Moss reached out a deep green hand to Grayson, to comfort her, not to touch, but the arm was already falling back into the darkness of the rest of her as she extended it. Moss breathing easy, breathing hard, not needing to breathe at all, but having gotten in the habit. Knowing what it would mean to Grayson if she stopped breathing.

“What would you have done if not for us? Would it have been better?” Moss asked Grayson. She was gray and black, the black fading the gray, the green succumbing to black.

“I would come searching for you at the tidal pools,” Grayson said. “I always would do that.” Grayson was constant like that. This Grayson, that Grayson.

There was a smell like mint and honeysuckle and periwinkle. There was such a richness lost into the air. That Moss had always carried within her. Last to leave her would be the salt, the brine, the scent of water.

“How long?” Chen, trembling from the effort of holding himself together, there with the other Chen mirroring him on the other side of the door. Except Chen-not would just die.

“A little longer,” Moss managed, although her face had lost its form. A wraith of wreathes. An impression in a now barren field where once wildflowers had grown. She’d taught Chen how to die, the progressions, but had never taught herself.

In the look Grayson gave her, the silence, Moss could feel Grayson’s bereavement intense, burning away her own pain like a heated surgeon’s knife.

“Better than nothing,” Moss said. “Always better than nothing. Remember that. Don’t forget.”

Moss reached out. With what was safe. Across the divide that could not really be crossed, across the void that was the space between minds. Reached out.

But it was the memory of Moss that Grayson always held within.

Limbs that couldn’t be separated, didn’t want to be separated. Held by so many and so much and never being alone, separate again.

Then the door closed and Grayson was left there, unable to touch the one she loved most in the world.

All the things. All the things Moss had taught her. All the things Grayson would never have been.

There was nothing left to say that had not been said.

The skies were clear. Out on the plain, her eye recovering, she could see the dot that was Charlie X, motionless, straining to hear something that could not be heard. A child. A nothing.

All was still. All was silent.

xviii.

reentry like death
found in flame

A century coming home, for Grayson. The warp and weft of time like a scythe swung effortless. No resistance. Caught you no matter how you tried to evade. A lethal cut that bled backward, started as a scar, became a wound, fountained red, then was nothing at all.