There's a little less mystery in the world than before. Secrets pass, the kind of little stories you can only tell someone who is interested to hear and know everything about you. You learn that Hyra is from a little sun-kissed barrow in the Western Plains, dead in the centre of hurricane country. Their homes were the old sweltering near-surface slums of a great Burrower city, but for half the year it was safe to go up above. Two rhythms, then, defined Hyra's life - patience and exploration.

When below, she studied magic to the exclusion of other hobbies. She learned tricks to fly, to become a wolf, a bird, to run at the speed of the wind and to drive all manner of vehicles. The one thing she never studied was maps - she found the idea faintly offensive, like giving someone spoilers for a book. She wanted to explore all of it herself. She wanted to see it all for the first time, discover everything anew, and then make her own maps that were just for her. She thought in spirals, and just orbited out in larger and larger circles from her starting place, determined to trawl through as much of the world up as possible before the storms came again and it was time to go home.

And when she was home, she liked basil and loved cinnamon and craved cardamon. Her hands are always warm and she always feels cold, and so wears gloves at any temperature lower than twenty. She has a scar she conceals under her hairline from a time she flew into a glass window while shapeshifted into a bird and she knows all the words to The Lion King - musical and movie - by heart. She can't sing, but she does use an old synthesizer she uses to make weird mechanical music that hints at an entirely incomprehensible side of her. How strange must her mind be to have those secrets in it?

She wants to climb a space elevator. She loves manga about sentai teams but she'd never want to be a part of one herself. She was afraid of robots, but it was the fascinated kind of fear where she'd seek it out in movies and books so she could flinch away from it. She'd never had a pet, but she was incredibly good at providing pats - being able to sustain a calming, repetitive motion until well after whatever she was stroking drifted away into a contented sleep. She has a plush two-headed hydra toy named Snake that she will talk to, and then do a voice and talk back. Snake's personality is extremely wicked and sinister, but he's been with her all her life so you'll just have to make your peace with him. She pronounces 'Ability' 'Able-eye-tie' and thinks that's normal.

Step by step, late night conversation by conversation, she opens up and reveals all the ways that she's a person. She has a story that meanders back over years and surprises and thoughts that have grown unspoken inside her for a long time. Being a friend is half of being a girlfriend, and so there needs to be some time for that to grow in along with the kisses.

But there are a great many kisses. Endless kisses. Do not underestimate the quantity of kisses. Kissing feels like a natural equilibrium to which all moments return if left unattended for very long. See her make a million, you just watch!