Nassun remains just Nassun. No one calls her Nassun Resistant Tirimo, though she still introduces herself that way upon meeting new people. Schaffa’s interest in her is simply too obvious. But she causes no trouble, so the people of Jekity are as friendly toward her as they are toward Jija, if in a slightly more guarded fashion.
It is the other orogene children who unashamedly embrace Nassun for everything she is.
The oldest of them is a Coaster boy named Eitz, who speaks with a strange choppy accent that Nassun thinks of as exotic. He’s eighteen, tall, long-faced, and if there is a perpetual shadow in his expression, it does nothing to mar his beauty in Nassun’s eyes. He’s the one who welcomes Nassun on the first day after it becomes clear that Jija will live. “Found Moon is our community,” he says in a deep voice that makes Nassun’s heart race, leading her to the small compound that Schaffa’s people have built over near Jekity’s weakest wall. It’s up a hill. He leads her toward a pair of gates that swing open as they approach. “Yumenes had the Fulcrum, and Jekity has this: A place where you can be yourself, and always be safe. Schaffa and the other Guardians are here for us, too, remember. This is ours.”
Found Moon has walls of its own, shaped from the shafts of columnar rock that dominate this area—but these are uniformly sized and perfectly even in conformation. Nassun doesn’t even have to sess them to realize they have been raised by orogeny. Within the compound are a handful of small buildings, a few new but most parts of old Jekity left abandoned as the comm’s population dwindled. Whatever those used to be, they have since been refurbished into a house for the Guardians, a mess hall, a wide tiled practice area, several ground-level storesheds, and a dormitory for the children.
The other children fascinate Nassun. Two are Westcoasters, small and brown and black-haired and angle-eyed. Sisters, and they look it, named Oegin and Ynegen. Nassun has never seen Westcoasters before, and she stares until she realizes they are staring at her in turn. They ask to touch her hair and she asks to touch theirs back. This makes them all realize how strange and silly a request that is, and they giggle and become instant friends without a head petted between them. Then there is Paido, another Somidlatter, who looks like he’s got more than a little Antarctic in him because his hair is bright yellow and his skin is so white that it nearly glows. The others tease him about it, but Nassun tells him that sometimes she burns in the sun, too—though she carefully doesn’t mention that this takes the better part of a day rather than minutes—and his face alights.
The other children are all from lower Somidlats comms, and all have visible Sanzed in them. Deshati was in training to become a stoneknapper before the Guardians found her, and she asks Nassun all sorts of questions about her father. (Nassun warns her off talking to Jija directly. Deshati understands at once, though she is sad about it.) Wudeh gets sick when he eats certain kinds of grain and is very small and frail because he doesn’t get enough good food, though his orogeny is the strongest of the bunch. Lashar looks at Nassun coldly and sneers at her accent, though Nassun can’t tell the difference between how she speaks and how Lashar does. The others tell her it’s because Lashar’s grandfather was an Equatorial and her mother is a local comm Leader. Alas, Lashar is an orogene, so none of that matters anymore… but her upbringing tells.
Shirk is not Shirk’s name, but she won’t tell anyone what that really is, so they started calling her that after she tried to duck out of chores one afternoon. (She doesn’t anymore, but the name stuck.) Peek is similarly nicknamed, because she is tremendously shy and spends most of her time hiding behind someone else. She has only one eye, and a terrible scar down the side of her face—where her grandmother tried to stab her, the others whisper when Peek is not around. Her real name is Xif.
Nassun makes ten, and they want to know everything about her: where she came from, what kinds of foods she likes to eat, what life was like in Tirimo, has she ever held a baby kirkhusa because they are so soft. And in whispers they ask about other things, once it becomes clear that Schaffa favors her. What did she do on the day of the Rifting? How did she learn such skill with orogeny? This is how Nassun discovers that it is rare for their kind to be born to orogene parents. Wudeh comes the closest, because his aunt realized what he was and taught him what she could in secret, but this amounted to little more than how not to ice people by accident. Some of the others only learned that lesson the hard way—and Oegin grows very quiet during this conversation. Deshati actually didn’t know she was an orogene until the Rifting, which Nassun finds incomprehensible. She is the one who asks the most questions, but quietly, when the others are not around, and in a tone of shame.
Another thing Nassun discovers is that she is much, much, much better than any of them. It is not simply a matter of training. Eitz has had years more training than her, and yet his orogeny is as thin and frail as Wudeh’s body. Eitz is in control of it, enough to do no harm, but he can’t do much good with it, either, like find diamonds or make a cool spot to stand in on a hot day or slice a harpoon in half. The others stare when Nassun tries to explain the lattermost, and then Schaffa comes away from the wall of a nearby building (one of the Guardians is always watching while they gather and train and play) to take her for a walk.
“What you do not understand,” Schaffa says, resting a hand on her shoulder as they walk, “is that an orogene’s skill is not just a matter of practice, but of innate ability. So much has been done to breed the gift out of the world.” He sighs a little, sounding almost disappointed. “There are few left who are born with a high level of ability.”
“My father killed my brother because of it,” Nassun says. “Uche had more orogeny than me. All he ever did was listen with it, though, and say weird things sometimes. He made me laugh.”
She keeps the words soft because they still hurt to say, and because she’s said them so rarely. Jija never wanted to hear it, so she has had no one with whom she could discuss her grief until now. They’re over by the southern terraces of Jekity, successive platforms high above the floor of a lava-plain valley. The terraces are still heavily planted with grains, greens, and beans. Some of the plants are beginning to look sickly from the thinning sunlight. This will probably be the last harvest before the ash clouds get too thick.
“Yes. And that is a tragedy, little one; I’m sorry.” Schaffa sighs. “My brethren have done their job too well, I think, in warning the populace about the dangers of untrained orogenes. Not that any of those warnings were false. Just… exaggerated, perhaps.” He shrugs. She feels a flash of anger that this exaggeration is why her father looks at her with such hate sometimes. But the anger is nebulous, directionless; she hates the world, not anyone in particular. That’s a lot to hate.