Liff drifts into awareness while doing chores and realizes that her memories do not line up cleanly. Looking outside, Liff sees multiple versions of Imir at once: young saplings, a mature forest, and a dying landscape of bleached trees and landslides. The contradiction convinces Liff that something is wrong not only with the land but with memory and reality itself.

Liff thinks of the Wolf as both real and unreal, a shared fear or dream living inside the minds of Landfall’s people. Liff feels overwhelmed by voices that are all versions of herself from different times: a child of hope, a child of decline, and a child who has searched Landfall for signs of meaning. Liff concludes that Liff is the constant in a world where families, deaths, ages, and histories keep changing.

Liff also recognizes Miranda and Miranda’s companions as constants of another kind. Miranda is always new in town, yet Liff has known Miranda across many versions of events. Remembering the birds’ attempts to sort real pieces from impossible ones, Liff realizes that Miranda, Fabian, Portia, Paul, and the children are not merely strangers but outsiders of a deeper kind.

Downstairs, Liff overhears a shifting meeting of adults whose voices come from incompatible times. Uncle Molder, councillors, Gembel, Arkelly, Liff’s father, and Heorest Holt seem to overlap as they argue about Seccers, out-farmers, property, failing crops, pests, fungus, the abandoned Watchers on the Enkidu, and whether something nonhuman or ship-born is behind Landfall’s collapse. The discussion reveals that the colony has long carried buried guilt over those left in orbit and buried fear of something beyond the human settlement.

A vision or memory of Heorest Holt leads Liff outside toward the treeline, but Uncle Molder stops Liff. Molder believes the colony’s failures and broken continuity prove that outsiders have entered Landfall. Molder orders Liff to ride into town with him and identify them. Liff resolves not to betray Miranda, but when Miranda appears near the First Tree, Liff’s involuntary shock alerts Molder. Molder names Miranda as the target, and Molder’s men move in.