"She said I was to talk here..." Karst pondered, prodding the device lightly. "I've never seen anything like this, even in the Lighthouses and other ruins from the Golden Age... though sometimes in those the statues spoke."

She sat down on the bench, too, sensing with disdain the dampness in the air around her, humid like it got after a rain storm in the South. She hated water, and her first experience of Southern rain hadn't been a pleasant one.

"I suppose the theory's the same with this that it was in most of the ruins I've been to-- experiment until you get it right, then remember what you did that was right so you can do it again later..."