"Who are you?" he asked shakily.
Her hesitant voice was music, rousing in Farrell a warm and expectant euphoria that glowed like old wine in his veins.
"Koaele," she said. "Look—"
Behind her, the valley lay wrapped like a minor paradise in soft pearly mists and luminous shadows, murmurous with the far sound of running water and the faint chiming of voices that drifted up from the little blue lake to whisper back in cadenced echo from the fairy maze of bridging overhead. Over it all, like a deep, sustained cello note, rose the muted humming of great flame-winged moths dipping and swaying over bright tropical flowers.
"Moths?" he thought. And then, "Of course."
The chrysalids under the sod, their eclosion time completed, were coming into their own—bringing perfection with them. Born in gorgeous iridescent imago, they were beautiful in a way that hurt with the yearning pain of perfection, the sorrow that imperfection existed at all—the joy of finally experiencing flawlessness.
An imperative buzzing from the ship behind him made a rude intrusion. A familiar voice, polite but without inflection, called from an open port: "Captain Stryker in the scoutboat, requesting answer."
Farrell hesitated. To the girl, who followed him with puzzled, eager eyes, he begged, "Don't run away, please. I'll be back."
In the ship, Stryker's moon-face peered wryly at him from the main control screen.