The women stepped off the stairway and made their way through the crowd.
“Akean,” Callie said to every thornskull who greeted her, offering them warm smiles.
Vrix parted, opening a path as a tall, broad, reddish-brown thornskull draped in white silk and flowers approached. The female spread her four arms wide and raised her mandibles.
“Ah, you are here, humans!” Nalaki said, her deep voice full of warmth.
Lacey threw her arms to the sides and spun in place. “Suitably fancy, I hope.”
Nalaki lowered her arms and dipped her head. “Beautiful. Rekosh is blessed by the Weaver.” Her gaze fell upon Ahmya. “Many females favor him, but his heartsflame burns only for you.”
A soft smile spread across Ahmya’s lips as she pressed a hand to her chest. “As mine burns only for him.”
Callie tipped her head back. The crystals adorning the village were as numerous and luminous as the stars in the sky. She smiled and swept her gaze around, taking in the beauty of those little lights. She couldn’t help but think of the distance she and her companions had crossed to get here. All those stars, all those planets, all those possibilities…
And yet they’d ended up here, with the vrix. Even if she didn’t know what her purpose was here, this was where she was meant to be. She knew it deep in her heart.
“This is amazing, Nalaki,” Callie said, fighting back a surge of emotion as she looked at the queen.
The daiya pressed her palms together. “We celebrate the work we have all done to welcome the season of promise and plenty. You are part of that. You are ours, we are yours.”
“We are happy to be part of this tribe,” Ivy said. “Where is Garahk?”
Nalaki chittered and swept out an arm, pointing past the throng of vrix. “My heartsflame is there, as is yours.”
Callie’s eyes followed Nalaki’s gesture to a chaotic scene. A large group of vrix, adults and children alike, were playing a frenetic game at the center of the clearing. They all carried sticks shaped into flat, paddle-like ends, not unlike cricket bats, and were using those sticks to hit a leather ball into the air, seemingly trying to keep said ball off the ground.
Garahk was easy to spot thanks to his snow-white hide, but the two shadow stalkers also playing stood out just as starkly—Ketahn and Rekosh, their respective purple and red markings uniquely glowing amongst the earthier tones of the thornskulls.
She also spied a smaller figure amongst the vrix. Cole. Despite his stature and what the vrix considered a lack of limbs, the human seemed to be holding his own in their game, deftly maneuvering between—and sometimes beneath—the larger players.
The ball soared through the air. Cole vaulted up onto Garahk’s hindquarters, stood tall, and gave the ball a mighty smack with his stick.
Callie’s eyes widened as the ball hurtled through a vertical wooden hoop set atop a tall pole.
Half the players cheered as Cole threw his arms up in triumph, hooting and hollering enthusiastically.
As the players shifted on the field, assuming different positions, Callie’s gaze wandered over the crowd watching the game and locked on a very familiar vrix on the sidelines.
A shadowstalker with blue markings unlike anything in Kaldarak.
Urkot.
He wasn’t focused on the game at all, no. His attention was upon the broodlings who were swarming him—all five of Garahk and Nalaki’s brood, along with Akalahn. The little ones were climbing all over him, latched onto his legs, hindquarters, and back, chittering as he attempted to pluck them off with playful ineptitude.
“I’m, uh…gonna go say hi to Urkot,” Callie muttered as her feet, all on their own, moved her toward him.
She watched as he spun about, reaching for the little ones on his back with exaggerated clumsiness, and an odd warmth spread in her chest. Just as she neared him, the broodlings converged, climbing over his shoulders to cling to his chest. With a dramatic flair, Urkot fell backward, banding his arms around the little ones to keep them in place. He landed on his back, legs sticking straight up in the air before curling inward.
It was easily the most spidery thing she’d seen from him, but damn if it wasn’t endearing.
The broodlings swarmed over him happily, as triumphant as Cole had been moments before.
From what Callie had seen of the vrix, they weren’t just a closeknit community—they were like a huge extended family. She’d always heard that it took a village to raise a child, but most people, at least in the United States, didn’t have the means to make it a reality. Whether it was a matter of time, of money, or of feeling increasingly isolated from one’s neighbors despite theever-increasing population, she’d never seen that old saying put into practice before now.
She rubbed at her chest. She loved her parents and brothers, but this closeness was something she’d never experienced as a child. Her brothers had been much closer to each other than to her and had spent most of their time glued to video games. And her parents…
Callie knew her parents loved their children, that they’d worked hard to provide a good life for Callie and her siblings. But they’d never…let go. They’d never allowed themselves to be silly, to be carefree, to roll around on the ground as their kids dogpiled them.
