clear water that languidly made its way through a thin stone-filled runnel less than a tenth the size of the riverbed itself. The flood season was well and truly over for the year, but it still made Nat a little nervous, looking at how much water it would take to not only fill but overflow this channel.

  Somewhat reassuringly, Lyn indicated that they should find a spot away from the riverbed for now; letting the coach sit beneath the level of the stone walls the riverbed had incised into the rocky plain.

  “Nat, bring your bedroll along, please — just the blanket; No need for anything else at the moment.” Lyn instructed.

  “Tanner, stay with the coach if you could, Nat and I will be back some time after dusk — feel free to set up a campfire if the coach master feels it appropriate.”

  They made their way along the edge of the riverbed, Lyn searching for a spot that met criteria they had not yet shared. Nat said as much.

  “We're looking for a spot where a potential activation of your Talent won't cause any major problems. No fires, some shelter for me, and out of view of the coach. Tanner is familiar with some of the peculiarities of your condition, but I don't feel we need to frighten the coach master, unless we'd like to walk the rest of the way. Also, that way we can invite Moira along without raising questions.”

  Lyn snapped their fingers, as before, and Moira's arc appeared.

  Nat wasn't sure what the protocol was for this sort of thing, so he just went with a simple, “Welcome back, Moira.”

  “Why, fancy meeting you here, stranger.” Moira replied in her tinny voice.

  “So, you two think this is dangerous still?”

  Moira took the answer, “We're not entirely sure, to be honest. It may be that the prior repairs hold and there's absolutely nothing to worry about. But why take chances?”

  “Fair enough. What's the plan?”

  The plan, as it turned out, was to find a reasonably sized stone with a sharp angled corner, and position Lyn around the side away from Nat, while still being able to reach around the edge to hold hands. Their arm, and side facing him, were covered in his heavy fireproof blanket. This would give Moira access to his system — as before — in case of problems, while also shielding Lyn as much as possible from any potential danger.

  Nat felt like maybe they were taking this way too seriously, but he kept it to himself. They'd know soon enough, he supposed. He still felt silly holding hands with someone hiding on the other side of a rock in the middle of a riverbed as dusk approached. The more he thought about it the sillier it felt. Moira might be a jokester in her way, but Lyn didn't give off that vibe at all, so if they were taking the time to do all of this, it was worth taking seriously.

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  So, they held hands. They were going to wait until right before dusk before doing more than hand-holding, though, to avoid potentially triggering an event themselves. Moira would only establish the connection if it was needed, she assured Nat. He wasn't that stressed about it though — the interior mind space didn't bother him, it felt … comfortable, or perhaps familiar?

  He let his mind drift as the sun finally vanished entirely beneath the horizon. According to Lyn, the pulse they were concerned about could happen at any time. It technically may have already started as theromagnetic field lines swept through the nearest schism, slightly before or after the actual cloak of night rushed across the plains. Laster was only a smaller schism, as these things went. By some definitions, it wasn't a true schism at all, in that it wasn't stable by itself. It existed as a sort of echo of a much larger schism, which would be found much further down the western bar of the hanging horseshoe shape that was the continent of Mirran.

  Nobody could be certain where or which schism was the parent that Laster was an echo of, because the raw energies output by the combined wounds in spacetime became progressively more lethal the closer one approached. Humans like Nat, Brin like Tanner, and other animals from Enkarr — or Earth as it was becoming more commonly known — were capable of withstanding these energies by dint of being native to an entirely different dimension, or so the Ber'Duun said.

  We were all of us descendants of accidental visitors to this world, spanning back thousands of years, so the Ber'Duun told us. And tell us they did, Nat could personally attest. Few Ber'Duun lived in the Gravlin area, due to the discomfort that proximity to schisms caused. Some naturally more resilient species — like the silverpaw — did come to visit or trade, however. There was an attitude, a tone, common to interactions with the remaining Ber'Duun; these lands had been theirs, up until the start of the great cataclysm — and then over decades the lands and waters had become like poison to them, and they were forced to abandon them or go mad or die.

  Humans, long merely just a footnote in the history of Enkoet, moved into these lands with a fervor borne of both greed and deprivation. The Brin came with them, though the history there was a bit confusing to Nat. The Brin had previously only been of sub-human intelligence, for the most part. A few naturally intelligent species long ago become peers in truth, if not in recognition. But around the time of the second cataclysm, right when Nat had come to Bell House, there had been a jump in capability, and the generations coming out of the creches since then had largely been equivalent to Humans. Though that was less commonly admitted.

  Many Humans, even ones Nat had known, still held to the belief that Brin had hit their milestones long ago and fallen short of Humanity, and thus somehow could never advance. It made no sense, in the face of objective testing showing dramatic improvement, but people were people, for good or ill. What couldn't be doubted was that the newer generations of Brin were capable of being far more humanoid. Tanner's musculature and bone structure differed greatly from a Human, but ultimately he walked on two paws. Only a few more naturally suited Brin had been capable of that in years prior — Bonobos being one of the more common examples, though not in this area. These changes were generally attributed to a leap forward in understanding, but the creches which had sprung up around the time of the second cataclysm insisted they were responsible.

  Nat thought it somewhat strange — the creches hadn't really seemed that prevalent when he was a child, but he chalked that up to either not paying attention or just shifting attitudes over the last decade and change. This was one of those areas where he was sure it wasn't his memory; the number of creches had indeed risen dramatically. He put it on his pile of things to learn about when he had a chance, along with everything else.

  He was in the process of sorting through his list of questions to ask Lyn, Moira, Tanner, or anyone else during this trip. A trip that — while exciting — seemed overly dramatic or perhaps unnecessary when the world around him went utterly mad.