Meeting his eyes steadily, she nodded at his explanation.

Then he touched her face, signaling readiness, and for a moment, it was as it had been the first time they met, when he touched her wings. Whispers of the thoughts of all of those around them came into his hearing, and of those above, a little more distant. And then it was all subsumed beneath a wave of sympathy, kindness, and...longing --

--And he was standing on the bare side of a low mountain, with the chill of autumn night all around, and the stars of Earth hanging above, brilliant as diamonds. In the distance were the low, flickering lights of a small village; nearby was a homely, grubbed-together campfire. Standing before him, Psyche smiled: a young human girl, her face and body marked with the ugly remnants of cuts and bone-deep bruises, her belly swollen with pregnancy, wearing the same travel-worn cloak she'd been wearing just a moment ago. Even so, her face was lit with hope, longing, and something that looked rather like bloody-minded stubbornness.

"Not so far to go, now," she said. "And take heart: here's always a chance things will go better than you could have expected. Here," she said. And held out her hand to him.--