Calliope straightened and braced herself to enter the silent house. Steady breaths rose and fell against her shoulder. Eunjoo’s body had gone limp with sleep, her small hands still clutching Calliope’s tunic. Calliope knew the feeling; postpanic, the body tended to shut down. She opened the door. No disarray in the living room, no visible chaos. No signs of struggle or carnage. Two white candles in two red sconces had burned down to the bases at the bottom of each wick. How long ago had the candles been lit? How long did it take a candle to burn to the bottom? How much time could have elapsed if the candles were still burning?

She blew them out.

Her temples throbbed, a dull ache. She was thirsty. She thought of her amniotic fluid. Dehydration could cause premature labor, she’d been warned. She would search for bottled water, but first she’d gather Eunjoo’s clothes. Upstairs, she found Eunjoo’s bedroom, decorated with paper cranes that soared from strings tied to the ceiling. She placed Eunjoo on her bed and opened drawers, pulling out ruffled skirts and brightly patterned tank tops, stuffing them into a backpack. She was kidnapping her. What if this was a mistake? A misunderstanding? What would she tell the girl’s parents if they came home and found Calliope, a stranger holding their daughter?

The room grew hotter. A deep rumbling shook the earth. Eunjoo awoke making a guttural sound and covering her ears, and above them, the cranes dipped from their strings, nose-diving in sharp angles. Calliope grabbed Eunjoo’s hand and darted out of the room onto the balcony. Across the scrubbed hills, from one Sister’s sandstone habit, a cloud of ash and cinder skewered the sky. A screaming Sister howled back to life. Time swelled and contracted. Calliope coughed in dry wracking spurts, covering her mouth with the inside of her tunic. The air had been sucked away, replaced by a breath-stealing heat. They’d be turned to stone.

Eunjoo’s coal-dark eyes fluttered. “What is that?” The girl’s screech startled Calliope out of her stupor. A voice inside her commanded: Run!

She couldn’t focus. Her stomach dropped as with labor pains. She needed to grasp something. She clenched Eunjoo tighter and cantered down the steps, ignoring the careening in her gut. She had to get the girl out. The divergent sensory perceptions flickered like camera flashes as Calliope ran: the water in her gut, the fire from the earth, the flapping birds and Sleeping Sisters, her aching muscles and bursting eardrums. The heat scalded. Glass shattered from shelves. Outside, the heat worsened. It was bladed glass sticking through her clothes. It pierced her skin, releasing bullets into her body. Jawed, thick black smoke. She had no breath. Eunjoo’s mouth opened wide in a scream. She was silent.