When they're five years old, they're enlisted to help gather clams: some of the grown-ups need more meat in their diet now, to prepare for...something? The grown-ups just smile, and say that they'll find out soon.

(It has to be clams because you should never kill anything with a mind, except in self-defence. Azet knows this. A little while back, an eleven-year-old was caught killing a lizard, and it was a big problem and the grown-ups were very very mad. They said it was an "intimacy you should never have with an animal". Azet doesn't know what "intimacy" means, and Torae didn't know either, and it didn't seem like a good time to ask.)

Azet doesn't really like diving for clams: it feels weird when your gills open and the water goes through them.

<How is that weird? They're just gills! It's what they're for!>

<I don't know, it just is!>

Well, she can hang back and Torae can do the clam-digging.

It's fun!

Her favourite part of swimming is going to a tidepool that's big enough to stretch out in, and floating there, face-up on the surface where she can breathe the air. She can just close her eyes, and let the world go quiet and still.

It's like the best parts of the best naptimes, but it's the whole thing.

(It's kind of boring, but she is tired after all the clam-digging. And when she gets too bored, she can go play inside.)

A couple months later, one of Azet's favourite grown-ups, Penza, sits their creche down and tells them it's time they learned about the Circle.

The Circle is the great pattern that governs an Atrellan life.

A child begins in an egg. They hatch, and the call in their bones leads them up through the sea and to the shore, where their tribe greets them.

The tribe cares for the children as they learn and grow--just as you are growing--and in time they become adults.

About eighteen years after their hatching, and every six years thereafter, an Atrellan begins to feel a new call, down into the sea. When they are ready, a woman and a man who love each other very much go down and find a place to make the hatching grounds for their children, and together they become a mother and a father.

The father protects the mother while she forms and lays the eggs, and makes sure that nothing interferes. The mother feeds the eggs from her own strength, and the parents guard the eggs with everything they have: once they've followed the call, their bodies change, reshaping themselves to be focused on making the children. They won't be able to eat anymore, and they'll barely sleep, but that's alright, because soon they won't ever be awake again.

The parents tend to the eggs until they hatch, and then give the last of themselves to their children, as a first meal.

As the parents' lives end, the children's lives begin, and thus the Circle is renewed.

The breeding cycle in which you were born is about to end, and a new one will begin. Some of us, including me, will be going down into the sea and completing our Circles. We wanted you to know, so that you won't be surprised when we say our goodbyes.

"And you're...really never coming back?"

"There won't be a me, anymore," Penza says gently.

Azet starts to cry. "How can you-- just-- not even try--"

"It's alright. Really. You'll understand when you're older."

She sobs.

<Look, go cry inside. I'll talk to her, okay?>

She gives a mental nod, and goes inside.

Torae straightens up, still with a bit of leftover sniffling but clearly not crying anymore.

"How did you know that you're ready?"

She really is a strange child.

"I have wanted this for a long time. I think about it a great deal.

For a while, I wanted other things more. I've had my roles to play in keeping the tribe strong and healthy, and I've loved playing them. I love making banana pancakes, and I love taking care of you--" Penza taps the girl playfully on the nose "--and it took me a long time to decide who would be the father of my children, and for him to decide that I would be his children's mother.

It's been a good life, but it's time now. The call has been growing stronger, and I don't know that I could bear to go through another cycle incomplete. And I have a mate, now, to swim forward with together into our future."

Torae nods.

The world turns, and the adults feel the call begin to stir again.

They hold a sending-off festival, for the couples who are going down into the sea.

Torae has been practising the dance.

Azet is quietly sulking.

They keep telling her that she'll understand when she's older. She doesn't want to understand. How can they be okay with-- with ending, with dissolving into nothing...

Some of the grown-ups tell her that you're not nothing, because your children carry the Circle forward. But it's not like anyone remembers being their parents.

One grown-up tells her that death isn't scary because it's just like falling asleep, and she cries every naptime for a month.

(She still floats in the tidepools, though, when she gets the chance.

Floating in the tidepools isn't nothing. It's comfort, and peace, and rightness, and it feels like holding, for a while, something vast and beautiful.

It isn't like being nothing at all.)

"It's so stupid," pronounces a twelve-year-old boy, while they are resting after the Sending-Off Eve feast, "that parents can't eat. Like, that's fine for animals, but we have tribes! We have adults who aren't mating that season! We could bring them food! We could help them guard their breeding grounds! And then they could come back!"

"That is not what the World would have for us," a creche-minder says sternly. "The tribe is there for you when you are a child, and you are there for it when you are an adult, but some things must be done alone.

You'll understand when you're older."