"Eleven years that groove sat empty. Four days at home, and he knew what it had been cut for."

The harness was made on High Isle in the circle's green, hide and scale and Breton stitching, with silver trees worked into the pauldrons. Twenty northern winters have taken most of the colour out of the cloth and none out of the trees. The only part still legible as Breton work is the part that was never dyed.

He crossed back over the Sea of Ghosts and went to the village for four days, and did not stay a fifth. The shrine was where it had been. The token he took at twenty-two fit the empty groove in the stone shank the way a thing fits when it was cut for something else entirely and happens to be right. He has worn the ring closed ever since. It is a decision about what shape he intends to be in. The ring does not choose for him.