Spiral Dance
Shift Change
In which the crew give thought to the future.
The tree has a lot to say for itself in this chapter. (I kind of wish I’d thought to tag for the chapters where the tree speaks. Too late to go back and find them all now.)
Spiral Dance
The Little Empty
In which Cantra and Jela have a talk.
The first aid kit offers to make Cantra not only good as new, but better. One is inclined to wonder, if it had been given permission to install a few upgrades, what else it might have slipped in at the same time.
Most of the chapter is Cantra and Jela talking. He tells her about the tree. She tells him about what happened to her family.
(It’s interesting that Jela says the tree hasn’t told him its name or that of its species, just because there’s a scene, in a much later novel, that mentions in passing that the Uncle does know the name of the species. It makes sense that he would have wanted to learn more about them after the encounter just finished — but who is there that he could have learned it from?)