Lenore Serapis, who had never seen it before, wept. For joy or heartbreak, I could not tell, and I doubted she could either.

I led them into the capital through the Ashumel's gate, and there we were awaited by the nakked, the Guardians who ward the safety of the Emperor. They fell in around us with the precision of their exquisite training; they did not speak, but they did not have to. They led and we followed. With this incomparable escort, we made our way through streets perfumed by the blossoming gardens, past fountains and golden buildings graciously framed in flowering trees, up the streets ever deeper into the atani until we had pierced its heart and reached the capital's center, the midpoint, the source of all the rays of Ai-Naidari influence: the dwelling of Thirukedi, the heart of the empire.

What do aunera think of it, seeing it for the first time? Do they expect something grander? Or is it overwhelming as it is? To us it is a little like a temple, the seat of Civilization; it is gracious in design and girdled in gardens and fountains, and the breezes that pass through it smell of incense. There is something of permanence in it—the warm golden stone—and something of the ephemeral, in the blossoms that litter the stairs leading inside, petals that are taken by the wind before any gardener can sweep them away. It is a little uncanny in that way: there is a sense to the heart of Kherishdar that it is maintained by the spirit of its people, rather than their bodily selves, and that all the Servants and Guardians and Public Servants who work there are ornaments on that spirit, which is animate without them.

But for me, I would say that what I remember most of the Emperor's residence, the few times I have been in it, was the light... warm, welling brightness, as if the soul might grow in response to it the way a flower would.

...but I was not to enter this time. The nakked escorted us to the residence and we found there a Servant, garbed in layered robes of mist-gray and pearled pink and wearing the token of empire around her wrist. So composed was she that I think the aunera took her for a statue until she spoke first, as was permitted by her role as one who greets those who come to a House.

"The nanaukedi, the fathrikedi and the aunera are to dismount," she said. "They will be taken inside to Thirukedi, who awaits them."

Haraa's surprise I felt in the tension of her shoulders and arms before she released me and slid off the beast. She joined the others, glancing at me once before one of the nakkedi gathered them with his eyes and led them away. As they walked up the steps, the Servant returned her attention to me.

"You are alone, osulkedi?" she asked, politely Abased but with a forthrightness that her role as the Emperor's Servant required.

"Shame could not return immediately," I said. "He will be escorting his penokedi home once that worthy is recovered enough to make the journey. I can explain further...?"

"Thirukedi will send for you when He is ready for your report," she said. "If you wish to leave your beast here, we will have it returned."

"That would be a great help," I said, and dismounted. I bowed, then. "I will await the Emperor's summons."

"Go with peace in your heart, osulkedi," she answered, and took the mount's reins.

She vanished then, leaving me to contemplate the palace's doors. The lord and his lovers and Haraa had all gone, and with them my duties had been discharged. It felt strange to be free of this mission; I could not help but feel as if too many things had been left unfinished. My artist's soul whispered that the final touches on the work had not yet been added, and I could not help but wonder. How would that story end? What final stanza awaited the poem that the lord had begun in his ascension on the stairs?

Perhaps I would never know.

At last I turned from the palace and departed, on foot. It was the first time since I'd left that I felt some hint of normalcy returning to my life. I found it... strange, but soothing. Even if journeys never end—perhaps particularly if they do not end—it is wise and good to rest, now and then.

What was it like to go home?

What is it ever like to go home? When one has been away? When one has changed so much?

I opened the door to my studio and saw again the gracious space I had spent so much of myself in. Aphorisms to soothe troubled spirits, wisdom tales to teach, words to inspire the young or the struggling, paintings to lift hearts or calm them... I touched my fingers to the edge of my work table and felt the years of my life there, layered on one another like glazes on a slow-drying painting. The air here had substance, and the pigment there had been formed of my own soul.

Every day. Day after day. Giving of myself. Pouring myself from a broken vessel onto parchment, racing to empty myself into my gifts to others before the last valuable thing in me had seeped away.

I sat on the window-seat in the early evening, watching people as they walked home from their errands, their work, their social calls. I remembered the feel of the pages of Shame's journals; remembered reading them right here, remembered my first astonishment at his genius. I remembered falling asleep on the window-seat, crumpled over the first of those journals.

I kept the dareleni.

I know it seems nonsensical at first hearing. I almost didn't. Kor was not present, and not likely to be so in the flesh for several days. But that was the thing that created the need for the dareleni. His absence had become a hole, and I made the art in response to that hole. Because even his absence implied him, and I could not do anything but face it.

So I went into the trunk, which had indeed been delivered, and brought out the paper block. I cut a page free and set it on my work table, a proper work table at last, large enough for me to spread out, for my arms to move without cramping. I laid out all my materials; I even opened my locked cabinet for the pigments made of ground gemstones and the precious metal leafs.

Perhaps I had been among aliens too long; perhaps even a moment is too long, for an Ai-Naidari to be among aliens. But when I put brush to paper, I was seeking a concept I could not easily choose a word to describe. It is thus, aunera: our words, uninflected, are plural—I have said this before, I believe—one begins with the plural and creates the singular. Thus, Ai-Naidar, and one Ai-Naidari. Until my visit to the colony, I had not realized that there was some other way to exist. That one might begin with the singular, and from that form the plural. That one might begin with isolation, and build community. It is not so with us; we assume community, and make allowances for isolation, and this is normal, this is how we survive, this is how we think.

...except for years, I had not been living that life.

Coming home to my echoing studio and the revelation of the empty years I had spent here, so devoted to my ishas and so consumed in my mourning, I realized... I had been living like an aunerai. Apart. Singular. Isolate. That the one rare and perfect love that Haraa had thought so astonishing had created that situation; I had had all that I needed, and when I lost it, the devastation was complete. Not just emotionally, but in my mind, in my assumptions, for it had taught me that one person was sufficient.

If one person is sufficient, aunerai, then when that person is taken away, no one can be again.

How strange, I thought as I painted flowers. How strange to realize how alien I had been in my own mind, long before I ever met one of you. How deep and perilous the crack in my pot. And how wise Thirukedi, to see it.

What I wanted to paint was the truth of what it was to be Ai-Naidar. To chase that subtle understanding into a single word, that we assume solidarity and communion, so much so that even our language builds on that basis. That to hold oneself apart is to be incomplete in a way so implicitly understood we don't even name it. Even our expressions are different from yours: you say of someone that they are complete in themselves. We say we are complete in others. And we both think this brings serenity.

So I painted an absence. Of Kor. Of Ajan. Of Haraa, the lord, his lovers, of what might have begun with Seraeda and had not. I painted the absence of my beloved Sejzena. Of my lost Marul. I painted the absence of my family, still in the country serving their rithkedi Noble. I painted the absence in my heart and the silence of my studio.

I painted flowers, ornate and delicate and lovely, peach and pink and silvery gray, lavender and yellow faint as dawn. I painted sorrow-nots and sovereigns and cloudsbreath, honeyfletch and brightsheaves, lilies and pansies. I painted blossoms that herald youth and those that honor death and all the flowers that celebrate our paisath in between.

I painted them around a vacuum in the center of the page, and left the center blank.

Now, as in the beginning, came the time that blurred, without form or context. The days between my return home and the summons that began my new life seemed one long stretch. Very little about them remains distinct in my mind: the sunlight, warm without burning, so gentle on the felt-soft fur on my face and ears, that I recall. The lack of strain in my walk when I walked... and all the walking I did.

That I remember best of all. That I walked everywhere. To bid it all farewell.

This has been my studio since I came to the capital; some of you might know a little of that from other tales I have related. I lived in the atani of the lord of Neriethen, who first engaged me as a Public Servant artist on behalf of his people. When Thirukedi came to claim me some years later, Neriethen's lord told me he would be honored did I remain in the studio he had given me, despite my now being osulkedi to the empire entire, rather than his district's calligrapher. So I stayed, because it was home, and from that studio I went forth on my errantry when I was required, or stayed home and painted scrolls that were given to whomever Thirukedi deemed needed them. But I had never felt the need to leave. I had had good years here, and it was in this bed that I honored my vows to Sejzena in her lifetime, and conceived my only daughter... and in that bed that I honored my vows to Sejzena after her death, and slept alone.

So many memories.

Nor did the studio own them all; the district itself was dense with them. The cafe with the melon and sweet rice dish. The shrine where I burned incense for my ancestors, and my father in particular. The clinic where my friend the district physician dwelt; the route to the library, where I was a familiar sight to the ancient and enigmatic librarian. The fountain where I first saw ajzelin close enough to read the joy in their eyes...

This place was home.

Was home. How could I stay here, with the ghosts of the lost and the weight of the empty years that had followed? How could I make a life here without my ajzelin? I could not imagine living in the temple with Shame, but neither could I imagine him trapped here, in a sunlit studio barely large enough for me alone. I could not conceive of what my life would look like after this, but I knew it would be different. And so I walked, to all the places I had frequented before. To look at them, again. And to come home and paint them, in miniature: little rectangles on a single page, glimpses of a moment in time, of morning sunlight on the awning of the cafe, of late afternoon gilding the water rippling from the fountain's center, of the warm red glow of the paper lantern that still hung outside my studio door, gift of a son of Saresh.

These miniatures were all painted in the moments stolen between my long peregrinations. But I stopped my work at supper, and did not resume it again until the following day. After that first evening, I did not keep the dareleni. Instead, I sat on the window-seat, or in my bed, and read the journals that remained in the trunk I could not bring myself to fully unpack. And this time, when I found reference to blood and guilt and expiation, I thought less of literal knives, and accepted Correction. The harm I had done myself was no less grievous for it being exacted in silence, in a form that no one would easily recognize. To allow oneself to bleed to death unnoticed is no less a form of suicide than to ply the knife directly.

There came an evening when there was a knock on the studio door and I opened it to find Shame, and my two worlds, the new and the old, suddenly touched. To this day, that image remains an imperishable memory: the glow of pale starlight on the fringe of hair against a cheekbone limned by the dim red glow of the lantern hanging alongside. I can even smell the sweetness of the night-blooming irises that drifted in with the evening breeze as we faced one another across the threshold of my studio.

And then I stepped aside and he entered. I began to ask the question when he interrupted me by gathering me into his embrace; he knew better than I did what we needed, and we did, we did need it. I folded my arms around him and together we leaned against one another, breathing in tandem, until I had the smell of temple incense in my nose and he, no doubt, the smell of sizing and oil and lampblack ink.

When at last we parted, I said, "Ajan?"

"Home," he said. "At the temple sleeping under the eager watch of the others. He will have no want; I think they sent for the physician just to be sure of him, but he is hale, Farren. He made the journey upright, if worn."

"Unbelievable," I whispered.

We both savored it in silence: from death's certain grasp to returning home in some handful of days? In some things, aunera, your temerity cannot be trammeled in words. You ordain, and somehow, sometimes, the world obeys.