Daddy, I'm hungry!' Little Jace, fractious now and beyond comforting, beat her father's shoulder with one small fist, clinging to him with the other. Galry, mercifully, was asleep on Leth's other shoulder. Leth, too, was not impervious to the gnawing hunger in his belly. He walked on, carrying both children for some time now, weary and with a growing sense of futility. His anger mounted. He raged inwardly at Orbelon for having abandoned him here, at the ceaseless blue world, at his own hunger - all of these things, which he had no power to remedy. And he feared, as he waded on, clinging to his two children, he feared the path along which hunger might draw him, for a famished man is a creature stripped of moral-conscience and humanity, capable of anything. Leth forcefully thrust his thoughts elsewhere. Nothing had changed, except. . . just once or twice, Leth was not clear in his mind but he thought he had glimpsed, or just sensed.
