The integration of Janus into Oakhaven was a slow, delicate process. He was a boy who had only ever known the cold, hard logic of a machine god's mind. The simple, messy, and often illogical world of human emotion was a foreign country to him.
Serian became his guide. She taught him not with lessons, but with simple, quiet acts of kindness. She showed him how to tend the garden, how to feel the warmth of the sun, how to listen to the song of the river. She taught him what it meant to be a part of a community, a family.
Nox, in his own way, taught him as well. He did not speak of emotions or love. He spoke of purpose. He took the boy, whose entire existence had been defined by a grand, inherited directive, and he taught him how to find his own, small, personal reason for being.
"Purpose isn't something you're given," Nox told him one afternoon, as they were repairing the old fence line together. "It's something you build. One post at a time."
