Something fairly large, with nice physical buttons as opposed to a touch screen is workable. River is fascinated by talk of shutter speed and focal length and so on.

While the assassination game is intriguingly predatory, it feels deeply strange to commit violence without actually committing violence. Puzzle games land best, though it's amusing to try to fight in an Amentan-shaped body. Seeker buys some of everything, including most of the best-rated puzzle games of the last five years.

How much do the thirty Rods of Healing end up auctioning for? More like 'enough to cover the shopping spree' or 'enough to buy some plots of land'?

The latter!

Seeker doesn't buy any plots of land. He mails out the Rods of Healing with the best possible delivery services and full insurance, even if insuring such precious items is expensive. He collects all his purchases, and he and River go home.

In Baravi, Bloom talks with geneticists, learns the local language, hangs out in the desert, tends flowers, and soon enough arranges to see the same set of people day after day as winter ends and spring begins.

Some months later, with the southern spring having just begun, Bloom tells her blue guide, I think I am ready for a first experiment. It would be best to first try one of the people I've been repeatedly seeing.

The worst-springer in the bunch, a purple with scars on his arms and a purse-sized dog he brings with him everywhere, is readily convinced to volunteer.

If I try to adjust your spring twice, the side-effects will be much worse the second time. I think it would probably be a bad idea.

With that in mind, would you prefer I attempt a dramatic reduction to the low end of Amentan springs, with more risk of side-effects, the most likely of which is reduced sex drive for the entire year not just in spring, or a more gentle reduction to merely average springs with less risk of side-effects?

I don't know what either of those things is like. ...honestly I miss being a kid and not springing at all. Try the first thing? Please?

Very well. I will do my best. You surely know by now that there is some risk in this, so I thank you for volunteering... It will take perhaps ten minutes and hurt a little bit, so I think you should lie down for the Enkindling. You should speak with Ruan to have a bed brought, and I will meditate to prepare for this.

A bed is acquired. The purple lies down.

She touches the tip of her nose to his hand.

It feels like burning, heat. Relatively gentle, but insistent. Just bad enough to make you want to twitch and wince. There's a vague sense of being pushed by something huge and inexorable. Something invisible stretching what seems like too far, then further, then further. And when it starts to seem intolerable, like he's gotten too big, about to collapse or shatter...

...Like exhaling after inhaling, the exact opposite process begins. The feeling of piercing cold sets in, with a vague sense of being pulled and twisted and pinched this way and that, invisible surfaces being folded and molded, pulling against each other the whole time. He sees glimpses of what must be Bloom's mind, focused on some incomprehensible indescribable process in a sense he does not have - on what might be described as a hellishly complicated weave of ten thousand tangled threads, or an elaborate chemical brew, or the conducting of a symphony.

And then...

It is done, announces Bloom, sounding tired. Her head rests on the concrete floor with a slow exhalation.

He whimpers and squeezes his dog, but doesn't cry out.

When she's through he spends a few minutes just breathing fast, adjusting. His dog licks his face nervously.

She watches the Enkindling settle and entrench itself, trying to learn lessons for next time. She tells the dog that he will be fine. The dog is still nervous despite this reassurance.

He... Might be able to directly sense these things, along with Bloom's looming presence to his left, dense and bright, and Ruan's presence across the room. It's at the edge of attention, sort of muddled and indistinct, almost like the faint impressions you can get by squeezing your eyes shut.

He doesn't notice right away.

"Can - can you tell how well it worked -"

...I am still observing. But I am sure it worked. All the markers of severe springs are suppressed. How much better this makes you feel will be important information for future attempts.

"I feel different. I'm not sure. That was really intense."

That is not surprising. Enkindling is the molding and setting aflame your very Essence. Metaphorically. There is time.

Ruan has a spring severity screening questionnaire ready for the purple, who takes it, picking his way through carefully, and scores a three out of fifty, somewhat incredulous about it.

That is good, correct? What you wanted? I think there are other effects... Probably your sex drive, as I predicted. It's well entangled with spring.

...I used more of my own Essence than I expected to cover problems and gaps I noticed developing. Enough that it was very tiring, and that is the kind of thing that tends to cause side-effects, especially sensitivity to the Song.

"You aren't... louder than you used to be? I..." He blinks. "I might feel something but maybe just because you suggested it."

Close your eyes? Suggests Bloom.

He closes his eyes.

She lifts her head on her long neck over to his other side, trying to remain silent.

...Yep, something just changed, moved from left to right.

He turns his head to track the motion.

Open your eyes. You followed me without vision. You have the Song, though perhaps only a glimmer. Isn't it beautiful?

"I don't see enough to really say. I guess it's pretty."

Only a glimmer, then? I see almost as much as with my eyes...