The sun shone down through the tomato leaves out of a bright blue sky. Ripe tomatoes gleamed on the vines and hung in the green shade.

Teige made Vlad laugh until it brought tears to his eyes, over drinks in warmly-lit, busy place--

--and then they were swaying against each other and stumbling through the fog, still laughing and carrying on--

--and the laughter only stopped when they were inside, in the purple darkness, when their mouths were otherwise occupied with each other, their hands questing over the other's body and up underneath their clothes--

--Liya stood with the hammer resting against her collarbone while she held up a slim metal rod in a pair of pliers, closing one eye and looking down its length, checking the straightness of it--

--Numair passed a delicate metal bone to Hawk, who took it gently in his fingers, and they sat on the floor of Hawk's room while Hawk worked the joint between two of the bones and Numair studied his movements carefully--

--they ascended a steep hill under a grey sky, the wind so strong they had to lean into it, until they came over a small rise and saw what Hawk had led them there to see, which was a pair of huge albatross, nesting sedately among the dry grass--

--and then elsewhere on a blue-sky day, Numair very nervously and carefully held a completely unruffled yellow hen in his arms, while Hawk spoke enthusastically--

--in a quiet shady place, Helly and Liya sat together, pulling lengths of pale cloth from a basket and rolling them up--

--Teige and Vlad shared a cigarette in the dusk, the curtains behind them drifting quietly as they leaned against the railing--

--green fire played over Teige's form as he narrated their meditation softly, while Yoshi's shoulders were squared in concentration, her hair drifting up into a formless dark flame--

--she paused in front of her mirror, hands over her chest, almost startled by her reflection--

--Liya leaned over the stall wall as Yoshi pushed a pile of straw away and asked, "Hey, Yoshi, how're the lessons goin'?"--

--Yoshi leaned against Shinobu's massive head; her muzzled rested on one paw, brow furrowed, as Yoshi put her cheek against the place between her eyes.

"It's been three months now, and my hair is still the only thing I can make change," she murmured.

"Maybe we could try a different tack, like."