THE SANDSTORM BLEW in a few hours later, maybe even a few days, I’m not sure. All I remember is us sitting in front of each other in the narrow shade of a cactus while she explained her theory about the fourth person. “Think how lonely it is to talk in first person. To admit it over and over again.”

“Admit what?”

“That I’m alone.”

“Of course you’re alone. You’re the only one on this planet.”

“It’s the other way around. Here I have no one to talk to, so I barely think about it. But back on Earth it drove me crazy. I felt like the whole language thing was keeping me stuck inside myself,” she said, and started piling sand into a small mound.

“Come on, you’re overreacting. It’s just words. And besides, first-person plural pretty much solves your problem,” I said. “We eat. We sleep. We. See? Not so lonely anymore.”

“No, dummy. That’s the worst. First-person plural just lumps you in with everyone else, erases you completely. Like it makes no difference whether you’re a realtor or a Holocaust survivor. People get lost in that shit.”

“You’re the only one who gets lost.”

“Fine, then I’m the only one,” she snarled. “Then for me second- and third-person are even worse than worst. You say ‘you’ or ‘she’ and you completely take yourself out of the equation, as if you don’t even exist.”

“I don’t understand why you’re obsessing about it. It’s just semantics.”

“For you. For me it’s more than that,” she said. “That’s why we need fourth-person.”

“What’s that? How would you even use fourth-person?”

“How should I know? I’m not a linguist,” she protested. “I just know that when you use it you don’t feel completely alone or completely lost.”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

“You know, like when you mix yellow and blue and they still haven’t turned completely into green yet? That’s what I’m talking about.”

I told her the whole approach sounded a bit childish to me. That no disrespect, but I’m not sure first-person was the reason she felt lost or all alone in the world. That it was more complicated than that. A strong wind blew past us, crumbling the little mound she had built. Ayala got up and strapped on her ski goggles. At first I thought she was just having one of her moments. That I had somehow managed to offend her. But when I noticed she was gazing out at the horizon, I turned around. A wall of blue dust was sweeping up behind us. It was still a few hundred meters away, creeping toward us.

“What’s that?” I asked Ayala.

“Come,” she replied. “Now.” She started to bolt.