They held the same dark color they'd always had, but behind that color was a depth that hadn't been there before, the way deep water held a different quality of dark than shallow water, and in the depth, something that was not quite light moved with the patient self-containment of something that had learned stillness by existing at a different scale than the world around it.
Asurani looked at him from the crater's edge.
He looked back at her.
Something passed between them in that look that none of the others could read—agent and goddess on the other side of a process that had changed what "agent" meant in this particular case, the relationship between them restructured by what had just happened without either of them having chosen the restructuring.
"You're all right," Asurani said, and it came out as confirmation rather than a question.
"I think so," Jake said. His voice was the same.
That, for some reason, was the most reassuring thing about him.
