I've come to visit my friends Atrus and Katran here at their new home, Tomahna, where they have settled in nicely with their new sprogling Yeesha. Katran, who seems to be intelligent and strong when she has no small children around, has gone completely placenta-brained and did little but coo at the sprog while I was there. It's a female, and having grown out of the Mother Teresa stage now looks like Winston Churchill with hair.

(Atrus, if you ever read this, that was a joke. Your larva is adorable.)

Their home is in a little green cleft surrounded by barren, wind-sculpted desert. Katran calls the desert "breathtaking". I, who have lived in a desert climate most of my adult life and hated every moment of it, called it "hideous", but not out loud.

After engaging in the minimum of baby-worship consistent with courtesy, I came here into Atrus's study. He's been hard at work on an Age called Releeshahn, which he's designed (redesigned? I'm still not clear on whether he actually builds these Ages himself with words, or connects to places that already exist and then reworks them) as a refuge for the surviving D'ni people. When he wrote, he seemed very eager to show it to me. And I was eager to see it, although a bit nervous about meeting the D'ni: the only D'ni I've met are Atrus himself and his father Gehn, along with my limited interactions with his two sons. The sample is small — not really enough to form a statistical curve — but numerically it leans towards Atrus's being the exception rather than the rule.

I wax digressive. Excitement — or nervousness — can do that to you. Really I'm rather looking forward to this, and have tried to do the occasion proper honor: I wonder if Atrus will take note of the fact that I'm actually wearing skirts.

Atrus seems more than a little nervous himself, about issues of personal security. Katran said something about a number of padlocks he's installed around their home. There is a letter on his desk — perhaps I shouldn't have read it — to a locksmith, in which he mentioned that someone has broken into his study and meddled with his Books. I can see why he'd be concerned, after what happened to his library on Myst. He is troubled enough that he literally keeps Releeshahn under lock and key: the Descriptive Book is under a glass dome, and is itself sealed with a strap and lock like a schoolgirl's diary.

I'm waiting for him, alternately looking around — there are exquisite tapestries here that seem to reflect what he's told me of D'ni history — and writing in this journal. Our visit to Releeshahn should be uneventful, he says, but I've taken the precaution of bringing a small satchel with a few personal necessities. I still vividly remember my visit to Riven, and how hideously unprepared I was for it. "Take this prison book," Atrus said. "Take my journal," he said. But never, "Take a water bottle." (The water there made me sick!) Or, "Take some paper and pencils so you can make notes." Or, "Take a sun hat, because the sun there is relentless" (does he think that D'ni are the only photophobes in the world?). Or, "Take your warm shawl, because the nights are chilly. And comfortable shoes, because everything is at least two miles apart."

So this time, for what I hope will be as uneventful a visit as Atrus predicts, I'm bringing or wearing all those things. With luck I'll need none of them. With my luck, I'll probably — here he is, more later —