No 1 spoke.
        Cleo wondered if they had not understood having missed childhood in Africa where explorers came and went with seasons and brightened every morning and made it all real.
        "What?" Rose asked.
        Cleo stared. "What, what?"
        "What made it all real?"
        Cleo had not known she'd spoken. "Why," wasn't it evident? "this."
        Cleo leaned forward elbows on knees, toes together capping the stool's clawed feet,
"They are life's fritillary, the filigree,"
        "The arabesque,"
        "The dance,"
        "The pattern,"
        "The adornment,"
        "We do like that," Carrie nodded, then added as they required it, "Humans. We always have. It's a kind of meaning, I think."
        "It seems to me," Rose said, "we ought to find Esme(e). Find her, and find the source, the seat."
        Carrie: "It isn't a place, but a quality."
        "Haggerty says it's not a quality but a condition," Elaine approached.
        "If it is," Carrie considered, "then it can be changed."
        Rose: "But do we?"
        All the faces looked to Violet.