"Yeah. There's some good stuff, there. Want another?"

Nod.

"I am a feather on the bright sky
I am the blue horse that runs in the plain
I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water
I am the shadow that follows a child
I am the evening light, the lustre of meadows
I am an eagle playing with the wind
I am a cluster of bright beads
I am the farthest star
I am the cold of dawn
I am the roaring of the rain
I am the glitter on the crust of the snow
I am the long track of the moon in a lake
I am a flame of four colors
I am a deer standing away in the dusk
I am a field of sumac and the pomme blanche
I am an angle of geese in the winter sky
I am the hunger of a young wolf
I am the whole dream of these things

You see, I am alive, I am alive
I stand in good relation to the earth
I stand in good relation to the gods
I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful
You see, I am alive, I am alive"

[source]

Ooooooooooh.

"We don't need it for the same reason, but I think we need some of the same things, there. Convenient that I've already gone looking for it."

"It's -" like the Force at night, sinking deeper and deeper into it until all that's left is you and the rushing wild song "beautiful," Daira says, because she can't find the words.

"Yeah."

"You said you had books?"

"Mmhmm." She scoots further onto the bed and retrieves a datapad from a box, then grabs a second box from the shelf above it. "I have more, and some paper books too, but this is a good place to start." She hands them over.

Poetry books! She picks a book at random, skims the table of contents, and then tears herself away when she remembers "- you were showing me the house?"

"Yeah, this is most of it though. Storage through there, that one's Daisy's, and that's the shower." She points at the relevant doors.

Daira nods and is halfway to the door before she remembers to ask if Pradnakt minds her vanishing in the books for an hour. Or two. Maybe three.

She chuckles. "Go right ahead."

And Daira curls up the corner of her cot and reads until someone interrupts her, humming the rhythm of the poems she particularly likes.

Pradnakt putters about briefly, and then gets to work on the promised shelves; it's not quiet, but it's not hard to ignore, and neither is the sound of Daisy leaving on the speeder.

Eventually she sets her work aside, and starts a pot of potato soup; she waits for Daira to be between poems before letting her know that it's ready.

Oh, food exists. Right. She gets up reluctantly and sits opposite Pradnakt.

"So," she asks, conversationally, "learn anything interesting?"

"It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:

dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,

drawn from the cold hard mouth

of the world, derived from the rocky breasts

forever, flowing and drawn, and since

our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown."

[source]

"Mmm, yes.

Not that the pines were darker there,   
nor mid-May dogwood brighter there,   
nor swifts more swift in summer air;
    it was my own country,

having its thunderclap of spring,   
its long midsummer ripening,   
its corn hoar-stiff at harvesting,
    almost like any country,

yet being mine; its face, its speech,   
its hills bent low within my reach,   
its river birch and upland beech
    were mine, of my own country.

Now the dark waters at the bow
fold back, like earth against the plow;   
foam brightens like the dogwood now
    at home, in my own country."

[source]

And now Daira looks like she's only not crying because Pradnakt's watching.

"Mmm. Gave something up you shouldn't've, hm? - You don't have to tell me about it. But you can, if you want."

"I didn't give it up. I had to, it wasn't safe, she was so bright."

"Ah."

"We could go find her. It's safe enough here."

"Mari needs - people and, and," Daira draws a deep breath, "her own country."