"Oh!"

"Pe-"

"Ka!"

Aster's three fingered ka was trounced by a single oh, which was in turn trounced by a pe, going counter-clockwise around the circle from the initiator. If they had been just one seat over, they would have trounced this round and won. Aster insisted, "One more."

"Oh--"

"Pe--"

"Ka!"

Aster played ka again.To their right, Canela held up an oh, winning the round. Not one of them had actually revised their stance, so it was a straight run, no contentions. Playing like this, they'd tie all the way around. Aster leered.

"Why'd you play pe again?" their asked Canela.

"Because you play ka every single time," Canela responded, with a lazy smile.

Aster frowned. "It's the best one."

"There is no best one. They're hand gestures," Auran, the third member of the small circle, responded. A rash of clementine hair curled around their neck, a cascade of shades not unlike Cyspel's dawn-hued fins. Mimicry was not uncommon amongst the dependents, but Auran was really leaning into Cyspel's appearance.

Aster folded their arms. "Opeka's a boring game, anyways. Isn't there anything else we can play?"
"We'll be going down to the lake soon," Auran offered.

Aster threw their stick across the room, where it lodged itself in a hole in the door created by the last twenty times Aster had thrown their stick across their room. At the very least, they had some uncanny aim with the stick. "So we'll be here all day waiting for a bunch of fourteens to crawl out of their cradles, so the Siida can escort them nicely down to the river." Aster stuck out their tongue, miming disgust. "If it were up to me we'd leave 'em. I don't know what they even get out of going down there."

"We can't leave them. The Koda will kill them," Auran said.

Aster squinted at their stick from across the room. "They should at least walk down there themselves."

"They can't walk," Auran said.

"I was walking when I was a fourteen!" Aster snapped.

"We all know," Canela said. "We were there. You were a big bragger then, even before you could talk."

Aster scowled. "I had the right." They flexed their leg upwards from their sitting position, brandishing the scar. With a self-satisfied smile, they launched themself back onto their feet, head still tilted upwards to try to increase their otherwise petty height. "And I'm growing horns, too, so there."

"Who'd you hurt?" asked Auran.

"I saw a Koda scout and I bopped 'em right on the dumb head," Aster bragged.

"Liar," Auran said.

Aster took Auran's hands and placed them in Aster's own caramel hair. "Feel them! There are stumps there. I know you can feel them, Auran!" Auran jerked herself away just as the Covena came in. Cyspel, Sander, and Ocella all came in with armfuls of other dependents, some leaning on them or hanging from their backs, others just stuck stubbornly to a five-foot radius of the more mature threes and fours of the Covena. Aster huffed a sigh, "Took you long enough."

Cyspel rubbed Aster's hair just where the nubs of horns were growing in. "You three are some of the oldest. I would expect you to be old enough to understand why we need to take care of the little ones, and why sometimes, that means making sacrifices."

"Because no one else will!" Auran said, nudging out Aster to stand directly in Cyspel's line of vision. "It's the most we can do to guide all the Panta in the world onto metamorphosis. Like the Siida guard the waters, letting little fish swim under their massive wings, that's how our Covena takes all the little Panta under their arms--"

Aster scraped a foot against the ground and turned it, audibly, a Panta equivalent of rolling their eyes hard. They had heard the Siida's creed enough times to recite it, but they would never say anything so solemn and heavy if they didn't mean it.

Auran cast them cold pout. Cyspel, trapped between the twin glares of their dependents, split them apart gently. "Thank you, Auran. Now, if you don't mind, we will be taking everyone down to the lake. Aster, can you please retrieve your stick from the door on the way out? We wouldn't someone to get hit with it."

Aster reluctantly withdrew their pole from the door. It had, by this point, acquired a meticulously kept-up sharpened point. They tapped it on the ground a few times, as if testing it, and returned it with an excessive twirl to their back, just as Canela swung under the pointed edge. "Would too," Aster informed the group. "If the Koda come around, I'll bop 'em. If wanderers come about, I'll bop 'em."

"If any of us get in range, you'll bop us?" Auran suggested.

Aster tapped their head with the stick. "Might."

The younger dependents clustered about Cyspel in well-deserved fear. Aster tilted their head upwards, wishing they had horns to flourish, and the procession found their way out the door, as a tendril of creek water finds its way along a rocky beach when the water feeding it rises. The path to the lake was well-worn, but meandering, such that it was almost twice as long to get to the lake as cutting down the hill directly to the lake. Woods stretched on in every direction, seemingly without end, although in reality there was water on every side. The trees at this time of year were blue-green, with red knobs on the bark where new growth was forming. The leaves and bark were of similar coloration, but different texture. Aster was craving sap, herself, but to stop now would at worst get their a scolding for distracting the group and at best ruin their position at the front of the line. Aster glanced back from their own small group of tens, at the front, to where the Covena huddled with the thirteens and fourteens.

Aster leered. They had four more years left than Aster did. They were at least a little resentful towards themself for wasting precious time and only ending up as they were now, by their age. They had ten years to do something before it was over. This was, to put it kindly, not the most efficient use of that remaining time.

"Think Cyspel noticed my horns?" Aster asked.

"They might have, if you really had them," Auran said.

"They're really growing in," Aster insisted. "I swear."

"But we haven't done anything! You can't really have mutations if you haven't done something, or if something hasn't been done to you. That's why I'm getting plates, for protection, because the Siida are doing such a great job--" Auran boasted, lifting up the places of raised, hardened skin where a reaction between the spores and their own biology was causing the mutations that would mark their for the rest of their adolescence. Aster leered at them. Besides being common, they were hardly effective. Right now Auran just looked like they had a large, nasty bite of some kind on their arms.

"I hope I get wings," Canela said.

"But you'd have to leave someone," Auran said. "Or be left."

Canela said, "There's no way that won't happen at some point."

"But it has to really hurt, to get the spores to trigger and start making you wings," Auran sounded despondent. "Why would you do that to yourself on purpose?"

"You'd be more powerful," Aster mused.

"No," Auran said. "No, no. It's not worth it. It can't be worth it."
"We're going to get hurt eventually," Aster said. When Auran opened their mouth to retaliate, Aster said, "And Canela said that, not me, so you don't even have to fight me on it."

"Did I?" Canela asked.

"Yes, kind of," Aster said. "Everything will happen to us at some point. We just have to go."

"You want that," Auran said. "Don't drag us into this."

Aster's eyes gleamed, their lips drawing back to reveal teeth that were just beginning to sharpen. Just as they turned, they tripped over a massive white structure on the ground and barrelled into a coral structure on the banks. Down the banks, large white and pink structures flourished like strange bushes. Several of the younger dependents were already licking the sweet white dust off the structures, while others were using sticks to fish angry snippers out of their burrows in the rocks. The creatures were vicious, but if they could be coaxed into grabbing a stick, they would take long enough to free themselves from their own tenacious grip that they could easily be eaten. There was always the opportunity to spear them, too, as the kinshii birds did, right in the back. Sometimes it would take several strikes to get them to surrender completely, but it was all fair sport.

Auran and Canela, unimpressed, ran out to the edge of the waters, which were silver with sediment from the corals. The sweet waters teemed with fish. Out at the edge of the lake, one could see them jumping and thrashing, and look out further to see an expanse of rivers and forests, small islands cutting in and out of the silver waters, barely reflected in its haze. Aster settled to join their companions at the edge, nose twitching as they took in everything, and as the water lapped at their feet, they found, in spite of herself, a sense of contentment.

A dragonfly settled on Aster's ear. Its small wings clamored against their hair, sensing but not heeding the danger of its proximity, and it darted away for moments before landing on their shoulder, unsettling spores as it pranced about atop them. It was not uncommon for insects to land on young Panta to try to eat their spores, which thankfully, were regenerative, but this was a different situation altogether. Aster mumbled, "Just a second." Their furtive gaze snuck from the other dependents to the Covena. The dragonfly paced impatiently on their shoulder. "I said wait!"

"What's the matter?" asked Canela.

"I'm, uh, I'm going," Aster responded, dusting silver sands from their bare legs as they stumbled back onto their feet, the dragonfly stubbornly clinging to them.

"What are you going to do, look for Ophelia?" Auran teased.

"No," Aster's face crinkled into a defensive snarl. "I'm going to drink."

"The water's here," Canela stated.

"There's better water in the pools. Don't tell no one I'm going nowhere, okay? Okay!" Before either of the others could say anything, Aster bounded off down the beach, jumping on a brittle coral structure and vaulting it to the sand, where they fell face-first at the feet of a Panta significantly taller than them, although with a youthful face and an intense smattering of spores and general lack of mutation that suggested a different story from their massive bulk.

"Darter!" Aster sprung back upwards, clinging to Darter like a cat clings to a tree. Darter, who was covered in a small swarm of dragonflies, fell backwards onto the sand. Aster, leaping off them, waited for Darter to stand back up, then hugged them again. "Hey! Hey! Did you find them?"

Darter shook their head. "I think they must have made it past the edge of Big Silver."

"You really think so?" Aster asked. They shook their head. "I'm sure they're going to be back, though. There's no way they would just leave me like that."

Darter looked regretful, but they only mumbled, "I'm sure your friend had a good reason for going wherever they went, and if they come back, you'll be there for them."

"Dunno about that. Was thinking of heading out," Aster said. Their gaze slid upwards, almost sadly. "With you?"

Darter's expression shifted. "You're going to take me up on that?"
"We could go find Ophelia ourselves," Aster decided, at once. "We could-- we could cross Big Silver ourselves, head on to the mountains or out towards the ocean. Ophelia might have gone to join the big Siida Covena near the ocean! Of course!"

"The ocean?" Darter said, distastefully. "That's a little dangerous for two tens."
Aster shrugged. "And what would you suggest?"

"Back up."

"Back up stronger than us? That's practically putting our teeth in a Koda skull and dropping it shut." Aster kicked the ground. "I don't take that from no one. Mm-mm."

"Just an idea."

"Have any other ideas?"
"For later?"
"For now." The waters lapped at their feet, but dared come no higher. For a moment, the world was very quiet, and quite still, just the waters murmuring at the edge and massive insects singing in the woods, calling out to no one.
Darter reflected for a moment. Dragonflies buzzed about their shoulders. "I don't have anything."

Aster fidgeted on the beach, moving sand about between their feet. "Have you ever played Opka?"

Darter nodded.

"With who?"
"You."

Aster blinked. "Really?"

"You lost every time."

Aster's feet kicked up sand from the beach. "Are you serious? Why do I keep losing to everyone? Is it some kind of trick?"

"You have to look at their faces."

"What about their faces? Is there a muscle you twitch for 'oh'?"

"You have to predict what your opponent will do next. What they're thinking. Everyone knows what you'll do when they look at you. You're obvious." Darter said.

Aster made an incredibly obvious expression, pointed glare, scrunched face, and all. "That's no fair."

"You play ka every time." Darter only looked off towards the waters.

Aster settled down at Darter's side, then put their chin on Darter's shoulder, which required a great deal of shuffling. "I can be unexpected."
"Yeah?"

"Yeah. If we went anywhere, together, where would you want to go?"

Darter smiled. "There's this abandoned cabin we could move into if we wanted to make a stand."

Aster tapped a few fingers to their chin in agreement. "Then that's where we'll go." They crossed their arms and rolled their shoulders, as if the weight of the entire world rested upon them. "And we'll start gathering forces, and we'll make a real stand for ourselves, with territory and everything, we'll fight off the Order of the Koda, we'll snipe dependents leaving the Siida, and before it's all over, we'll have a real run at it, doing something important, meaning something, living, really. We'll have so many mutations that everyone will ask us when we're going to the obelisk when we're still fives, and we'll say, no, we still have time, and we've done everything, but now we'll do more than that. Can you imagine a more exciting life than that, Darter?"

"Not when you put it that way," Darter said. "It could just be us, too."
Aster cast them a caustic glare.

"Maybe not."

"Tomorrow?" asked Aster.

"Not today?"

Aster glanced back up the beach. The others were out of sight, thankfully so, but Aster still felt a little string of gold pulling her towards them, a little twinge of regret that they knew they wouldn't be able to shake without a proper ending. "Give me a moment, okay?"

"You'll see them again," Darter promised. "Whenever you want."

Aster only cast them a slight, concerned smile. "I'll see you tomorrow. Meet me at dusk, when you can see the moons rising in the sky."
Darter had never lived with anyone, so they didn't understand what it felt like to have a door close. They didn't understand the silence afterwards, the sensation of opening it again to find there was no one behind it. Some things, when severed, could not be repaired properly, like a vase returned from pieces bared cracks. Something beautiful could be made from the aftermath, but it would never again be the same item. Such was losing someone. Such was moving out. Such was letting go.

Aster reminded themself, as they walked back, that they didn't care. They reminded themselves of this at endmeal, where the younger dependents tried to impress the Covena with little toys they'd made from stick and leaf wrappings on the bank. When they slept in the room of the oldest dependents in the Siida cove, an old room whose rafters were beginning to let stars and rain in, they looked up at an open sky and listened to the familiar shallow breaths of Auran, Canela, and a few of the other dependents. It was a place made for moving out, one way or another. Aster knew they could start leaving or they could leave.

They kept thinking, now is the moment I say goodbye, but that moment never came, not really. Instead, they kept rubbing their horns, beginning to realize that growing them would entail a different, more obvious kind of hurt.

Somehow this was worse.