So here’s the chronologically first appearance of Rana and Yalaria, and the only time we’ll actually see them together, written and drawn some time after they were conceived separately. As I think I mentioned elsewhere, we were vaguely planning a reunion for them for a while before deciding it wasn’t in the cards.

That decision did not come before we wrote this story, but regardless, it may have been a small hole in the narrative that we’d never actually seen their dynamic. And when you find a hole, you try to fill it.

Panel 1 might register in your consciousness as a portrait of a couple of guards sleeping on the job. But we’ve already seen plenty of guards on our way in, and if these two were guards it’d be way too convenient for them to be asleep while everyone else is awake. They are resting near the egg for another reason.