Morning came into the woods gently. The light arrived first, thin and gold, threading down through the canopy in slow columns that moved as the branches moved. Then the birds — not all at once but one at a time, each adding to the last until the whole forest was carrying something that sounded almost like contentment. The fire had gone cold in the night. The air was cool and smelled of moss and wet earth and the river somewhere nearby.

  Iruga opened his eyes, lay still for a moment, and then sat up.

  Chiyo was still asleep against the elm root, hair pooled around him. The space where Mina had settled the night before was empty. The grass there was flattened and the impression of something large remained, but Mina herself was gone.

  Iruga looked at the empty space for a moment. Then he decided it was a problem for after he had dealt with more immediate business, and he followed the sound of the river.

  He found it a short walk through the trees — clear water running over flat stone, the morning light sitting on its surface. He moved to the bank, picked a spot, and was about to attend to things when he saw her.

  A figure at the river's edge, downstream. A woman. Red hair falling past her shoulders, pale skin catching the early light. Iruga stood where he was and stared, in the way a man stares when his mind is still catching up to what his eyes are doing.

  He stared for longer than was reasonable.

  "Why the fuck are you peeping me?" The voice cracked through the morning air like a branch snapping. "Are you a fucking pervert?"

  Iruga blinked. "Mina?"

  "Yes, Mina! The fruit worked! Now turn back to the elm tree, you perv!"

  Iruga turned around so fast he nearly stepped into the river.

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  He walked back to camp with his ears burning and his eyes fixed on the middle distance. Chiyo was awake, standing a few feet from the elm, and his hands were moving — slow, deliberate circles in the air, one following the other in patterns that were almost a dance but not quite. Something more purposeful than a dance.

  Iruga stood and watched him for a moment.

  "Want to join my tai chi routine?" Chiyo said, without looking at him.

  "I'm good. I've had enough exercise with a shovel for one lifetime." Iruga sat down on the root. "Hey. Mina. She's a woman now. How did you know the fruit was going to work?"

  Chiyo completed a circle with his left hand. "I told you. That fruit is celestial."

  He said it the way people state things that should end conversations.

  Mina came back from the river shortly after. She had made do with what the woods provided — large leaves, arranged with the pragmatic efficiency of someone solving a problem under significant constraints. The vital areas were covered. That was the extent of it.

  Iruga looked at her face and kept his eyes there with considerable effort.

  "How are you feeling?" he said.

  Mina looked down at herself and then back up. "Weird," she said. "I'm back to being human. But I was seven the last time I was in this body. After fifteen years." She turned one hand over, examining it. "This is an adult body. It doesn't feel like mine yet." She reached up and touched her hair, pulling a strand forward to look at it. "And I'm pretty sure I didn't have red hair. But I can't thank you enough, mister child."

  "That's the fruit doing its job," Chiyo said, from across the camp, without looking up.

  Iruga nodded. He was fairly sure his face was doing something he couldn't control. He had spent his entire life in Smardoh, which was a cattle farming village, which had not prepared him in any meaningful way for this particular morning.

  Chiyo looked between the two of them and appeared unimpressed by the general situation.

  "Quit your yapping," he said. "Get ready and let's proceed." He pointed at Mina. "You're joining us now, woman. You owe me a fortune for that peach slice."

  Mina opened her mouth.

  "Non-negotiable," Chiyo said, and picked up his things.

  They left the elm behind as the morning warmed around them, three of them now on the road north, the forest thinning gradually as the path climbed. Iruga walked and tried to think about the road ahead but his excitement overshadowed his thoughts.

  End of Arc 1