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this
    Be your Returning day.
    “No,” Hwanta screamed from her place on the riser—an anguished wail that seemed to pierce my skin all the way to the bone. "No.” Hwanta swayed on her feet and then crumpled in a heap. Tav ran over and kneeled down next to her. Hwanta's back arched like a bridge. An awful gurgling sounded in her throat.
    We all rushed forward, all of us near the front, crowding close around our injured sister. I knelt down to help hold Hwanta still, so she wouldn’t hurt herself.
    After a while the convulsions stopped and Hwanta opened her eyes. She rolled onto her side and lay there, panting hard. I stroked her neck. Her emotion spots were brown-black, the color of anger.
    “Are you all right?” I whispered to her.
    Hwanta’s breathing slowed, but stayed harsh and ragged. Wide eyed, she looked up at me. I didn’t know if she recognized who I was. Slowly she pulled herself to her feet. I stood up beside her. Hwanta leaned against my shoulder and stared blindly toward her sisters gathered around her. I felt a long shudder shake her body head to toe.
    “The creator is cruel,” she said, so low that I was sure I was the only one who heard her. “It cheats us all.”
    “No,” I whispered back. “The creator is kindness.”
    “The creator is jealous of our lives!” she screamed. “Why should it take us back when we are still healthy and filled with the desire for life?”
    My heart thudded in my chest. My emotion spots burned blue-red with anxiety for Hwanta’s soul, in fear for my own soul that I’d even heard these words.
    Someone said, “Hwanta’s gone insane.”
    “No,” some said, but more said, “Yes. Hwanta’s gone mad.”
    “Guilty of pride and punished before our eyes,” Gintok called out from her spot next to Simanca on the riser. “Turned into a babbler.”
    I felt my hands shaking, my emotion spots flaring an ugly rainbow as fear, disgust, and sorrow raced through me. A babbler had wandered into Lunge commune once. Simanca had already warned us about them—that they were not only insane, but vicious and would hurt any doumana or hatchling they got a hold of. We drove that babbler away with sticks and stones and shouted curses.
    A swarm of angry doumanas rushed toward the riser, yelling, “Babblers must be banished.” I stepped in front of Hwanta, wanting to protect her.
    "Babbler," my sisters were shouting. "Send her out. Babblers must be banished."
    “Stop,” Simanca commanded the swarm. She didn’t look or wait to see if her command was followed—she knew it would be. “Return to your dwellings. Now.”
    The rushing doumanas stopped as suddenly as if Simanca’s words were a wall. Others who’d been standing by their seats sat down, only to rise again immediately, to obey Simanca’s order. The sound of bare feet tramping across the wooden floor filled the hall. No one spoke.
    We filed out of Community House and headed toward our own dwellings. Jit walked with her head down and muttered under her breath. Colors blotched her neck—purple-gray concern, brown-black anger, soft-gray sorrow. I felt my spots fired with the orange-yellow of confusion and the dark purple of grief.
    The Rules say, Value your sisters as you wish to be valued. Love as you wish to be loved . These doumanas, Hwanta’s sisters—how could they do that to her?

Chapter Three
    The creator walks by day and night.
    Its will hidden from our sight.
    --Prayer Song
    All my commune-sisters had gone to what should have been my second Resonance. They’d left me behind, cast off from their thoughts and concerns as if I didn’t exist.
    I dragged my toes through the soft dirt in front of our dwelling, looking around, hoping for something to catch my eye, something I could do. We had two hatchlings, but they were locked into Hatchling House for safety. I couldn’t visit them. Something had gone wrong with the vision stage and it showed the same presentation over and over. There was no one to fix it.