She came out of it quickly, as the supply of chemicals from glands in her neck and brain stem shut off. The compounds already

in the girl’s

brain cells began to break down, releasing her.

Reality blew around her, the breeze freshening cold against her skin. She wiped the sweat from her brow. There were tears

in her eyes, and

she wiped them, too, sniffing, and rubbing her reddened nose.

Another failure, she thought bitterly. But it was a young, unstable sort of bitterness, a kind of fake, something she assumed

for a while, like a

child trying on adult clothes. She luxuriated in the feeling of being old and disillusioned for a moment,

then let it drop. The mood did not fit. Time

enough for the genuine version when she was old, she thought wryly, smiling at

the line of hills on the far side of the plain.

But it was a failure nevertheless. She had hoped for something to occur to her, something about the Idirans or Balveda or

the Changer or

the war or… anything….

Instead, old territory mostly, accepted facts, the already known.

A certain self-disgust at being human, an understanding of the Idirans’ proud disdain for her kind, a reaffirmation that at

least one thing was

its own meaning, and a probably wrong, probably oversympathetic glimpse into the character of a man she

had never met and never would

meet, who was separated from her by most of a galaxy and all of a morality.

Little enough to bring down from the frozen peak.

She sighed. The wind blew, and she watched clouds mass far along the high range. She would have to start down now if she was

going to

beat the storm. It would seem like cheating not to get back down under her own steam, and Jase would scold her if

conditions got so bad she

had to send for a flyer to pick her up.

Fal ’Ngeestra stood. The pain in her leg came back, signals from her weak point. She paused for a moment, reassessing the

state of that

mending bone, and then—deciding it would hold up—started the descent toward the unfrozen world below.