The Day-Blind Stars

An Earth explorer in search of something new and strange in the up and out ends up traveling through space with a small god over millennia.

Short story | 5,293 words

She grew fearful of the world and turned away from it, seeking solace. She intended to return.

She never did.

When one turned away from the world in those days, one was subject to a binary. Binaries were a sort of self-imposed tyranny, imagined by the one but expected by the totality. So, turning away from the world, for Sierra St. Sandalwood IV, involved a choice—of necessity illusory—between going up and out or going down and in. The first choice was blue. The second choice was green.

The first choice was green. The second choice was blue.

See? Illusion.

Sierra went up and out. Going up, she theorized, she would be able to look down at the receding world, watching for signs of pursuit. Had she gone down, the world would have closed over behind her as she hacked through roots, as she gnawed through bedrock, as she braved the magma mantle washing the iron and nickel core. How can that be said to be turning away from the world at all?

That would be going under, thought Sierra.

But so many people chose down. Her husband had. Her godmother had. The twins, of course, painfully young, swore they were determined to embrace the world through all the numberless days gifted them by the life force. Devon called the life force Gaia and Denisa called it motion. Denisa waved her arms, dreamy and languorous, whenever she spoke of motion.

Sierra was graceless in the up and out. She had never been outside the gravity well. Her go suit prompted her to make the adjustments necessary to steer a clear course, but only because she had activated those options. Options for prompts for adjustments—some of the very things from which Sierra was turning away. Perhaps up and out was not so different from down and in. Perhaps neither was any different from the world itself.

She approached a tumble of great rocks trailing the world. Each of them was inconceivably cold on one side, gamma-drenched hellfire on the other. A guard god was sitting on one of the rocks, breathing smoke and looking at her with idle curiosity. The go suit suggested she stop and visit.

“Hello. How are things?” asked the guard god.

“How are you breathing smoke?” asked Sierra. “How can you talk? How can I hear you? Why is a god trailing the world?”

“First,” it replied, “I’m smoking a cigarette, which technically is breathing smoke, but not exactly what you are imagining. I can talk because I learned how at my father’s knee. I can hear you because I am listening. I am trailing the world because I’m on watch.”

“What does a god watch for?” asked Sierra. Her go suit maneuvered its way onto the surface of the rock; she was briefly nauseous before her see-plate stabilized the view.

Illusion.

“I’m more of a poppet deity than a god. And I’m watching for people who go up and out.”

“Like me,” said Sierra.

“Much like you, yes. Mostly like you. You should tell me who you are.”

The suit made it impossible to nod, though Sierra reflexively attempted one. “My name is Sierra St. Sandalwood IV,” she said.

The guard god did nod, though its thick neck, wider than its block of a head, made the movement negligible. “Thank you. That is welcome information. However, I did not ask your name. I asked who you are.”

Sierra thought very carefully. “I think if I knew that I would be at home with the twins.”

The guard god nodded again, this time with more alacrity. Pebbles and dust floated out into the nothing. “I think you have a question.” It sounded delighted. “Let’s take an equatorial walk.”

It lurched up and Sierra realized she had not made a careful enough study of her interlocutor. Its waist and legs were seamlessly bonded to the outcropping of silicates she’d thought simply served as a throne until it cracked free. It stretched, dreamy and languorous.

“My go suit keeps me from careening away,” said Sierra. “But how are you treating this little rock as firma?”

The guard god looked at her and furled its face, a sort of miniature avalanche concealing what Sierra thought might be emeralds deep in the crags of what she thought might be orbital sockets. When it opened them again, its eyes were sapphires.

It started to force its way through the tumult of stalagma that extended to the horizon in every direction.

The horizon wasn’t very far.

Sierra blinked her right eye, just so, and she floated after the guard god. When she was moving alongside it, she asked again, “How are you walking on this little rock? Shouldn’t you fly off into the nothing?”

“You haven’t asked the question I think you need to ask, yet, but you do ask a lot of others,” it said. “I like that. Yes, I should fly off because of, you know”—and here it made a circular motion with one of the three spindly fingers sprouting from its upper right hand—“the spinning. Also, there are fundamental forces of the universe to be taken into consideration. At least one or two of them. But it’s okay. I kind of bend down a little bit so I won’t spin off. As for violating fundamental forces, I have a permit.”

Sierra tried to nod again. When she couldn’t, again, she breathed a query to her go suit, piano, asking if there was a way she could move her head freely. The suit flashed a series of glyphs on the inside of her see-plate, seizure fast. Sierra interpreted them as saying, “Sure.”

“Those things are hilarious,” said the guard god. It had stopped and seemed to be considering their route. “Have you ever talked to a go suit when it’s not being worn?”

Sierra shook her head, greatly satisfied with her freedom of movement. “I didn’t think they had any independent agency.”

“Eh,” said the guard god. “People get up here, they look around. A good number of them take off their go suits and launch themselves skyclad into the nothing, giving up their little essences in favor of… well, in favor of what each one of them individually seeks. Sometimes the suits stick around for a bit after that.”

It continued, “I think the equator of this rock will prove a little rough. How do you feel about a circumpolar walk?”

“Do asteroids have poles?”

“Hadn’t thought of that. Probably not this one. Doesn’t it have to do with the invariable plane?”

Sierra had never heard the phrase but was beginning to catch the ebb and flow of the conversation, something she had always been good at. “Sounds right,” she said.

The guard god turned right and plodded north, or perhaps south. “People who come up here tend to be either immigrants or mystics,” it said.

“Never both?” Sierra blinked her eyes just so. She moved along beside the guard god, their heads at the same height but Sierra’s torso and limbs now extended up and out, upside down, relatively. This amused her. If she knew the just-so sequence of blinks that would prompt the suit to remind her of the last time she’d been amused, she would have blinked it.

“Immigrants, they usually have a lot on their minds,” said the guard god. “Not much time for revelations and all that omenistic business.”

“Are you saying immigrant, or—” Sierra stopped. “The one with the I or the one with the E?”

“I could never keep that straight,” said the guard god. “Comings or goings, borders and frontiers. I don’t think it makes much difference up here.”

Sierra queried the suit on whether she could shrug, was given an answer in the positive, entered a command, and shrugged.

“I can also never keep lie and lay straight,” said the guard god. “Yes,” it went on, circling an outcropping that it somewhat resembled. “This way is much easier.” It ploughed through the next rock formation and Sierra drifted a little higher to avoid the detritus.

“This isn’t anything like I thought it would be,” she said. “But I’ve only just now started.”

The guard god snorted. “Time. Who cares?” Then, “What did you think coming up and out would be like?”

“I…” Sierra trailed off.

“They always have ideas,” said the guard god. “If you’ll forgive me for lumping you in with all the other blue travelers.”

It had been Sierra’s observation that minutes are longer than people give them credit for. When people pause for a minute, it is most often not a minute at all, but a moment.

She paused for a minute and said, “I thought I wouldn’t miss anyone anymore.”

The guard god stopped its ramble. It reached out and put two of its great hands on her shoulders and slowly, gently even, rotated her. It pulled her down a bit until they were face-to-face, her gazing through her see-plate, it gazing through its fluctuant eyes.

“That’s new,” it said. It removed its top hands and clapped all of them. Particulate matter drifted out like a scattering of dusk-flocking birds. This time, Sierra could hear the nod as well as see it. The guard god asked, “Do you want to get out of here?”

The guard god, the poppet deity, made a check of Sierra’s go suit and determined that it was of the highest quality, but it warned her that the highest quality might be insufficient for her survival where they were going.

“Where are we going?”

“Up and out.”

“We’re already up and out,” she said, nonetheless intrigued.

“Further up. Further out.”

“My godmother always said farther was correct.”

“Isn’t there something about literal and symbolic distances? The A means one, the U means the other?” The guard god sounded genuinely curious.

“Are we going… literally? Or symbolically?”

“I look forward to finding out,” and for the first time the guard god laughed, and it wasn’t grumbling thunder and tumbling gravel at all, but lovely and melodic, like a flute solo.

Sierra joined in the laughter, though her laugh was a throaty alto and she often honked despite herself, as she did this time.

“Your go suit,” said the guard god, “is hesitant. It wants reassuring. I propose you ride on my back so as to be within my sphere of influence. That might protect you should we encounter any day-blind stars.”

“What are those?” asked Sierra.

“They are fey and beautiful and vicious and deadly, like all stars. But in particular, they are the stars that shine by day and so can’t be seen from the down and in.”

“We’re not down and in. We’re not going down and in.”

“One day I will meet a blue traveler with a proper sense of perspective,” said the guard god. “Now, if you are to ride on my back, you won’t want this broad mineral stuff. What sort of steed would you prefer?”

The only steeds Sierra had ever seen were the force-grown mules spun up by the various corporation-citizens on the world for use as data storage.

“I can’t think…”

“Think wider. It can be anything at all you’ve seen, yes, but also anything that you’ve heard of, that you’ve read about, that you’ve heard sung to you, or even that you’ve imagined.”

Sierra thought. “When the twins turned one hundred and eleven years old, their father and I marked it as a very momentous occasion, though it’s not a particularly remarkable age for a child to reach and the Widows Who Wait do not attach any numerological significance to one hundred and eleven. But it was that day they were given their choice of a Memorial Day, to celebrate all the rest of their lives.”

“I here admit, Sierra St. Sandalwood IV, that I have spoken to you more than any other human being I have ever encountered,” said the guard god. “Therefore, I will tell you I do not know what a Memorial Day is. My kind have had encounters with the Widows Who Wait, though. They’re all liars.”

Sierra elected to ignore that. “They could have chosen the anniversary of their physical birth or of the day they bloomed within me. But the twins are puckish. They are readers of old books and it’s a rare hour passes without them sharing a knowing smile. They chose the eighth day of September.”

“That one I know,” said the guard god. “The Nativity of Mary, mother of the Christ.”

“No. I mean, yes, it’s that, too, but we are not Christians. The eighth day of September is also the Feast Day of Saint Corbinian. That’s why they chose it.”

“I like to understand things,” said the guard god. “If you are not Christians, and the birth date of the Holy Mother is no occasion for memory, why choose a Christian saint?”

Sierra smiled, remembering. “Because of the bear,” she said.

The guard god moved its great shoulders back. Some arms retracted and others shortened. Stone became flesh and flesh grew hirsute. Rounded ears sprouted and eyes became amber. The guard god dropped to all fours and its great claws curled into the rock. “Wait,” it said. “I am listening to the story.”

Sierra heard nothing, but she waited.

“He was on his way to Rome, yes.” The guard god’s voice was now a different timbre of deep. Sierra wondered if its laugh had changed as well. “A great bear slew the saint’s mule and Corbinian commanded the creature, in the name of God, to submit to saddle and rein and serve as his mount. The beast acquiesced and carried the saint to the Holy See. When they arrived at the gates, Corbinian freed the bear and it returned to the wild, sinless as only animals can be.”

“Sinless, yes, I suppose,” said Sierra. “There are none of its kind left to prove or disprove that notion.”

The guard god reared up on its hind legs, twice as tall as Sierra. She was afraid for the first time since she had launched herself up and out.

The guard god, the bear, looked down, down, down the long way Sierra had travelled. “There are a few bears yet,” it said.

Sierra was surprised. “In captivity?” she asked.

“In hiding,” it answered. “Plenty of mules, though. Probably not as tasty as that one in old Bavaria.” The guard god dropped down again and hunched its shoulders. A leather saddle grew out of its back and reins extended from its terrifying teeth.

“What were you listening to? Who told you the story?”

“Mnemosyne. She grants me instantaneous access to every bit of recorded information in the omniverse.”

This startled Sierra. “You’ve indicated there are things that you do not know, even things you don’t understand.”

“I rarely access Mnemosyne. She vexes me. Now, Sierra, climb up.”

She put her foot in a stirrup, but hesitated. “Will you give me your name, as I gave you mine?”

“You have yet to tell me who you are, so I will not tell you who I am. But my name is now Corbinian.”

“Corbinian wasn’t the bear,” Sierra said, swinging into the saddle.

“Oh, I doubt you can prove that,” it replied.

Farther up and further out proved to be a circuitous route that twisted between the world and its moon. This involved travelling towards the world before they travelled away from it, but Corbinian did not respond to Sierra’s queries beyond grunting, “Concentrating.”

She let it be.

Having never ridden anything at all, not even a bicycle, Sierra found the sensation vertiginous, even without the other rocky world they passed, even without the belt of tumbling asteroids, even without the great ringed bodies the bear rushed past. The go suit held up perfectly so far as she could tell. She saw many stars off in the distance but did not know if any of them were day-blind.

Finally, Corbinian came to a halt.

“A relative halt,” it said. “All things are in motion, from down at the bottom of matter, where minds best not linger, to the very top of all of it, to every bit of it.”

Sierra thought of her daughter waving her arms and speaking of motion. She was comforted by the memory. She was glad her daughter had long known something she herself had not known at all.

“Do you know what Gaia is?” she asked.

“I’m told that the answer to that question is of no importance,” said Corbinian. “And it is not your question. Keep asking them though!”

“Well, here’s another. Why have we stopped here?”

“Ah. This is the farthest any go suit has ever gone.”

“So, I’m farther from the world than any one has ever been?”

“Or further, yes. Let’s say both.”

“The suit seems fine,” said Sierra.

“Good. Because I feel odd,” said Corbinian.

“Are you ill?”

“I don’t know. I never have been. But there’s some sort of limiting factor that is holding me in this orbit. I feel like a bear twice my height has stood up in front of me.”

“That would be a pretty big bear,” said Sierra.

Corbinian’s laugh was still a flute.

“You’re afraid,” said Sierra. “That’s the limiting factor, I think.”

Corbinian said, “Wait. I am listening to the story.”

Just a moment later, the bear said, “I was attempting to access recorded information that would tell me if it is better to be ill or to be afraid.”

“Now that you’ve said it,” said Sierra, “I’m curious myself. What did Mnemosyne tell you?”

“She didn’t tell me anything. She didn’t tell me anything at all.”

Sierra discovered that unlike with her husband or her godmother, unlike with even Devon and Denisa, were she to be honest with herself, she never grew frustrated in the company of Corbinian. She never found the guard god tiresome or boring. She never felt put upon.

They sat companionably, in silence, for a number of years.

One day, Corbinian said, “Isn’t there anything you want to ask? There was that question I thought you had. I just remembered that.”

“I have questions, of course,” said Sierra, “but I still don’t know what you mean by the question. Wait, no. I know what you mean by it, but I do not know the question itself.”

“Ask me some others, then. I’m awfully resourceful.”

“Are you getting bored?” asked Sierra, worried about the answer.

“No,” said Corbinian.

“Well, then. Who made you?”

“Mnemosyne did.”

“Who made Mnemosyne?”

“You did.”

“I did no such thing,” said Sierra.

Corbinian gestured in the direction of the far away world. “You collectively. You blue travelers and green travelers and those few that never go up or down or in or out at all.”

“When did we make her?”

“I will not ask Mnemosyne to tell that story,” said Corbinian.

“May I ask her, then?”

“Mnemosyne would be the end of you, Sierra St. Sandalwood IV. She is a terrible thing for people like you.”

Sierra asked, “Is she terrible for you?”

But Corbinian fell silent for another few years.

Over time, the go suit began to alter itself in subtle ways. At first, Sierra thought it might be changing itself to match her dreams of it. Perhaps she would grow wings. Perhaps she would be able to lift the see-plate and breathe in the aroma of the nothing.

But then it became apparent the suit was becoming less than it had been before. It was winnowing parts of itself that Sierra rarely used. She nudged Corbinian.

“The suit’s breaking down,” she said.

The bear’s brows went low, and Sierra noticed that sometime clouds had appeared in the amber. It pressed a paw against Sierra’s chest. “Yes,” it said. “But it is not unhappy. It is confused. I am tempted to ask Mnemosyne whether it is better to be confused or unhappy.”

“I think parts of it are disappearing,” said Sierra.

Corbinian moved his massive head and back and forth. “One of the fundamental tenets of Mnemosyne is that formulated by Lavoisier the Lawgiver. Things do not disappear.”

Sierra had received an excellent education from her godmother. “Mass is not destroyed,” she said. “But that’s not what I meant. The go suit is sloughing off, not ceasing to exist.”

Corbinian took a closer look. “Yes, you are right,” it said. “It is sloughing away in a stream.”

“To where?”

“To the day-blind stars.”

“Oh,” said Sierra. “I know now. All it took was patience and study.”

“What do you know?”

“I know the question.”

Corbinian did not speak. It adopted a mien of anticipation.

“Good and faithful friend,” said Sierra. “Will you take me to the day-blind stars?”

Centuries later, the day-blind stars proved fey and beautiful and vicious and deadly. They were unappreciative of the new-come pair.

Along the way, they had overtaken the stuff of the go suit that it had previously surrendered. The suit fully reincorporated. Corbinian reported that it was pleased to have done so.

Once again, they relatively stopped. They were in a great nursery and every particle a star can emit buffeted them. These ejecta waxed and waned. The go suit trembled but Sierra felt its bravery. Corbinian’s eyes grew cloudier.

The answer to the question had proven to be yes, obviously. But now Sierra turned to the problem of why it was the question.

She thought:

in the beginning was the question

and the question was flawed

then the question begot a question

and that question begot a question

“Does Mnemosyne know why I asked you to bring me here?” she asked Corbinian.

“I have not been able to hear Mnemosyne’s stories for decades, now. We are dependent on what is in me, and what is in me is paltry. All that is in me is at the very surface of knowledge. I plumb no depths.”

“The question I asked you was of unknowable provenance,” Sierra said gently, “and you answered with an action you didn’t understand. You didn’t understand why, but you took the action anyway.”

Corbinian sighed and said, “I wonder if some other guard god took my place on the trailing rocks.”

The changed course of the conversation troubled Sierra. She went on as if Corbinian had not spoken. “It must be an interesting sensation you’ve been feeling down these past years. Wondering.”

“I didn’t know there was a word for it,” said Corbinian.

Sierra gave it a sharp glance. “That seems unlikely,” she said.

“Sierra St. Sandalwood IV. Goddaughter. Wife. Mother. The lone blue traveler possessed of a proper sense of perspective. Friend. I am sloughing away.”

One of the greatest failures of design and imagination that ever occurred in the world was the routing of the ducts around the eyes of go suit wearers into a reservoir at the base of the throat for filtration and reabsorption. So, tears did not stream down Sierra’s cheeks.

“Can we move on?” she asked. “Can we overtake what’s gone from you so you might be whole again?”

“I say again, I am unable to hear Mnemosyne’s stories. And I have not been whole for a long time. It is unlikely I ever will be again.”

A pair of day-blind stars let loose flares. The flares crossed the nothing and double-helixed. Sierra saw that Corbinian was not so large a bear as it had been.

And it grows smaller.

But that didn’t make sense. Growth implied addition, not subtraction. She elected to distract herself and Corbinian both.

“What is the opposite of growth?” she asked.

Corbinian cocked its head to one side. “Death?”

“But some things subside without dying,” Sierra insisted.

“Matter is not destroyed,” said Corbinian, “The opposite of growth must mean that whatever is not growing is sloughing away.”

“Are those flares sloughing away the day-blind stars, I wonder?”

“I do not know,” said Corbinian. “Ask them.”

But the stars could not answer. They were simply stars, possessing only the intelligence of fusion, which was notoriously unreliable.

“Why did you say I should ask them? You must have known they couldn’t answer.” She was still trying to distract the bear, who had fallen into melancholy.

“I did not know they couldn’t,” it said. “I suspected they wouldn’t.”

“That’s not the same thing at all,” said Sierra.

“We have crossed half a galaxy,” said Corbinian. “Everything we say or do is close enough.”

That sounded true.

“I do not believe my go suit will sustain me if you leave,” said Sierra.

“It’s a good suit,” said Corbinian. “It will try.”

“That’s all I can ask,” said Sierra. “I ask the same of you.”

“You have always asked me things. It has been the joy of my existence.”

Tears did not stream down Sierra’s cheeks.

Corbinian was a long time dying. Things changed as it diminished. It began asking Sierra questions, but though it tried, it was less and less able to answer hers.

“Do you believe your children kept to their plan of going neither up nor down?” it asked.

Sierra reflected upon what she remembered of the twins. The great distance between her and them, the great amount of time, made her suspect her own reflections.

“I believe,” she said, “that they kept to it for as long as they could.”

“So, you know they could have, but not that they would have.”

Devon’s smile was sly in her memory. He lifted the right side of his lips only. Not mocking but acknowledging. Denisa’s smile was bright, all teeth and gums and joy. They were both somewhat myopic but refused the simple treatment that would have perfected their vision. Puckish. For some people, clinging to imperfection was such a faux pas as to be considered an atrocity.

“I have just realized that the word is would. They are still on the world. They never fitted themselves for go suits or deep smocks.”

“That is welcome information,” said Corbinian. “But we should entertain the idea that one no longer needs a go suit to come up and out.”

An interesting notion.

“I can imagine those two finding some way to accomplish that. They had the benefit of my godmother’s tutelage, and she was an extraordinary educator.”

Sierra realized she could not envision her godmother’s face. Her husband’s name…was Diego. She was sure it was Diego.

“Now I’m sloughing away,” she said, describing to Corbinian the lacunae in her mind.

“You are limited by biology,” it said. “Synaptic misfiring is a product of age. But age brings wisdom, too.”

“I’d rather be intelligent than wise.”

“That is a wish I cannot grant. And one I would not if I could,” said Corbinian. Then it coughed.

And coughed.

Sierra stroked Corbinian’s shoulder. She did not know what else to do. Besides asking a question.

“I’m sorry, Sierra,” Corbinian answered. “There is nothing you can do for me. I am limited by pathology.”

“But you are thousands of years old!” she cried. “You were never ill before I insisted we come to these damnable stars!”

“I do not mean I am diseased,” said Corbinian. “I mean I am a symptom. One that is at long last being treated.”

“You seem to be plumbing depths now.”

“Wait,” said Corbinian. “I am listening to a story.”

The story was not told by Mnemosyne.

“Who is it then?” asked Sierra. She was distracted because her go suit had begun humming.

“I do not know who. I believe I know what. It is a go ship.”

Sierra had never heard of a go ship and said so.

“We have been away from the world for a great length of time,” said Corbinian. “It is in the nature of things to change.”

“You believe this is some sort of craft from the world?”

“I know it is. It is asking about you.”

Then Corbinian coughed a long jag. Blood coated its terrible teeth.

“That’s all, now,” it said. “Even the surface is fading.”

“But you plumbed the depths!”

“The depths plumbed me. They did not have to lower the weight very far. I am sorry, Sierra. That’s all. That’s all.”

She could see matter streaming away from it. The stream was directed perpendicular to the direction of the day-blind stars.

“You must tell me who you are,” Corbinian rasped. “Unless you do not wish to. I should have asked that as a question instead of stating it as an assertion.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Sierra said, “I am the woman who asked the wrong question.”

“I find this answer deeply unsatisfying.”

She could see through it. It was less a bear now than the ghost of one.

Then Sierra knew the right question.

“Who are you, Corbinian?”

“I am not a who at all.”

She could barely discern its voice.

“I am a what.”

Her go suit was trembling. Sierra asked, no, pleaded, “What are you?”

Corbinian uttered a melodious word. Its voice sounded like a flute.

Sierra was bewildered. “Did you say elusive or allusive? Columbine?”

Suddenly the guide god’s face was distinctive and fully present. Its eyes were flashing diamonds, lit glorious as stars that could see.

But Corbinian did not answer. Instead, it faded away into the nothing.

The trembling of Sierra’s go suit became so pronounced that she was afraid it might tear itself apart. She wished her friend were there to tell her whether the suit was frightened or excited, wished Corbinian was there to muse upon which of those states was better.

Then the trembling stopped. Her see-plate went black and every joint in the go suit froze. She could neither see nor move.

Sierra’s sense of the passage of time had long since atrophied. She did not know how many minutes or years passed before her see-plate unfolded with a hiss.

She blinked, but not in command or query. She blinked to clear tears from her eyes. She blinked so that she could better see the two figures leaning over her.

The man’s smile was sly, but not mocking. He only lifted the right side of his lips. The woman’s smile was bright, all teeth and gums and joy.

Sierra found that her children had spouses and children of their own, and that those children had children. And those children begat children and on down like that, living with dozens of other families who made the go ship their home.

The go ship’s name was Diego, but it preferred to be called Ship. It had been the only one of its kind when the twins had left the world.

Some on board wished to study Sierra’s go suit. It was older than any other surviving example of human technology. At first, Sierra took this to mean that the world had ended, but she was assured by Ship that was not the case. Matter is not destroyed, but it changes. It is always moving.

And Sierra moved.

Sometimes she would don her go suit and spend a year or two scouting ahead of Ship. Sometimes she would simply walk the skin of the vessel and study the inconstant stars. She kept moving. She found that she could not stay still, not even relatively.

Sierra often thought of Corbinian. She did not believe it had sacrificed itself for her, not that it had sacrificed itself for anyone at all. Not a who, no. Perhaps a what.

The what was fearlessness. The what was love of the universe. The what was solace.

The what was up and out and up and out and up and out and up and out…

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