"Half under now. I watch the last of my kilt disappear into the dark gap around me, feel the sand fill my navel.

"This feels like a moment of change, a point beyond which the earth will make a new claim on me. From here on, the greater part of me will be under, my presence above the sand more tenuous and transient than ever. I look down, watch myself disappear. I picture the sand closing over me, the last tuft of fur slipping from sight. I picture the sand smooth, unbroken over the place where I was.

"I have no such picture of what I will be after the sand closes, how Siedi will transform me. The moment of going-under will be a greater moment of change, the loss of this shape, the end of Lorne. Maybe forever, maybe not."

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