Dear Tomas: How're you doing lately? I'm terribly sorry about sending you this letter all of a sudden. The last time I wrote was three years ago, and at the time, your family had only just welcomed little Cantor into your lives. My wife and I wanted to reply back with some dried meat to celebrate, but it's rare to have the chance to send mail out here in the frontier, and the weather's not been great either. That dried meat ended up ruined by the rain, and I ended up putting off this letter again and again. Anyhow, I'm real happy to hear that you're all doing well in the nomadic city. Your last letter had you asking about Tila. You must've been worried about her. I can tell you that she's a young lady who loves the call of adventure, one who's happy to run across rocky beaches all day long. Whenever she grew a little taller, whenever she had a smile on her face from digging out a potato on her own, I thought of writing you. I childishly hoped to brush away your worries this way, to convince you that even here, out in the harsh frontier, children have the space to run free. As long as we protect her and cherish her, she'll turn out the same as any other child, happy and healthy as can be. But... I shouldn't forget that you're always right. You were always the smartest one, which is how you could make a place for yourself up in those steel cities, living the good life. Tila caught a cold when she was four. We didn't have the medicine to treat it or even a way to keep her warm. There's not much the beast traps can get when the cold sets in either. She couldn't get the nutrition she needed, and she never fully recovered. My healthy little girl was wasting away by the day. It's her fifth birthday today, Tomas. We put together the best birthday bash we could. We borrowed a pot, veggies, cream, spices, and meat, the best meat I could find. She ate it up like a happy little angel. Know what she asked me next? She asked if her face would go back to as round as it used to be if she finished it all, if she'd never get sick again if she did. I've got no other choice. It shames me to do so, but I'm begging for your help. You're the only one I can trust. I hope you can take care of her. Give her a place to sleep where the wind doesn't come in through the cracks, a place where she can grow up healthy and strong, a place where she won't end up like a lot of other unfortunate kids cut down before their prime out in the frontier. Lots of love, in all sincerity and shamefulness, Your big brother Surfer puts down the letter and photograph. This was the last of the envelopes. Out of the things her uncle sent her, there were just two packages from the frontier left—Her mother's obituary and things, and the same for her father, dated a few years later. '...Did I manage to get the flavor the same?' Surfer closes her eyes, focusing all her attention on the taste of the food in her mouth. In a Blacksteel Worldwide-branded pot, a cream stew with in-season ingredients bubbles and boils away, the spitting image of the simple pot in front of the five-year-old her in the photo. The sun begins to set, and her stomach starts to rumble. 'Suppose now's a good time to find out.'