Serit finished eating, then opened the door at the back of the kitchen. There was a short corridor on the other side that curved to the right.

“Your room is at the end,” they told Saia. “If you need me, I’m in the second to the left. But I gave dispositions to shut you down in about an hour, so try to limit your movements around the place. I wouldn't want for you to fall and ruin your statue.”

Saia nodded. She had tried to ask more about the 'fundamental problem' of cloud people, but they had refused to tell her anything.

She entered the corridor and walked on toward her room, not knowing what to expect. She didn’t really need a bed, nor anything else apart from maybe some books to entertain herself with, but she guessed they would be in whatever language cloud people spoke.

She distractedly adjusted the strap of her bag and froze. The snakes.

“Everything alright?” Serit asked from behind her.

She considered keeping them without telling anyone about their existence, as a secret weapon. But even if they were asleep, they needed to eat and keep their temperature regulated. Whatever she'd be forced to do in the following days, she couldn't guarantee them anything.

She turned.

“I have some sea snakes with me. They're asleep,” she added, opening the bag to show Serit. “But they'll wake up as soon as you deactivate me. They need a tank to swim and at least a mound of earth to…”

“I don't have seawater,” Serit interrupted her. “But there's a public aquarium at the bottom level.”

“A what?”

“Think of it as a museum, but with fish.”

Saia reflected on their words for a bit.

“A what?”

“Nevermind, the point is that they can take care of your snakes there. I’ll store them in separate boxes for the night and have them delivered in the morning.”

Saia looked at her snakes. She'd always thought of them as food at worst, tools at best. But they still deserved to be taken care of properly.

“Give them meat, any kind,” she said, gathering them in her hands with the same gentleness she would use to pick flowers. “And keep them in the warmest spot you can find. Tell the people of the aquarium that they need to get on land, sometimes.”

“I sure hope they already know that,” Serit said, taking the bouquet of snakes with their bare hands. “Be right back.”

They turned around and disappeared beyond the kitchen.

Saia proceeded along the corridor, trying to open the doors she came across to. They were all locked. She expanded her domain to check what was behind them: she found mostly tools and materials of various shapes and sizes, but no glass, and certainly not a shard with her viss on it.

The second part of the corridor, after the right turn, continued for a bit despite not having doors on either side. The dullness of the unpainted wood was softened by the three large windows on the left wall. Looking through them, she could only see one of the alleys at the sides of the warehouse and the building in front of it.

She reached the end of the corridor, where a single door awaited her. It was a bit ajar, discreetly letting her know that she could enter. She opened it and stepped onto a monochrome blue carpet.

The first thing that caught her attention was another of those eerie lights, the half-sphere of glass bolted to the roof. A brass wand protruded from the center of it downwards, ending with a rounded tip half an armlenght over her head. She prodded it with a finger, but nothing happened. She observed the luminous fog for a bit before focusing on the rest of the room.

There was just one window, facing the alley from which she and Serit had arrived. Below it, there was something she could only describe as a giant pillow. She sat onto it to try it out: it was big enough to hold her entirely, even if not fluffy enough to prevent her body from touching the floor through the padding of plumes and the sturdy cloth enveloping it all. Still, she appreciated the feeling of the pillow raising along the outline of her body, as if she was resting on a cloud.

That thought ruined the whole experience. She was on a cloud, sort of, and away from home. She needed to play nice with Serit until she knew where her shard was, then steal it back and leave.

She got up to explore the last interesting element of the room, beside a wardrobe that she chose to ignore: the bottles.

They were lined up on the shelves of a small cabinet: it had five rows in total, but only the top two were occupied by one and three bottles respectively. They were similar to the ones she'd seen in the kitchen, with slightly different shapes and sizes, a transparent liquid inside, and labels in that vertical writing. Each of them was encased in a pedestal that protruded from the wood, to protect them when the cabinet was tilted forward.

She took one of the bottom three in her hand, allowing it to enter her domain, and immediately felt the viss it contained. She focused on it, trying to read it as if it belonged to a person.

The room around her disappeared for an instant, replaced by a bright morning sky extending all around her. Part of her was still aware of the room she was standing in and the bottle she held in her hand, but the rest was far away in that imaginary sky. Two giant birds flew in front of her, one attacking the other with its long talons. The person riding on the bottom bird bent forward to elude the attacker, who screamed of anger, gripping the reins of his animal in one hand and a sword in the other.

Saia looked down and around her, but the vision didn't move with her gaze. The bottom bird folded its wings and fell towards the clouds below. The attacker went after it, and only at that point Saia felt herself flying down with them, their warring shapes colliding in front of her.

“Do you like it?”

She stopped reading the viss so abruptly she almost lost her grip on the bottle. Serit was standing in the doorway, looking pleased with themselves.

“The snakes are in the warehouse. I gave them some bird meat, it should last well beyond morning.”

Saia slid the bottle inside its pedestal. Serit stepped closer and rested a hand on top of the cabinet.

“So you can read them?” they asked.

They were trying hard to seem uninterested, but Saia was close enough to sense their curiosity.

“I saw two giant birds in the sky with people on their back.”

Serit nodded, barely holding back a smile.

“That's a scene from the middle. You have to look for the starting point.” They took the bottle back out, holding it as if it was the head of a baby. “This a story-bottle. An old one, from when I was young. We usually read it by immersing a finger in it. You gods can read it with your innate use of the viss, of course. Humans can learn to read them with time, or they can obtain the same effect by drinking it.” They grimaced. “A lot of stories have been lost this way because of some heartless merchant.”

Saia considered the bottle with more attention.

“What's that liquid?”

“Humans call it 'cloud water'. We call it éshan. A more literal translation in your language would be ‘blood’.”

Saia recoiled a bit at that. Serit smiled openly.

“Don't worry, it's spontaneously donated. There's a donation center at every level besides the fourth, and anyone can buy empty éshan from there. Even if famous viss-sculptors prefer to work with something that already has viss inside. They base the images on the memories already there.”

“How do they even do that?”

“The basics are easy, we all learn them at school. Magic comes easier to us than to humans. Obviously if you want images and not just voices, it requires a lot more work to get right.”

“No, I mean… Our brain isn’t supposed to understand the data inside viss, right? Unless we establish a code or something. So why can I see these images?”

Serit shrugged.

“I’m not an expert in that field, but that’s just how our blood works. It makes viss readable by our brains.”

They put the bottle back on top of the shelf and took another one.

“You should start from this. It's a course of Shilizé, our language. It contains the entire vocabulary, grammar and quite a few examples.”

When they held out the bottle for her to take, she realized that 'quite a few' was an understatement. The bottle was filled with three times the viss of the previous one.

“And I should study all of this?”

“Handle it carefully, it’s incredibly expensive. Anyways, it's not supposed to be read like the other story-bottles. Ideally, you should drink it. You can’t, but I guess you'd gain the same knowledge by copying the information it contains into your viss.”

Saia nodded, weighting the bottle in her hand. The novelty of everything she'd seen was fading. She looked around the room and saw it for what it was.

“So I'm a prisoner,” she said.

“Don't think of it this way. You are my guest, if you need anything please tell me.”

“I want to go home.”

Serit sighed.

“Apart from that.”

“Then I'm a prisoner. And there's nothing you can say to change that, so please spare me the pleasantries.”

Serit looked like they were about to say something else, then nodded.

“You should be deactivated shortly,” they said, eyeing the bottle she was holding.

She walked up to the mattress and put it down on the floor.

“I’ll study it a bit,” she promised. Knowing the local language would be useful, since she was forced to stay there.

Serit nodded, looked around the room, then stepped back toward the door.

“Well, if you're all set, have a good night.”

She glared at them and they retreated into the corridor, closing the door behind them.

Saia laid down onto the cloud of cloth. The light on the ceiling was still shining, and she realized she hadn't asked Serit how to switch it off. The movement of the fog created soft shadows on the walls, and the light was dim enough to be more soothing than distracting.

She gripped the bottle with a hand, then decided to just lay it next to the bottle, the back of her fingers against it so that she could reach it with her powers without expanding her domain. She started to copy the information into her viss, wondering in the back of her mind about what being deactivated felt like.

Her vision returned on a wooden ceiling. Something was off, but she didn’t realize what it was until she glanced at the window: it was morning. She didn't feel rested nor tired, just aware.

Serit knocked at the door.

“Coming in,” they said.

Saia sat up as they entered.

“Sorry for the early rousing, I promise that your waking time will be set later starting tomorrow. How is it going with Shilizé?”

Saia recognized the name of their language.

“Well, I think.”

She picked up the bottle. She could easily decipher the title now: ‘Shilizé complete course’.

“I don't think I can speak it well, yet. I still have a lot of viss to copy.”

“Then try to practice with me,” Serit said, changing the language to their own. “We'll be meeting people today who don't speak any human tongue, let alone one as isolated as yours.”

She nodded. If she hadn't noticed their tension in the fast, slightly trembling way they spoke, she could have found it in the way they dressed: their dark gray tunic had white feathers on the shoulders and a single blue one at the center of their chest. The belt had brass decorations and small pink seashells sewn in with a silver string. The hair was tied in a tight bun over their head, showing off their delicate ears and marked jawline. The outfit looked much more colorful and put together than the tunic of the previous day.

Serit opened the wardrobe.

“I’ve filled it with some simple clothes of different sizes. Once you've found the right one, I'll have something else prepared, a bit more suitable for official meetings. We might be talking with the representatives soon, and the better the impression we make on them the more time and resources we'll obtain.”

“You will obtain,” Saia said.

Serit went back to the door, leaving the wardrobe open.

“Good grammar, but I suggest focusing a bit more on the pronunciation. I'll wait for you in the kitchen.”

Once they were gone, Saia got up and stepped in front of the clothes. She only touched them, at first, gauging their exact sizes, then chose a cream-coloured one with small red feathers like drops of blood on the front. She also found a high leather belt and black shining shoes that were slightly too small for her feet. She put them on anyway, since she didn't feel pain or discomfort anymore. She stared a bit at her bag before deciding to bring it too, even if the pockets of the tunic were large enough to contain everything inside it.

She checked the room one last time before leaving. The luminous fog was still floating inside its sphere, but there was no apparent way to switch it off, so she left it to rotate alone in the room. She walked along the corridor, watching the alley outside of the window and wishing it was the sea, or at least a scorch of the sky.

Serit was waiting for her in the kitchen, two pouches tied to their belt. They glanced up and gave her a brief nod before opening the door to the staircase.

“After you.”

Saia walked down to the first floor while they locked the door.

“We have to go back to the bottom,” they said. “It will take a while, so if you have some questions, it's time to ask them.”

“Where are we going?”

Serit smiled.

“It's a surprise.”

They left the building. Serit stopped again to lock the entrance.

“Then I have a question about your language.”

“Good. Ask away.”

“The... the words you use to refer to people,” Saia said, looking for the translation inside her viss.

“Pronouns?”

“Yeah, I don't understand them.”

Serit produced a knowledgeable smile, as if it was something they had anticipated. They gestured with their head to tell her to continue and walk on.

“At the mountain, if we want to talk to people who are not part of the conversation, we always use the same word. You... You sort of use the same word, but attach another one to it. But this other word changes based on the person.”

“Yes. That's exactly it, in a nutshell.”

“And how do you decide which word it is?”

Serit let her go first into the narrow alley. Saia was glad she could still see behind her as well as at the front.

“The short answer is that people will tell you the first time you talk to them, unless they're public figures like the representatives, then you're supposed to already how that. You’ll notice it because it’s the word they add after their names, but they’ll only do it one time unless you ask. It’s called a god-particle.”

“What’s yours?”

Serit told her. She practiced by repeating some sentences out loud, trying to recall the grammar rules she’d copied into her viss. It was less like skimming a book's pages and more like recovering a memory through the sparse details she recalled about it.

They were at the stairs, now filled with activity. The influx of people was mostly going downwards, from the first level to the bottom.

“Is there a ceremony or something?” Saia asked, descending a step. At least the staircase was wide enough they could walk side by side.

“Not today. These people are mostly workers for the public buildings, or servants for rich houses. Some are higher students,” they added, nodding toward a group of five young people hurrying down the stairs with little regard to anyone standing in their way.

“Higher students?”

“We all get a basic education in our respective levels. Some go on to study specific subjects in a more particular way. There's a building for that, the university.”

Saia thought about the scholar monks and nodded.

“Did you go there too?”

Serit laughed, but it was a short sound without much humour behind it.

“No, I'm a self-made talent.”

That sentence was so ridiculously arrogant Saia laughed, and since her laugh was mostly her viss buzzing faster and light flaring up, Serit didn’t notice.

“Alright, I have another question: if everybody has a god-particle, should I have one too? Or it's fine if I don't use it?”

“No, you're right, you should have one. And always use them unless explicitly asked not to. If you don't understand someone's god-particle, ask them to repeat as many times as you need, but try not to get it wrong.”

Saia nodded. Serit looked up, toward the distant trees of the top levels.

“The god-particle is not random. We choose based on the deity we… resound with the most.”

Saia recognized the word they used, even if she couldn't find an equivalent in her own language: it was a mixture of 'having an affinity with' and 'worshipping'.

“For foreigners who don't feel a particular connection to any deity, the usual choice is Tynit, the goddess of glass and sand. You can change it later, once you know a bit more about our gods.”

“I’m not interested in gods.”

And she didn't plan to stay at Iriméze long enough to learn about them, but she didn't say it.

“Well, it might be useful to know they exist, at least,” Serit said, sounding a bit offended. As if they'd already forgotten she wasn’t there of her own volition.

They finally touched the earth of the bottom level. The crowd poured in from behind them and dispersed in dozens of different directions. Serit followed three well-dressed people who barely talked to each other, each lost in their own thoughts. The street continued until the center of the city, and soon Saia recognized the buildings she’d seen the day before. They walked past the one that contained the hole to the world below. An easy way out, considering a fall couldn't hurt her, but she needed to find her shard first.

The structure reminded her of a flower, with a central dome and round rooms jutting out all around it. A short outside corridor allowed visitors to access the central hall of the building. There was an old woman sitting on a bench near the entrance, looking at each person as they came in. She was wearing a green tunic that seemed made of a softer material than the ones everyone else was wearing. Her feathers were all at the front of her dress, along the collar of the tunic, of ten different colors even if they seemed to belong to the same kind of bird.

The woman was staring at them now, for once focusing on Serit as much as she was looking at Saia. She didn't know how to react, if she was supposed to stop or address her in some way, but Serit was marching ahead without glancing at her, so she did the same.

“Who is she?” Saia asked.

“A priestess,” Serit answered at a much lower tone.

The main room was round like a temple. The walls were made of a darker and more solid wood compared to the other buildings, while the floor was of multi-colored stones that resembled the priestess's collar of feathers. She had expected to find at least a statue: instead, there were ten tall openings in the wall, each leading to one of the ten rooms around the central one, a window between one passage and the next. On top of each one there was a carved symbol, different for every doorway.

There was light coming from the ceiling. She focused her attention upwards, expecting to find a giant sphere similar to the one in her room.

Instead, she saw clouds. Or better, they weren't clouds, but the same luminous fog that shilvé put inside their lamps. Except it wasn't trapped by glass, but free to move, various shining nucleus scattered in the midst of it. It formed diaphanous shapes she could barely recognize before they disappeared, replaced by others.

“Come on,” Serit said, some steps ahead.

Saia followed them. There weren't many people in the room, and each one was headed toward a doorway or another: that area was just a point of passage.

Serit gave a long glance to the entrance with the symbol of a coin. They slightly shook their head and proceeded toward the next one, marked by the image of a chain curving on itself, the end pointed like an arrow up and to the right.

They entered the room. The space was huge, but divided into three slices by two straight walls that started some armlengths away from the entrance, leaving a small round space right before it. The walls didn't run up to the high ceiling, but stopped midway through, so the sounds could freely move from one section to the other.

But most importantly, the giant statue of a deity was visible from every angle of the room. It was three times taller than Koidan and Vizena's statues and made of various materials: iron body and face, silver hair, brass clothes, and two black diamonds in place of the eyes. She had a chain wrapped around the arm, the extremity dangling from the hand, steel point aimed at the floor, and through it, at the human cities below.

Saia followed Serit without taking away the focus from the statue, expecting it to move at any second despite what they had told her. There was a priest standing to the side of the common space before the partitions, next to an open wooden box. Saia looked inside: there were bronze coins, not many, scattered at the bottom. Serit took one from a pocket and tossed it in without even looking at the priest. Saia scuttled on behind them before he could ask her to pay with money she didn't have.

The leftmost partition was filled with people. Even if they were all speaking in a low voice, there was a clear background chatter. Serit hovered near the entrance, all the confidence disappearing from their posture.

“Now what?” Saia asked.

“We wait for Hilon to see us.”

People were beginning to notice them. They were all shilvé, not a single human present, and they were all sending alarmed glances to both her and Serit.

There was a woman at the center of all that chattering. She had long storm hair and was wearing a simple pink tunic, a color Saia hadn’t yet seen anyone wearing. It was also empty of any feathers, embroidery or seashells.

The woman was distracted from her current conversation by a sequence of hands tapping on her shoulders and mouths whispering to her ears. She turned, saw Serit and walked over with a smile.

“Is it what I think it is?” she asked them once she was close enough, nodding in Saia’s direction.

Serit gave her an embarrassed look.

“Yes, I hope you don't mind. She already understands us.”

The woman’s black eyes became a bit wider at that. She finally turned to openly look at Saia.

“I’m sorry, I wasn't sure how to address you. I'm engineer Hilon.”

Saia heard the god-particle she used. She greeted her too, using her words as a blueprint to introduce herself. Hilon looked slightly amused, clearly not knowing what to make of her presence. The only indications of her age were the wrinkles near her eyes and on the slate gray skin of her forehead. She was older than both her and Serit, for sure.

“I thought you would appreciate seeing her before your departure,” Serit said. “You're the first person to meet her who isn't me or the representatives.”

Their words lit up a new light in her eyes.

“I’m intrigued,” she said, openly staring at Saia.

Serit’s smile was the one of a student who had just been praised by their favorite teacher. Saia stepped back, hating every second of that examination. She realized with a sparkle of anger that Serit had brought her there to exhibit her.

Hilon put a hand on their shoulder.

“I’m really tempted to stay and talk some more, but I've waited too long and the urge is impossible to contain.”

Serit nodded.

“I’ll document everything carefully and let you know as soon as you're back.”

Hilon smiled, then let go of them with a sigh.

“At least you believe I'll be back.”

She invited the both of them forward, retreating into the crowd. Serit followed her until she was snatched away by a younger woman that had Hilon’s same round cheeks and thick eyebrows.

“Who is she?” Saia asked, not bothering to hide the venom in her voice.

“My mentor. She gave me a chance when nobody else did.”

They gestured around them, as if to point at the crowd. They were all keeping away from them, ignoring Serit every time they raised a cupped hand to greet them.

“Come,” they said at last. “Let's take a spot. I want you to see well.”

They led her through the crowd to the end of the partition, where the wall curved. At the center of it there was a short ring of steps, a wooden railing that didn’t close completely, and a hole.

Saia wanted to look closer, but Serit put a hand on her arm and shook their head.

“Only Hilon can walk the stairs. We must wait here.”

“Wait for what?” Saia asked, but Serit only looked at the crowd, an irritating half-smile on their lips.

Hilon finally emerged from the assembly. Some people were crying quietly.

“Come on, now,” she said, descending the steps. “I’m not that old. The odds are in my favor.”

“Expand your domain,” Serit whispered.

Saia did. She saw the hole directly from above, now. She could glimpse the distant shapes of some tubes identical to the ones she’d seen the day before and the sea of clouds below, but apart from that, nothing.

“… and be ready to be amazed, instead,” Hilon continued her speech. “At the things I'll discover when I'm back.”

She turned toward the hole.

“Whatever happens, don't interfere,” Serit said.

Hilon jumped. Her body turned onto itself as Saia saw her fall toward the clouds. Her viss trembled so violently with panic she felt the statue sway.

Hilon went down until she was past the tubes, then her figure turned one last time and exploded in a million shining pieces. They disappeared inside the clouds, the empty tunic left to float behind them.

Saia retreated her vision and turned her head to stare at Serit. She couldn't believe it, but the bastard was smiling.