"This is edible?" I poked the green sludge in the bowl while Xipe laughed at us silently. "Cool."

"The name was accurate," said Lupe in mixed horror and fascination.

"Right?"

"What are you two doing?" said Emma, wandering over with a dog at either heel. Grifo had not stopped looking pleased with himself ever since he'd gotten over his experience in Mictlan and adjusted to Jem and I's trips back to the underworld. It was starting to show why. Tochtli looked suspiciously pudgy these days.

Lupe and I exchanged a knowing glance at Emma's question. My cousin folded her hands daintily. "Tecuitlatl."

Emma's face screwed up exactly as expected. Lupe and I doubled over laughing.

"It's not funny!" shrilled Emma. "Who in Ōmeteōtl's name calls a food rock poop? Xipe!"

"What?" The golden god had a disarmingly good "innocent" face. "I didn't name it."

"Well, rename it, then." She stormed off with a scowl.

My cousin met my eye. "What do you think?"

"Not a chance. I like tecuitlatl better."

"I hoped you'd say that."

A wave of laughter rose from the group Emma had just passed through. I suspected we would have support for our anti-renaming campaign.

"Are those two back yet?" said Lupe.

I scanned the bustling tent-town. It had tripled in size since my seeking-flame and some very determined adventurers had found Tepepia alive and well, if shaken, in the desert some thirty kilometers south of here. To say that the two villages had merged smoothly would be an understatement. It had been six weeks since the war had ended, and two since Grillo Negro had packed up its tents and joined Tepepia where they were camped. Already I could only tell their people apart by their faces and hair.

Well, and their accents, but even that was nearly a moot point. With Grillo Negro gifted back their language by the gods, everyone in the village just spoke Nahuatl.

"Adriana..."

"I can't see them."

Quet and Tezcat now traveled to Mictlan every other day, crossing its first three challenges to visit Xochi's grave. Quet said Xochi would reappear where she had faded when there was enough energy around to reverse the fade. The trip also got Tezcat out of the tent regularly, which did him good. He still didn't speak, but his siblings seemed fine with the silence. I doubted it was the first time they'd dealt with this, either.

"Adria~na..."

"What?" I grumbled. Lupe had her sparkle-eyed face on, and I wasn't in the mood to tell her who I was or wasn't pining after. I dragged my gaze from the crowd. Jem wasn't back yet. He hadn't told me where he was going, and he'd been gone all day.

"You going to take him up on a dance offer tonight? You still owe him one. And now that you're officially dating..."

"Haven't you got your own offer to worry about?"

"She's taken." Lupe could put on a good pout when she wanted to. "Or will be. And I'm not going to fight a goddess over it."

"Oh?" I let a grin quirk the side of my mouth.

"Okay, maybe I will. But you'd better be there to back me up."

I gave her my best cousin-smirk and left to grab the clay bowls we'd be drying the rock-poop algae in. It was, I would rather die than admit, another excuse to check for returning gods and Jem. And to hide the stupid grin that kept trying to bubble up inside me. It was fun having the gods here. I secretly hoped they'd stay longer than the time it took Xolotl to recover enough to manage the trip back to a now-rebuilt Tlalocan.

"You're laughing at me," said Lupe when I returned with the bowls.

"I'm not. I promise."

"You're laughing at something."

"I thought it was just Quet running around breaking hearts."

Lupe sniffed. "Well, it runs in the family, clearly."

Emma hadn't told me what size of snake she had conjured to keep Cihua running across the sky, but I planned to find out eventually. Fifteen years old or not, she had taken just fine to her role as a proper goddess, though we had to keep reminding her not to conjure snakes when Tochtli or Tezcat were around. At least she vowed never to make a skirt of them. Seeing her thriving warmed me all the way through. Even with winter's passing, she was as happy most days as the Tepepia boys trying and failing to court her were not. When she wasn't bouncing around snowing on things, I suspected she enjoyed harassing the new sun.

As the evening dimmed, the faint strains of music around the cookfires picked up on some unspoken signal. Tepepia had all its own dances, and it was only moments before the exchange began. Adults whooped and laughed, and marveled at the similarity of some of their dance steps. Teenagers used it as an excuse to flirt with each other, and kids used it as an excuse to run into anyone and everyone, bop them with colibríes and run away giggling.

Lupe and I found seats at the edge of the village center, far enough from the music to hear ourselves think, but close enough to be within a quick dash of the food. Lupe left to get drinks. I watched the dancing with a smile and one foot tapping until something whacked my knee. Graciela beamed up at me. She had a colibrí in one hand and a half-eaten sweetbread in the other. The lack of crumbs on my pants told me which one she'd taken to me. I swept her up with a laugh. "You know what? Thank you. I'll remember that when I need it."

I bounced my niece on my knee and chatted with her entirely nonsensically until she wriggled off and beetled away to bless more people with luck and fertility. Lupe balanced a mug of hot atole on my head. I snatched it down before it spilled. I'd been looking forward to sampling this. Xipe made a pretty amazing atole himself, but I'd heard the mothers of Tepepia were giving him a run for his cooking skills.

I seized Lupe's arm as a turkey popped up beside us. Black eyes. My cousin put her hand on mine and squeezed it gently. "Sorry," I mumbled, releasing her. I put down my drink before my suddenly trembling hands wasted it.

"Don't be."

She put an arm around me, and I rested my head on her shoulder. Tepepia had come with turkeys, and tasty as they and their eggs might be, they still spooked me every time they caught my eye. At least it was better if they were moving, and they rarely stood still.

I turned my attention to the music to peel my mind off the white eyes it kept trying to paste on the turkey now pecking my boots like they might yield something edible. At the cookfires, a food lineup materialized from the scattered crowd. They must have started serving.

"Hungry?" said Lupe.

"Not yet."

We sat like that until my appetite returned to me. The cooks of Tepepia and Grillo Negro had sought to outdo one another without making too big a meal. Lupe and I joined several other cousins and cousin-additions and had fun guessing what the original and hybrid dishes were.

I scanned the crowd again. I really was ready to take Jem up on that dance, but he was nowhere to be seen. He had better show up before the speeches began.