Elvira (later called 'the Enchantress')

The survey man knew more than his coat implied.

Elvira had been working the boundary zone for three years by herself, since the previous outpost occupant had left under circumstances she had never been told and had stopped asking about. In three years she had developed a vocabulary for what she observed here. Most people she met either did not share that vocabulary or actively rejected it.

This one used it naturally.

She stood up, brushing mud from her knees. The failed circle was annoying rather than frightening — she would need to take new measurements before trying again, and whatever was pressing through the boundary had used the attempt to learn the pattern, which meant her next attempt would have to be different.

She was not afraid. She did not experience deep fear, which she had once thought was a character flaw and had since understood as a structural feature. It made the boundary work possible in ways she could not have managed otherwise.

"You're with the station survey," she said. Not a question. She had watched the station lights on the horizon for weeks, noted when they changed in ways that suggested new personnel.

"Yes."

"There's something else here," she said. She had been trying to decide how to say this for days. "Not the boundary drift. Something that wants the drift to continue." A pause. "I do not have a good name for it. The folk around here call it a Court thing. I think they are identifying its method correctly but not its nature."

The man was quiet for a moment. Behind him, from somewhere in the reeds, she heard a sound she had learned to associate with Aldera.

The cat, she suspected, had been following her for longer than she had been paying attention.