"Alright. Let's go to that little hillock over there," he said, pointing at a small tor that rose up from the surrounding low hills. "It's higher up, so we can see anything coming at us."

They moved up to the top of the little tor, which had steep drops on two sides, and Sarraya conjured up a little lean-to to serve as shade against the brutal sun. She also conjured some lunch, and a little ice from some glacier somewhere to put in a tiny conjured cup of wine. Tarrin sat just inside the lean-to, the shade yielding to the sun about halfway up his legs as he sat there with his legs out and ankles crossed, leaning against a large rock that was under the lean-to's protection. He watched in mild interest as a scorpion braved the heat of the sun to climb up his ragged pant leg and perch atop his knee, probably trying to figure out what it was it had just ascended. The little tail sting flexed back and forth rhythmically as it tried to decide just what to do next. Then, probably deciding that there was no food there, it climbed across his legs and down the other side, then scuttled behind the safety of a pile of loose rocks nearby.

"Ah, much better," Sarraya sighed, flitting over and sitting on his thigh. "You know, the desert is actually kind of pretty. Nothing like the forest of course, but it does have its own unique charm."

"You only just noticed?"

"Don't be nasty," she chided, looking up at him. "What do you think Var and Denai are doing right now?"

"Probably something that would make you giggle," he replied absently.

"I'd put money that if they're not married by now, then they're betrothed."

"You'd lose that bet," Tarrin told her. "Selani don't associate trysts with marriage. Why spoil a perfectly fine physical relationship with marriage?"

"I guess I'm a prig," she laughed. "My husband kept trying to get me to go to bed with him for five years while we were betrothed, but I wouldn't hear of it. I liked him keeping his every attention on me, and to be honest, I didn't want to do badly in bed and have him decide that I wasn't worth marrying," she admitted. "After we were married, it didn't much matter. Not that he was disappointed about it. Five years of fun we could have had, down the drain. Ah, well."

"You know, you've never talked about this mysterious husband of yours. Does he mind you being out here with me?"

Sarraya grunted softly. "Oh, yes," she said firmly. "But that's one of the reasons I'm here. I love Danzig, but he's terribly possessive, and he has a fit when I perform my duties as a member of the Druids. Sometimes I take these little trips just to spite him. These little separations ensure we can still tolerate each other when I come home. He's very sweet and accommadating for a while, and then regresses back to his jealous ways. When he does that, I leave again. It does him good to realize that I can take care of myself, and I'm not going to go chasing after every Faerie boy I meet."

"You have any children?"

"Not yet," she replied. "But I'm young yet. I've got a few hundred years to go before age starts becoming an issue." She looked up at him. "Why the sudden interest in my private life? You've never so much as asked me my husband's name before."

"Because you talk all the time, and never talked about it," he replied. "You always chatter on and on about senseless things. For once, I wanted to hear you chatter about something that matters."

She gave him a wild look, then burst out into gales of laughter. "Well, I guess I deserved that one, didn't I?" she acceded, wiping a tear from her eye. "I didn't think you'd be interested in boring old daily life."

"I'd be more interested in things that matter to you than whatever floats to the top of your mind at the time," he said pointedly.

"Alright, alright. I live in the southern tracts of the forest, in a colony of Faeries. It's the closest thing to a city we have. I live with my husband Danzig, who's something of an important figure in our society. Something like an advisor to our leader, which really means that he goes and gets drunk with the other advisors every night and pretends to debate about things that matter. I have two sisters and two brothers, who all live in the same tree as I do, so we stay close. I'm the only one in my family who's a Druid."

"I thought all Faerie had magical affinity."

"We do, but not everyone cares to develop it," she replied. "And we're not all Druids. We have Priests, and we also have Faeries who practice Wizardy. That gives our colony a good mix of magical orders that can deal with a wide range of problems."

"Clever."

"When you find something that works, you stay with it," she chuckled. "No one else in my family really cared to study magic. It takes discipline, you see, and discipline isn't a trait you see often in my people."

Tarrin laughed quietly. "I noticed."

"Would it scare you to know that as far as Faeries go, I'm very disciplined?"

Tarrin looked down at her, then he laughed again. "Yes, that is scary," he told her.

"We're a frivilous bunch, I'll admit it. But at least a day in the colony is never boring."

"It sounds more like chaos."

"Sometimes it is. The only thing we have to bind us together is our laws, and Fae-da'Nar. We have our customs and practices, like other societies. Of course, we don't often adhere to them if our fancy takes us some other way, but that's part of the unique charm of the Faeries. The only things we can really say we obey are our laws, and only because the penalties for breaking those laws are severe enough to even make us afraid of breaking them."

"Heh. It takes something pretty drastic to scare a Faerie. They must be awful."

"The mildest of them is to have your wings cut off and be landbound while they grow back. The worst of them is exile."

"Exile? That doesn't sound bad."

"Faerie are very social, Tarrin. We like to be together. A Faerie robbed of those social contacts doesn't last long, so it's literally a death sentence."

"You're not like that."

"I'm a Druid, Tarrin. I have more discipline than most Faeries. I can tolerate separation from the colony for much longer than other Faerie can, but even I can't stay away from the colony forever. In about another year, the need to be back in the colony will become too strong, and I'll have to go home."

"There, see? I've learned something. I could have listened to you chatter on about interesting things all this time, and I could have learned a great deal from you."

"Don't rub it in," she said in an accusing voice.

"Truth is truth," he said calmly. "How you-"

He was cut short by something he had never experienced before. It was coming from the Weave, and the only way he could describe it was that the Weave screamed. He jumped to his feet, ripping the roof off the lean-to and dislodging Sarraya as he shot up and tried to discover what the strange, frightening sensation was, where it was coming from. It took him a moment to realize that it was emanating from the Weave, a powerful surge that blasted through all the strands at once, like a ripple playing across a pond. Within that surge came that scream, a horrific sound that wasn't sound, a shriek of emanations of the Weave that chilled him in ways he couldn't describe.

"Mother!" he gasped. "What-"

The scream echoed in his ears, again and again, and he found a voice within the inaudible cries, a voice he knew.

Jenna!

That was Jenna! In an instant, he realized exactly what was happening, and it made his heart lurch. Jenna had lost control! She was very nearly as powerful as he was, and he knew that that meant that she now stood on the precipice, she was now facing the challenge of her power. She had to conquer it, or it would destroy her. The scream went on and on, becoming more and more powerful, making the entire Weave shudder in ways that only ones of his magical stature could comprehend.