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She fell in love with the idea in books before she ever saw one in real life. Water burbling down a narrow course, singing along its banks and roaring over rocks it had long rubbed smooth. It was nothing like the meander that wound its way under the domes on Komarr, silty, artificial and lazy.
Sometimes, when times were tough, she had imagined a river carrying Tien away as she and Nicky stood on its bank, waving. He wouldn't drown, of course, but would be carried off - perhaps on a raft - to the river's mysterious end, the alluvial plain a quiet breath before a roaring sea. Water, free, was a force more powerful than any person, she knew, but that it chose no favourites made it like a friend.
Miles, who had seen everything several times over, seemed to find it quite ordinary, but Ekaterin was in awe. A river! Finally, one worthy of the name! She dipped her fingers into the cool water and felt its flow.
"It's wonderful," she breathed.
"Yes." Miles's eyes didn't move from her face, as he took her hand and helped her in to the boat. "It's yours if you want it. Anything. I'm sure..."
Ekaterin laughed, cutting him off. "A river doesn't belong to anyone, dear. I'm happy just to drift along it."
"It's three days to the Long Lake by boat. I'm sure you'll be quite sick of it by the time we arrive."
Right. Ivan had told her that Miles had never handled boredom well. But she knew she could never tire of the river, of its constant shifting views. Like Miles, it could be rough and unpredictable or require great patience, but along its muddy banks and at its end in the fertile plain, among native and Terran vegetation growing wild, was beauty, possibility, dreams.
As Miles cast off and the boat slipped away from the dock, Ekaterin realised that the knot of worry that had always held her had been dislodged, had tumbled away in the waves. She thought of the river's end, and for the first time since before her father remarried, felt anticipation. She'd never thought she'd have one, but here it was, laughing in the waves. A second chance.