After returning home from their trip to London Arja and Simoni visited a temple dedicated to Hanuman, the Monkey King and incarnation of Shiva from whom Arja was descended. At first it just seemed to be a nice tourist location with wild monkeys eating offerings of fruits left by visitors to the shrine, though Arja surprised Simoni by encouraging her to go for a swim in one of the more secluded pools. As the girls relax in the water Arja talks to the monkeys around it, chittering at them like a primate as the animals seem to be able to understand her. She has them put a few fruits into the water which seems to react to it, causing the water to glow and swirl around as if a giant drain has opened in the bottom, pulling both her and Simoni under the waves. 

The pool turned out to be a portal leading to a reflection of the temple in some pocket dimension populated by Arja's cousins and grandfather, all of whom were half human, half primate, along with a roost of garuda above the temple. 

The garuda and the monkeys have a... tense... relationship, the monkey people viewing them as stuffy, snobbish birds who don't enjoy a good brawl while the garuda view them as loud and obnoxious brutes. Though they have a policy of leaving each other alone as mystic sites are few in this day and their ancestors were the staunchest of allies. 

Simoni goes to meet Arja's grandfather, a giant of an ape man with a face on both the front and back of his head. He was presumably human (or at least a 'normal' ape-person) when he was younger, but in his old age he has become the spiritual leader of his line as well as a powerful magical being in his own right. He recognizes that Simoni wasn't actually Indian before and asks to hear her story, so Simoni explains about her transformation, the fetch, and Clan Fullmoon. Her grandfather asks her if she's really dedicated to being a part of their culture or 'if Simoni is just a costume she's wearing'. Simoni admits that she's not really sure she wants to give up everything about her past, but that she wants to stay with Arja and that she wants to learn more about her new home. 

He seems satisfied with this, welcoming Simoni into their family, and suggests that Arja takes her to the roost in the upper reaches of the temple where the garuda live, suggesting that she ask if she can train with the garuda in order to help learn to control her magic properly. She was also offered a chance to practice with the traditional weapons of the garuda, though the longbow proved to be a bit too harsh on her talons (having turned her arms into wings she had to hold it with her bird-like feet) she did find that a set of metal talon-covers, which clipped over her real ones in her harpy form were much more to her liking. Having been isolated from any of her witch relatives by her mother and forbidden to learn magic before being abducted by Arja, Simoni had never met any other magic users, especially ones with abilities so similar to her own, and found a sense of belonging and community there she had been longing to have for quite some time. 

At the close a lone caucasian man is seen entering the town on foot, a cat perched on his shoulder...