As the glistening Enterprise began her final system tests after her long stay near the shiny polished quais of Tern, Mandy and the Terran walked down to the loading ramp which curved delicately to shore from her massive sides. He turned to her and looked into her eyes -- and she noticed that the battles of the recent past had aged him, but in a nicely balanced way. Or perhaps it was the merging he had undergone with the hierarchy of the Plantiarchs. They stood at the bottom of the ramp, and he turned toward her and held her elbows. They stood still, under the rising morning light of Neezy, and although no words were exchanged between them, a torrent of something more powerful, a river of certain seeing such as is only known to those who have tasted the longer, slower sight of the rooted, passed from his eyes to hers, and returned again to him. They smiled, and without a word, turned from the humming of the great ship Enterprise and began a slow and long and gentle stroll along the tree-perfumed trails of Tern.