Calliope’s stomach flipped. She stared at Eunjoo’s round face, so earnest and solemn. She turned to Chance, who winked. “Have you met him before?”

Eunjoo shook her head.

Calliope sighed. “It was just a dream, chica. Someone who looked like him.” She tugged one of the girl’s braids playfully, and asked Chance, “Did you lose anyone?”

“I don’t know. Phones aren’t working, I can’t call home. I was on my way to the rez before I ran into you ladies. Yet, I have a feeling my people are unscathed. We’re survivors.”

She thought of the recent water crisis of the Sioux people, the snaking oil pipeline broken in the Heart River. Our people are survivors, Bisabuela had told her, at the graveyard outside Old Mesilla, where her sons were buried. They’d fought wars for a country that wanted a wall built around them, to keep them othered always.

His people were unscathed. Where were her people? The hills in the distance glowed orange. Why were they glowing? She squinted, set Eunjoo down.

She was holding her belly and running before she knew what she was doing, the others calling after her. A flashing, strobe-like pulsing, and she rushed toward it, a cicada vibrating in her ears.

Andres had given her a flashlight their first Christmas together and she’d laughed. It had a Taser setting and a strobe light. She’d laughed that he would give her such a gift, and she’d turned on the strobe, pointed it toward the ceiling, and danced, mimicking a beatbox and techno sounds (something she was low-level famous for at talent shows as an undergrad). Pajama’d and messy-haired, she’d jumped onto a couch and danced. When she’d calmed down enough to explain, she told him that she’d thought the strobe was for signaling her distress if she was lost—a not uncommon occurrence—while hiking or out on a dig. Andres had corrected her, in the way of overprotective husbands and mansplainers worldwide (a phenomenon she was well aware of, as a female professor in academia): the strobe was to render attackers dizzy, off-balance, and generally unable to assault. I’ll still use it if I’m ever lost, so you’ll know where to find me. She’d pulled him into her dance, kissing him. It’ll be my signal for you, our secret code. Scientist lost at dance party, come find me. She had no idea where the flashlight went. She’d never used it. But it was their signal ahead, she knew it, knew it had to be Andres. The air was wet against her face, though it shouldn’t have been humid. She felt the bile rising in her throat, her stomach ached from exertion. She should not have been sprinting.

Chance caught her easily, grabbed her arm. Panting, he turned her to face him. “What on earth? Mujer, have you lost your mind?”