"A dozen, or fifty, or more if it's a particularly large raft. Raia-el, my home, is one of the larger ones, a well-established raft-tree. We keep our numbers around two hundred thousand, in total."

A good and ecologically sustainable number. This was decided. And it's also quite a bit less right at the moment but there's no reason to go into that.

"Though sisters frequently move around and create new homes on new rafts."

Merwen already sounds wistful. "My home is with my lovesharer, the daughter of my womb and the daughters of hers, a girl we took in when her raft sank in a storm, Spinel, who is Valan-born but is as much a Sharer as any of us now. Oh."

Abruptly, she looks incredibly homesick.