Veda Threnn wanted only one thing: the true route home. She had chased it across Phloxara's seas for six years, and the star charts inked on her shaved scalp held every failed attempt. Her compass should have ended the search long ago. Instead the needle wandered, always a little wrong, and every course she drew from it drifted her somewhere new. This morning she beached her boat on a strange shore and admitted the truth. She held the compass to the light. A hairline crack split the glass. The needle swung, then stuck, then swung again. She had trusted a broken thing for years. No wonder each route lied to her. She walked inland to think. Silver cacti grew in clusters, their pads pale as old coins, orange fruit crowning each arm. Veda pressed her palm against one and felt the small spines bite. Real. Solid. Unlike her needle, this place did not drift. She needed a better guide, and her hand no longer held one. A shadow crossed the sand. She looked up. A great teal bird landed on the tallest cactus without touching a single thorn. Its feathers glittered like they held broken pieces of night sky. Its long tail trailed light. The creature tilted its head and watched her with a bird's flat patience, but its eyes tracked the compass in her fist. Veda knew this kind of animal. Sailors called them sky-readers. They flew the true currents of the air and never lost their way. Old crews swore one would trade help for the right offering. She had laughed at those stories once. She was not laughing now. She cut a fruit from the cactus with her knife. Juice ran orange down her wrist. She held it out on a flat palm and kept her arm steady. "I've followed a broken needle long enough," she said. "Show me which way is real." The bird dropped from the cactus. It took the fruit in its beak, swallowed, then closed one talon around her broken compass. Veda's breath caught. She almost snatched it back. Six years she had gripped that stone. But she opened her fingers and let the bird take it. The creature carried the compass to a bare slab of rock. It set the stone down and struck it once with a talon. The crack widened. The old needle fell out and rolled away in the sand. Veda stared at a ruined thing she could never trust again. Then the bird spread its wings and rose. It circled once, low, and beat toward the open water in a straight, certain line. It looked back at her. Veda understood. Her guide was no longer a needle. It was a living thing that would not stay still. She ran to her boat and shoved it into the surf. To follow the true route now, she had to keep the bird in sight, and it was already pulling ahead.