She turned, and there was a face she knew to match the voice. A face that pulled her out of her confusion. “Kaveh!”

He was walking along a sun-dappled path, hands in his pockets, smiling like this was a spot they came to meet regularly. He was wearing the same black denim jacket over the black hoodie and black pants he’d been wearing the very first time she had seen him.

“You came back,” she said. “Why did you leave?”

“I didn’t mean to,” he said as he approached. His hair was silky and flowing, his facial hair clipped close, his jade eyes gleaming. She reached out for him, pulled him into an embrace. She tried to smell him, but there was no air. She didn’t need it. He didn’t have a smell.

“Kaveh,” she said, pulling away from him. “I think we might be dead.”

He cocked his head quizzically, but not confused. “I think you might be right.”

She heard that voice, that insistence like a voice yelling through a thick wall, only now the wall didn’t seem so thick, telling her there was somewhere she needed to go, somewhere she needed to be, someone she had to take care of. She looked at the patch of forest floor that had turned to black and saw that the patch was spreading, burning everything it touched to cinder without fire.

“You need to go,” he said. He ran his fingers through her hair, but she couldn’t feel anything. No warmth, no feeling of skin on skin. She looked and saw that the hills behind him were turning to black carbon, crawling up the trees and turning them to ash as well.

She thought of leaving the redwood grove, seeing what was yelling at her from the other side of that wall, but she knew what it entailed. Pain, burden, suffering. Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if she stayed. “I think I’d rather stay with you.”

He shook his head, the lines around his eyes crinkling. “No, not now. Not now.”

Not now. But if I go back, he might hurt me again. I might hurt him again. What else was there to consider? She couldn’t remember, couldn’t see past the negatives, and she was tired. The fire without flame was almost on them now. She was so incredibly tired. She wanted to sleep now, sleep forever.

“No,” she said. The giant trunks that surrounded them faded from red to black, began dissipating into ash, crumbling into the air. “No, I think I want to stay with you.”

The warmth in his eyes didn’t wane, but sadness crept in. “I have to go home now. But you’re not done yet.”