Aea didn't reply.
"Any children?" Ninedinni asked after several more stones were plucked from the lentils.
"All beneath you," Aea said. Ninedinni was puzzled by this at first, thought maybe the woman had followed enough of her talking to figure out who she was, but then a flicker of awareness, a sign of her power slowly returning, and she sensed the little bodies interred in the platform. Indeed, beneath her.
"Five wee ones," Ninedinni said. "Born dead?"
"One lasted not three days," Aea said.
"So five nameless babies," Ninedinni said. "And now you are alone."
"The last of my people," Aea said.
"You must be so lonely," Ninedinni said, acutely aware of the ruins of the village around them, long abandoned by the look of it. "I understand being lonely. I have no tribe either, just this
