We follow him, Makemin snapping at us to come back, but we haven’t far to go. Thrushchurl has ascended a broad flight of shallow steps to a bare semicircular terrace of that white material, fronting a huge white building whose roof has collapsed and whose sides bulge and spill out. There is a crushed and blocked doorway there, but he is approaching the exposed wall beside it, which runs on for many feet, covered with the shadows of people who aren’t there to cast them. Black streaks run from a spot by my two feet to climb the wall, join into a torso of a man with arms at his sides, facing, I think, toward the wall.

Thrushchurl caresses the shadows without touching them, a lingering sigh welling from his chest. Mutely imploring figures, knees buckling, arms flung up before the face, another kneeling hands outstretched in warding off. At one end, a figure caught turning to look. We look at them. Black and white. Snow spins around me so thick I can’t see the horizon, the trees, I can’t see what past I’m in, although I’ve remembered this moment so many times since out of black and white I swam together and became a “character”—

—now see the flash that scalds the eye, through the glare see the shining city’s beautiful towers minarets domes and columns wilt sag and jet fire as the whole city seems to deflate, crazily lie down on its side on a bed of screams—I see people burning to cinders, and dying in the ruin of the buildings. I hear silence. The light destroys the air. Instantly the light turns to darkness, blindness, a sky without sun, moon, stars, clouds, as black and dead as charred wood. The land glows with transparent white flames that ooze along the ground, and everything they touch turns over and curls up, changes from one color to another to another, shrinks and then billows out flat.

Far off down the street I see someone, a woman, going to and fro, crossing and recrossing the busy street, approaching everyone, briefly stepping into every business on the busy street, avidly searching for someone. Her clothes are entirely unfamiliar to me. This concerns me, but I haven’t got time to think about it. My time is not my own. Inside my head are many many long lists of things I have to do right away. I check my watch. I have to collect my rations before the office closes.

The train is idling on the platform; I sit across from the open door as we wait for the connecting train to arrive. I watch the passengers criss-cross the platform between the two trains.