Kelpie, neighing wildly, trampled through the rubbish dump, struggling back upwards towards the road. Ciri, choking from the stench, grabbed the mare’s neck.

They managed to get up. And greeted the weird road’s disagreeable hardness with joy and relief.

Ciri, trembling all over, looked down onto the rubbish dump which ended in a black lake filling the bottom of the basin. The surface of the lake was lifeless and gleaming, as it wasn’t water but solidified pitch. Beyond the lake, beyond the rubbish dumps, the piles of ash and heaps of cinders, the sky was red from distant glows, and was marked by trails of smoke.

The unicorn snorted. Ciri was about to wipe her watering eyes with her cuff, when she suddenly noticed her entire sleeve was covered in dust. The flecks of dust also covered her thighs, the pommel of her saddle and Kelpie’s mane and neck.

The stench was stifling.

‘Disgusting,’ she muttered. ‘Repulsive… I feel like I’m sticky all over. Let’s get out of here… Let’s get out of here with all haste, Little Horse.’

The unicorn pricked up his ears and snorted.

Only you can make it happen. Act.

‘Me? All alone? Without your help?’

The unicorn nodded his horned head.

Ciri scratched her head, sighed and shut her eyes. She focused.

At first there was only disbelief, resignation and fear. But a cool brightness–the brightness of knowledge and power–quickly came over her. She had no idea where the knowledge and power were coming from, where their roots and source originated. But she knew she could do it. That she would do it if she wanted.

Once more she cast a glance at the hardened and lifeless lake, the smoking heap of refuse and the skeletons of trees. The sky was lit up by a distant glow.

‘I’m glad it’s not my world.’ She leaned over and spat. ‘Very glad!’

The unicorn neighed meaningfully. She understood what he wanted to say.

‘Even if it’s mine,’ she wiped her eyes, mouth and nose with a handkerchief, ‘it’s at once not mine, because it’s far away in time. It’s the past, or—’

She broke off.

‘The past,’ she repeated softly. ‘I deeply believe it’s the past.’

They greeted the heavy rain, the proper downpour they fell under in the next place, as a blessing. The rain was warm and aromatic, smelling of summer, weeds, mud and compost. The rain washed the filth from them, purged them. The rain was quite simply a catharsis.

Like any catharsis, it also became monotonous, excessive and unbearable after a short while. After some time, the water she was washing herself in began to wet her annoyingly, run down her neck and chill her unpleasantly. So they got out of that rainy place.

For it wasn’t that place either. Or that time.