Grimwick rolled up his right sleeve to rinse mud from his forearm, then caught himself. The gray had crept past his elbow two months ago. He tugged the fabric back down and kept walking through the Eldergreen Fenlands, boots squelching in the wet earth. A structure rose from the mist ahead, metal and glass wrapped in vines. Clockwork gears turned inside windows filled with growing things. A woman stood beneath a massive willow tree nearby, its moss-covered branches glowing with soft amber lights. She watched him approach without moving. Her glitter was bright silver, clean as starlight, and it hung in the air around her shoulders like she had no reason to hide what she was. He stopped ten feet away. She tilted her head and looked at his sleeves, then at his face. Her eyes were calm. "You came looking for someone who works with glitter," she said. It wasn't a question. She lifted a carved vessel from the grass beside her feet. Dark blue ceramic, marked with symbols in gold and copper. "This holds what I forge. Dark glitter and bright. Mixed together, not separate." She set it between them. "How far has the gray spread?" Grimwick's chest tightened. He'd been asked about his heritage before, about his parentage, about why his glitter looked wrong. No one had ever asked about the gray. She stood there under the willow's glow and waited. He pulled his sleeve back slowly, past his wrist, past the point where most people stopped looking. The discoloration reached halfway to his shoulder now. She didn't flinch. She didn't look away. She just nodded once and said, "I can work with that."