There was a lot in what he said that I could not understand. Or rather, I could, but to do it would be to sit down and put a shattered stained glass back together—it would result in a picture of symbol and meaning, but I knew I would cut my fingers in the process of putting it back as one. What Indigo had said had brought my memories close to Kystrom.

Indigo took a step back from the glass, squaring his shoulders to it and the body inside. He laid one hand on his collar-light and dialed it to the darkest of violets, then flashed out a pattern of light, rhythmic, hypnotic. In the space between flashes, the corpse in the container revolved; the inconsistency of light lent it some of the life it had lost, like it was turning, willingly, to look Indigo in the eye.

“What was that?” I asked, when the flashes had ceased.

Indigo lowered his hand, his collar-light still glowing dark. “Tradition.”

He didn’t say prayer, but I knew a prayer when I saw one. I thought of the bones I’d blessed, back at the start of this whole disaster, and Indigo kneeling beside me with his palm over mine. “Do you need someone to say it with you?”

His gaze snapped to mine and held there, intense and unreadable. Then he reached out and took my hand that held the flashlight, raising it up to face him. “Like this,” he said quietly, and flashed a section of the light-poem at me. I mimicked it as best I could, but knew I was failing to get it precisely. It’s difficult to imitate a pattern when you don’t know the meaning of the pieces.

He shook his head. “I’ll break it down,” he said. “This,” and he flashed a segment of the light, “means died, or has died. The pattern at the beginning makes it a noun. Do you see?”

I did, and I slowly flashed the pattern back at him. “Those who have died.”

He nodded briefly. “The pattern on either end means addressed to. Do you see?”

The line started with a dim light that went quickly bright. It ended with the same dim-flash, surrounding the noun. Fascinating. The Light language had circumpositions instead of prepositions. “To those who have died,” I translated.

“The next line is similar,” Indigo said, and flashed it at me. “The repeated pattern at the beginning and the end of the phrase means addressed from. The noun in the center means will not die, or does not intend to die. My language has more than one future tense. This future tense expresses intention.”

He flashed the phrase at me. I could see the same root verb in both noun phrases, a held darkness between flashes. That must be how to say to die in Light. “From those who will not die,” I translated.

“Or from I who will not die,” Indigo corrected softly. “It is the same.”

He taught me the next two lines as well, walking me patiently through the syntax until I could remember each phrase. “Your bodies will stay here,” I translated—it was a different future tense, a slightly different conjugation of flash and glow, “but your life will be remembered.” Future intention, again.