But the faces which against my sure and certain knowledge of what was safe for me, these faces which in the past I had allowed despite myself to latch onto my heart and move within it and mix inextricably with the fibers of me, these faces appeared before me floating, fading. These disembodied silent faces came before me and hovered in the gathering night. They floated below the surface of the slow and potent river. These faces came to me. I might think I had departed and severed all as I had been severed but these faces had come with me. They were within me and of me because of all the time and the sharing.
        They were silent and they called.

        I had been their rider. We had lived together upon the vessel. We had worked; we had ensured 1 another's lives. Jun, Proctor, Wikrahn, Pennbaston, her young sister Gallett who had grown up and been trained upon the Rachella. Others, many others.
        Times called.

        I might have thought I had cut them away but I had not; that was not possible. They returned. Unbidden.
        Claimants.

        I would not have it so but generally 1 could not have what 1 wanted for the desires and the needs of a living being frequently did not match the provisions of the milieu.
        I wished, I thought, to be absolutely apart from all that had been.
        If that were true why had I come to the river to stand and look and seek and reflect? Would I hold these pieces of the ruined past to me, call them up to watch them try to live again?
        When I knew that they could not. And that it was better so.
        Had I not changed? By changing had I resisted change?
        I turned from the river and from the faces and the voices, songs and endeavors they elicited inevitably within my mind. Pennbaston, Jun, Vettra; Pennbaston.
        I turned away. I clamped my jaws and closed them out and walked stonily away from blackening waters coiling thick as oil before the night of coming storm.