Now that they had a little time to spare, Jade and Megan gave some attention to the town about them. It was not as primitive a place as Jade had first feared it would be. The houses were all on bases of stone, brick, or concrete to foil the local wood-eating insects, but above the first meter most were either painted wood—white, yellow, and brown seemed to be preferred colors—or red-gold brick. The rest had that strange, stripped look. The slanted roofs were covered with azure tiles that almost seemed to mirror the sky. The houses were saved from a look of uniformity by the colorful designs painted on their sides, usually as part of the shutters on upper-story glass windows. The windows themselves were often of stained glass in abstract patterns. The two humans couldn’t tell whether the sh
