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The stone thing said, "My difficulty is that you are not entirely of the meat creature kind"

"Of course I am!" Evvy retorted

"No If you were, I would not have heard your approach when you were still in the lowlands of the Ice Naga River"

"The what?"

"The river that flows below my mountain, before the stone place where they tried to kill you, Evuzai"

"We call it the Snow Serpent River," Evvy told hiin to say such a name before I would have finished it Will you accept Evuhed "I suppose I have to What do you call yourself?"

He tipped back his head knob and gave voice to a series of sounds she could not even begin to reht on to two syllables she knew she could say

"I’ to call you Luvo I’m sorry, I know that’s not your whole na her head "I’ athings"

"I am only the heart of this mountain," Luvo said kindly "And part of you is of h it saddens me to say that you are impaired Too much of you is a meat creature I cannot understand how you came to be"

Evvy wiped her nose on her are We draw our power froic froets hers from the weather, and another one who takes it fro with cloth I get mine from stones"

"I did not know that this could ever be true," Luvo said, fascinated "Thispeople, or the people of the white eye"

"I think those are acadees and shamans," Evvy said "I know Briar’s somewhere west of the fort with Parahan and Soudaes with them, but I think Briar’s the only ambient one If he isn’t dead" She twisted her hands in her ragged shirt "What a to do? Hoill I find hio back to the fort -- they’ll torture ain!"

"You could not return to the fort," Luvo told her "It no longer stands"