Picture a village shared between two tribes. At sunset, the first tribe must abandon their homes and find a place to sleep in the woods so the second tribe can move in. At sunrise, the process reverses. To mark the new moon, the night tribe holds a celebration with much feasting, drinking, and revelry. In the morning, who will sweep up the ashes and pick up the bones?

—Stigel, reflections

Colors blossomed in Stigel's vision as his tacs adjusted to the low light. Seeing through the big eyes of a night-Janux, the world took on a whole new richness. Overhead, the ever-present ceiling of mist was parted by a color bow cast by the planet's rings: carmine, peach, slush, slate, and indigo.

On the ground below, Stigel admired the color garden Camrak had cultivated for her daughter, Mimree. It reminded him of the starry nebulas that so enchanted him as a young girl. Stigla had been ten when she saw her first Hubble images in a magazine. They resembled spilled dyes, like the ones they colored Easter eggs with. She imagined a clumsy God spilling his Easter egg dyes all over the sky. When she heard they were photographs of the actual sky, she begged her father for a telescope, eager to see them for herself. But when she got the promised telescope for her eleventh birthday, she found only disappointment in the heavens. Even on a moonless night, the space between the stars was dark and empty.

The Janux had recreated their nebula-scape using bioluminescent fungi. They came in all different shapes—caps, bulbs, bowls, scallops, antlers, and phalluses—and colors—indigo, every shade of rose, cotton, radium green, and ghostly blue. Some were dotted while others were streaked or covered in fuzz. The colors formed a complex, nested pattern that was something between a mandala, a fractal, and abstract art.

Gathered around the garden's perimeter, Janux stood atop massive roots that breached the ground like giant serpents. They made a low, Gregorian-style humming as Mimree entered the color garden through an archway of leafy boughs. Their bodies were painted with graceful lines and flowing patterns. Mimree's body was unadorned, her steely sides unmarred by wear and parasites, her top-spikes symmetrical and free of chipping. Soon she would be the most colorful of all. As her feet disturbed the frail fungi, bulb-shaped fruiting bodies released puffs of luminous spores that floated on the air like pixie dust. Glowing powder collected on her back and sides.

The observers pounded their feet against the roots in a drum chorus that set the entire field trembling. Heads swayed. Forcipules clicked. The humming rose in pitch and volume. Set off by the vibrations, colorful geysers of pollen erupted everywhere. Urged on, Mimree danced with abandon, her body bucking and swaying, a chain of color rippling its way through a nebulous cloud.

The tempo turned slow and steady like a heartbeat, and the humming settled into a long susurration. Coated end to end in vibrant spores, Mimree made a slow circuit around the garden's perimeter so the observers could trace streaks and swirls along her sides with their mustachands. She made a second, slower circuit. This time, the Janux offered her delicacies and draughts served up on leaf wedges. She paused before a face so lined and gnarled it resembled the bole of an ancient tree. The elder dipped the tips of her mustachands into bowls of brightly colored pollen and applied strokes to her face, covering it an intricate, Mehndi-like pattern.

Fully painted, Mimree departed through an archway opposite the one she had come in. She followed a path lined with lavender phalluses to the husk of a dead tree, hollowed out and white as bone. Beyond was a field of pearlescent stones that marked the spirits of her ancestors.

Some of the stones were dull and cloudy while others were clear and milky white. She dipped the tip of a mustachand into a bowl the elder had given her and made a marking on each stone, beginning with the dullest. When she got to the last one, the smoothest and brightest, her mustachand shook, and she began to weep. Tears ran down the stone's smooth surface, leaving trails of color that dried in place.

Back at the dead tree, a Janux was waiting. He hadn't been among those at the color garden, and his body was black as ebony. Their mustachands touched and twined together, his dark ones with Mimree's magenta and turquoise. First mating would come later. For right now they just clasped each other in tenderness.

For the first time in minutes, Stigel tore his eyes away from the scene to check on Camrak. Her face was still and white as a sleeping mime, and her nostrils were crusted with yellow scabs. Pools of moisture had collected along the lower eye-rims, and glistening trails ran down her cheeks like those on the memory stone. The shadow of a smile was still present, but her nostrils were unmoving. Camrak had taken her last breath.