And small, than most have done. My peace is made;

My breathing slows. I could not ask for more.

To reach beyond the stuff of day-to-day

Is worth this life of mine. Our kind is meant

To search and seek among the outer bounds,

And when we land upon a distant shore,

To seek another yet farther still. Enough.

The silence grows. My strength has fled, and Sol

Become a faded gleam, and now I wait,

A Viking laid to rest atop his ship.

Though fire won’t send me off, but cold and ice,

And forever shall I drift alone.

No king of old had such a stately bier,

Adorned with metals dark and grey, nor such

A hoard of gems to grace his somber tomb.

I check my straps; I cross my arms, prepare

Myself to once again venture into the

Unknown, content to face my end and pass

Beyond this mortal realm, content to hold

And wait and here to sleep—

To sleep in a sea of stars.

—THE FARTHEST SHORE 48–70

HARROW GLANTZER

CHAPTER I

RECOGNITION

1.

She was.

How, where, and what, she could not say … but she was. The lack of knowledge did not bother her. She existed, and existence was its own satisfaction.

Her awareness was a thin, trembling sensation, as if she were stretched over too much area. She felt insubstantial; a haze of recognition drifting across a darkling sea.

And for a time, that was enough.

Then she noticed the membrane of her self beginning to thicken, slowly at first, but with increasing speed. With it came the question that birthed all questions: Why?

As her flesh continued to solidify, her thoughts also grew stronger, more coherent. Still, confusion dominated. What was happening? Was she supposed to know? Where was she? Was where something real or something she had imagined?

The shock of connecting nerves caused her a stab of pain, sharp-edged as the light that shone upon her. For there was light now, from many sources: cold sparks set in black and a great blazing sphere that burned without end.

More shocks followed, and even thought failed before the barrage of pain. Throughout, she continued to increase in size. Gathering. Coalescing into being.

A memory returned to her, and with it, the memory of memories: Sitting in third-year anatomy class, listening to the damn pseudo-intelligence drone on about the internal structure of the pancreas. Looking at the glistening red hair of the undergraduate two rows ahead of him …

What did it mean? Wh—