She came out from the trees and walked down to the lake. It was slightly choppy in the summer breeze. There was the hint of a chill; overture to the coming of fall. Kim stepped out onto the flat surface of the rock that jutted out over the water, just as she had done before, with Ysanne, when the Seer had summoned the water spirit under the stars.

Eilathen was down there, she knew, far down among his twining corridors of seastone and seaweed, amid the deep silence of his home. Inaccessible. Lost to her. She sat on the stone and wrapped her arms about her drawn-up knees, trying to number blessings, to shape sadness into joy.

For a long time she sat there, looking out over the waters of the lake. It had to be late afternoon, she knew. She should be starting back. It was so hard to leave, though. Rising up and walking from this place would be an act as lonely and as final as any she’d ever done.

So she lingered, and in time there was a footfall on the rock behind her and then someone crouched down by her side.

“I saw your horse by the cottage,” Dave said. “Am I intruding?”

She smiled up at him and shook her head. “I’m just saying my goodbyes before this evening.”

“So was I,” he said, gathering and dispersing pebbles.

“You’re coming home too? “

“I just decided,” he said quietly. There was a calmness, an assurance in his voice she’d not heard before.

Of all of them, Kim realized, Dave had changed the most here. She and Paul and Jennifer seemed to have really just gone further into what they’d already been before they came, and Kevin had remained exactly what he always was, with his laughter and his sadness and the sweetness of his soul. But this man crouching beside her, burned dark by the summer sun of the Plain, was a very far cry from the one she’d met that first evening in Convocation Hall, when she’d invited him to come sit with them and hear Lorenzo Marcus speak.

She managed another smile. “I’m glad you’re coming back,” she said.

He nodded, quietly self-possessed, looking at her in a calm silence for a moment. Then his eyes flickered with a certain amusement that was also new.

“Tell me,” he said, “what are you doing on Friday night?”

A little breathless laugh escaped her. “Oh, Dave,” Kim said, “I don’t even know when Friday night is!”

He laughed too. Then the laughter passed, leaving an easy smile. He stood up smoothly and held out a hand to help her up.

“Saturday, then?” he asked, his eyes holding hers.

And bursting within her then like another kind of flowerfire. Kim had a sudden feeling, a flashing certainty, that everything was going to be all right after all. It was going to be much more than all right.

She gave him both her hands and let him help her rise.