It was dark in the great square, with only the pale sandglow seeping through the gates. For a moment the little blue-grey woman-creatures clung around him, not moving, except as the whole mass of them swayed slightly with the slow rhythm of the sea.
Then they burst away from him, outward, in a wild surge of hope—and Lundy stood with his mouth open, staring.
They weren't blue-grey any longer. They glowed suddenly, their wings and their dainty, supple bodies, a warm soft green that had a vibrant pulse of life behind it. And they blossomed.
The long, slender, living petals must have been retracted, like the fronds of a touch-me-not, while they wore the sad blue-grey. Now they broke out like coronals of flame around their small heads.
Blue and scarlet and gold, poppy-red and violet and flame, silver-white and warm pink like a morning cloud, streaming in the black water. Streaming from small green bodies that rolled and tumbled high up against the dark, dreaming buildings like the butterflies that had danced there before the sunlight was lost forever.
Quite suddenly, then, they stopped. They drifted motionless in the water, and their colors dimmed. Lundy said,
"Where are they?"
"Deep in the city, beyond our buildings here—in the streets where only the curious young ones ever go. Oh, bring them back! Please bring them back!"
"If I come back myself," said Lundy, "I'll bring them."
He left them hovering in the great dark square and went on into the city.