I wept for her. Then I took justice for what had been done. She arrived on the vessel that appeared just before dawn. I saw it at once as it came hurtling out of control, a thin white streak against the fading purple of the sky. Like too many others, it had been wrenched from its flight path by the kvinka, the fierce wind streams of the upper atmosphere, which shield the surface of Akkabarr, my homeworld. "So cold." My apprentice, Enafa, joined me at the window I had chopped in the thick blue ice. As she shivered, she also peered, trying to see what had caught my attention. "Is that a ship, Skjæera?" "Quiet." I measured the plume, silently calculating the rate of descent as I watched it elongate. She hopped from one foot to the other, slapping her arms with her mitts. "Should we alert the crawls?" "Wait." I watched it fall until it bloomed with a flash just over the north fields. That decided the matter. "Bank the heatarc and put on your outfurs." As Enafa obeyed, I heard her murmur "Die quickly," one of the more traditional Iisleg prayers.
