“It’s not fair!” Rovender yelled, throwing the bottle. It exploded against a lone standing wall. “You did not deserve this.”

Eva put her head down.

“It should . . . It should have been me!” His voice was angry. “It’s not right!”

“Don’t say that, Rovee.” Eva sniffed. Her body felt numb.

“No!” Rovender stood up, shouting, “I should have died! It shouldn’t have been Mother. It shouldn’t be any mother . . . not with little ones.” He crumpled back down, his head in his hands. “Not with little ones. They don’t deserve this. It should have been me.” He sobbed, “It should have been me.”

Eva scooted over to Rovender and put her arm around him. They sat quietly as a full blue moon drifted up through the clouded night skies of Orbona.

Eva awoke to the crackling of the campfire in the middle of the night. Balled up under a thick wooly blanket given by Hostia, she peered out into the camp. Rovender sat near her and gazed, as if hypnotized, into the fire. Alongside him, his large rucksack was wide open, its many contents spread about.

One by one he picked up an item and tossed it into the blaze. Eva blinked out the sleep and sat up. “Rovee, what are you doing?”

His voice seemed calm, at ease, as he spoke to the flames. “I am, at last, cleansing my spirit, Eva Nine.”

She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. “What?”

Rovender picked up the ornate necklace from his rucksack. “These things are nothing more than that—just things,” he said, and dropped the necklace into the campfire.

Eva sat in a ball of blanket as she watched the flames consume the necklace.

“They are not memories. . . .” Rovender dropped a handful of belongings into the fire.

“They are not alive. . . .” He scooped up an armload.

“They will never replace the ones we’ve lost.” He stood and emptied the last bit of his old possessions into the growing fire.

Eva got up, still wrapped in the coarse blanket. She grabbed her satchel and walked over to the campfire, turning it upside down. The remaining nutriment pellets, water purification tablets, Pow-R-drinks, and SustiBars tumbled down into the roaring blaze. She sat down next to Rovender and smiled. Her smile wasn’t so much one of happiness; it was more one of understanding.

Something else struck her at that moment. Eva crawled over to her sleeping mat and grabbed a small, flat object that was tucked under her balled-up jackvest. She studied the WondLa one final time before she moved to toss the picture into the flames—but a calloused hand caught her wrist.

“Not that.” Rovender’s tone was serious. “You must honor Otto, myself, and your mother by seeing to it that you find what it is that you have searched for.”

“But . . .” Eva blinked in shock. “What does it matter now?”