DO YOU RECALL, MY RINGS, HOW THE ROTHEN ship circled thrice over the Glade of Gathering, blazing from its hot descent, chased by the roaring protest of a cloven sky? Stroke the wax-of-memory, and recollect how mighty the vessel seemed, halting dramatically, almost overhead.

Even the human tribe—our finest tech-crafters—stared in the round-eyed manner of their kind, as the great cylinder, vast as a glacier, settled down just ninety arrowflights away from the secret sacred hollow of the Holy Egg.

The people of the Six Races came before us, moaning dread.

“Oh, sages, shall we flee? Shall we hide, as the law demands?”

Indeed, the Scrolls so command us.

Conceal your tents, your fields, your works and very selves. For from the sky shall come your judgment and your scourge.

Message-casters asked—“Shall we put out the Call? Shall villages and burghs and herds and hives be told to raze?”

Even before the law was shaped—when our Commons had not yet congealed out of sharp enmities—even then our scattered outcast bands knew where danger lay. We exiles-on-Jijo have cowered when survey probes from the Galactic Institutes made cursory audits from afar, causing our sensor-stones to light with warning fire. At other times, shimmering globe-swarms of Zang fell from the starry vault, dipping to the sea, then parting amid clouds of stolen vapor. Even those six times when new bands of misfits settled on this desert shore, they went ungreeted by those already here, until they burned the ships that brought them.

“Shall we try to hide?”

Recall, my rings, the confused braying as folk scattered like chaff before a whirlwind, tearing down the festival pavilions, hauling dross from our encampment toward nearby caves. Yet amid all this, some were calm, resigned. From each race, a few understood. This time there would be no hiding from the stars.

Among the High Sages, Vubben spoke first, turning an eyestalk toward each of us.

“Never before has a ship landed right in our midst. Clearly, we are already seen.”

“Perhaps not,” Ur-Jah suggested in hopeful Galactic Seven, stamping one hoof. Agitated white fur outlined her flared urrish nostril. “They may be tracking emanations of the Egg! Perhaps if we hide swiftly …”

Ur-Jah’s voice trailed off as Lester, the human, rocked his head—a simple gesture of negation lately fashionable throughout the Commons, among those with heads.

“At this range, our infrared signatures would be unmistakable. Their onboard library will have categorized us down to each subspecies. If they didn’t know about us before entering the atmosphere, they surely do by now.”

Out of habit, we took his word for such things, about which humans oft know best.

“Perhaps they are refugees like us!” burst forth our qheuenish sage, venting hope from all five leg-vents. But Vubben was not sanguine.

“You saw the manner of their arrival. Was that the style of refugees, treading in fear, hiding from Izmunuti’s stare? Did any of our ancestors come thus? Screaming brutishly across the sky?”

Lifting his forward eye to regard the crowd, Vubben called for order. “Let no one leave the festival valley, lest their flight be tracked to our scattered clans and holds. But seek all glavers that have come to browse among us, and push those simple ones away, so our guilt won’t stain their reclaimed innocence.

“As for those of the Six who are here now, where the ship’s dark shadow fell … we all must live or die as fate wills.”

i/we sensed solidification among the rings of my/our body. Fear merged into noble resignation as the Commons saw truth in Vubben’s words.

“Nor shall we scurry uselessly,” he went on. “For the Scrolls also say—When every veil is torn, cower no more. For that day comes your judgment. Stand as you are.”

So clear was his wisdom, there rose no dissent. We gathered then, tribe by tribe, did we not, my rings? From many, we coalesced as one.

Together our Commons turned toward the ship, to meet our destiny.