He tasted like sunlight and shame, like forty years of hard labor, waiting for things to get better while they never, ever did. He tasted like anger, bitterness, and xenophobia, and like a strange, fierce joy at the idea of space invaders coming for his planet, in his time. If there were aliens walking the world, he could kill them without compunction. He could feel like a hero, a protector, and not the failure life constantly told him he was. He tasted like oranges and axle grease, and the sudden shock of his death was a sweet spice, like garlic and red wine. I walked through and over his life, and I was sad when my feet hit simple sand again. The world was nowhere near so delicious.

The pit’s edge loomed, sharp and unforgiving. I stopped when I reached it, digging my toes into the soft sand at the drop-off. In the back of my mind, the part of me that still wanted to hold on to humanity—the part of me that loved Graham, that cared about Mandy, that wanted to be a person, and not a pawn in some intergalactic conquest—was screaming. I ignored it.

I stepped off the edge.

3.

The fall was interminable. I felt like Alice plummeting into Wonderland, only to realize that this time, gravity wasn’t going to be kind; this time, she was going to fall all the way down. I closed my eyes, and the space behind them was immediately filled with the soothing hum of the flowers from the forest, with the rustle of their dragonfly petals and the chiming of their leaves.

// stop fighting // they whispered. I went limp, allowing my body to relax completely into the moment. A vine whipped out of the deeps and wrapped around my waist, gently, like a lover’s hand. Two more followed, wrapping around my legs, and then more, and more, and more, cocooning me like a caterpillar being wrapped in silk, pulling me deep into a biological embrace.

When the first threadlike creepers wormed their way through my skin, I tried to open my eyes, scared of what this could mean. My eyes refused to respond. My everything refused to respond. It was like the creepers had paralyzed me, turning me into an observer in my own existence. Not even an observer: with my eyes closed and the vines wrapping around my head, I couldn’t experience anything outside the cocoon.

Maybe that was the point. I was trying to decide how hard to struggle when the vines drew tight, and the voice of the forest whispered, in a querulous tone, // ours? //