The sun filters through the atmospheric dust, trapping oppressive heat in the Ashlands. The black hills around the camp stifle the winds, stagnating the air. Nothing moves in this valley except for sweat falling and ash kicked up. Red Mountain spills blight over its crags, but that red haze never falls here. It is safe.
“It is safe,” Shikammu always says to herself as she toils under the sun. She tends to her plot of ash yams that never grow. She roasts one of the last harvest’s yield below the hot ash of a fire and eats it for lunch, when sun is highest and she can bear the work no more. Once she would have tried to clear the ash off before biting in. But she relishes the ash in her throat now.
She coughs, both from the yams and the dust kicked up sneaking into her mouth like an assassin. She coughs, but she cherishes the feeling. It is proof that she remains. It is proof that it is safe.
“It is safe,” Shikammu says, even as the shalk passes close. It is always the same shalk. Most times her chitin waraxe crushes in its carapace before it has a chance to bite or spit fire. Sometimes it doesn’t. She does not remember those times. The heat of this place gets hotter for an instant, and then it is the next day, and it is safe.
“It is safe,” Shikammu whispers to herself as she shoots a draining spell at a guar. It is always the same guar. Most times her aim is true, and the guar falls over exhausted, easy prey for her waraxe. Sometimes it isn’t, then it runs away, and she just eats another ash yam for dinner.
As she eats either a roasted guar haunch or an ash yam, the sky grows dark, darker. Too dark for even night, the darkness swallowing the stars. She looks towards Red Mountain and sees nothing but fire and darkness. Once, this worried her. But now she knows it is safe.
Shikammu lays by the fire, her belly full, and she stares into the blackness above. One star begins to shine, growing and glowing until it pierces the darkness completely. It is the blue eye of The Serpent, Mnemo-Li. And she says to Shikammu, “It is safe.”
And then the world walks backwards, kicking up ash with its heels. Mountain. Guar. Shalk. Yams. Toil. And then Shikammu wakes again, and it is safe.
One evening Shikammu lays by the fire, watching the blue star grow bright through the ash far above. It grows brighter and brighter as it always does, and Shikammu closes her eyes, waiting for morning to come and the dark clouds to go away.
But she waits a while and realizes that it is still evening, and through her eyelids she sees the blue light growing faster and, piercing all the way through the blackness above and keeps going. When she opens her eyes, the gaze of the Blue Eye of The Serpent enters them, and everything falls silent.
Mnemo-li opens her eyes after some struggle and scans the sky. Of course, the apocalypse has long passed, and the sky is clear. She sees her celestial body, bright blue in the sky, projecting down. She looks at her kin among the blackness and names them as a mental exercise. The brain works without so much effort, it seems.
But the body is strange. She has studied the girl’s anatomy for some time, and thought she had its functions figured out. But she must focus so much of her mind on moving even a single muscle that she fears she will lose connection. She starts by wrinkling her face in funny ways, and then wiggling fingers and toes.
Her vision begins to fade and her chest burns. Why? What has she forgotten? The star flashes bright in the sky as she remembers. Quickly before she loses consciousness she thrashes the diaphragm, taking in rough breaths in uncoordinated rhythm. She focuses on practicing this and compartmentalizing the motions in her mind for several minutes.
When she feels satisfied that she won’t asphyxiate on accident, she proceeds with categorizing and testing the skeletal muscles. Everything seems to be in order, and she begins to learn which combinations of muscles can motivate specific movements.
She attempts to sit up, desperately digging her elbows into the ash to lift up her torso. Her head dangles backwards from her neck as she slowly rises. She tries to raise and stabilize it, but she spreads her focus too thin and falls back down.
Her lips flutter in a strange shape and turn the ensuing gasp into a hoarse sound: “B’vek!”
Odd. She hadn’t tested speech yet. The girl must somehow be doing this thing with her mouth. She files the notion away for later and tries to sit up again, remembering to hold up her head. She manages to push her torso up, but it slumps to one side. She stretches both hands out against the ground to balance herself, and straightens her back into a proper sitting position. Getting the hang of it.
From here she can swivel her head to observe her surroundings. The two-and-a-half centuries since the Red Year have given Molag Amur a completely new face. The girl’s camp is gone, of course, but so is much of the landscape that once surrounded it. Only Red Mountain still remained, wounded but tall.
Mnemo-li tries to return her eyes to her body, but her head stays put and wouldn’t move its gaze from the ravaged volcano. Her eyes blur and she feels wetness on her cheeks. Is something wrong? Has she forgotten some critical function again? She tries to close and open her eyes again, but the fluid still falls, dripping onto her clothes.
With incalculable effort she tears her eyes away from the mountain and looks at her legs, her next project, but she isn’t able to stop the flowing from her eyes. Another finer detail she’ll deal with later. Hopefully the vital waters of this body won’t completely drain from them.
Her arms and torso are under stable control now, and so she works on massaging and twitching her legs and feet. After a few false starts, she is able to bring herself to her knees. She attempts to stand fully, but can’t quite support it yet. No matter; these bodies are capable of relocating via hands and knees alone from an early age. So she begins to crawl the wastes, her feet dragging in the ash, her inexplicable tears still falling to the earth.
- - - - -
After a few hours traversing the wastes, Mnemo-li has not seen another living thing. She has since stopped leaking water, but her body grows tired and uncooperative, still restricted to crawling on bleeding hands and feet.
Perhaps she needs to be heard. So she uses the opportunity to test the voice. She starts by making as many sounds as she can with her throat, lips, and tongue. Then she tries putting them together in as many ways as possible. Then she learns to raise her voice to be heard from farther away, and she starts calling out to the world with the sounds.
She does this for a while, but the sound grows thin and weak, and her throat hurts. If only this body hadn’t wasted all that water earlier. Nevertheless, she opens her mouth to call out again. But what she hears instead is a quiet “Stop.”
So she stops moving, unsure what to make of the outburst. She mimics it: “Stop.” Then her mouth opens unbidden and says “Please.” Again, she parrots the word back.
“What’s happening?” Shikammu asks. Mnemo-li crawls in a circle and calls out strange sounds again. “Why?” Mnemo-li rolls over onto her back and points towards her celestial body. “Is that you?” Mnemo-li just keeps pointing.
“Thirsty,” Shikammu says, closing her eyes and rubbing her throat with the hand not pointing. Mnemo-li rubs her cheeks and says, “Why?” Shikammu points towards the mountain and says, “It was real.” Mnemo-li still doesn’t understand. So she rubs her throat like Shikammu did and says, “Thirsty why?”
Shikammu slaps herself across the face, her rock-torn hand leaving a bloody handprint behind, and says, “Because you keep yelling!” Pain again. Mnemo-li doesn’t like pain. She says, “Stop thirsty why?” Shikammu says, “What do you mean!” Mnemo-li pauses and says. “Thirsty why stop?”
Shikammu clenches both fists and shouts, “Don’t you know how to talk?” Mnemo-li says, “What do you mean!” Shikammu finds the strength to jump to her feet and yells, “Just shut up! Let go of me! Leave me alone!”
Mnemo-li is on her feet somehow. She starts to take back control, but stops herself. The girl can stand for me, she decides. Shikammu turns to look at Red Mountain again. Through Shikammu’s shaky, tear-filled voice, she says, “It was real.” Mnemo-li reaches up with one hand to wipe away the wetness. Shikammu grabs her wrist and tries to force it away from her face, but Mnemo-li keeps trying.
“Stop it! Shut up! Go away! Let me go back home!” Shikammu falls to her knees in the ash, clutching her head and sobbing. Mnemo-li decides to wait for this tantrum to be over before doing anything else.
Eventually Shikammu stops, and the two sit in silent stillness for a while. Finally Shikammu whispers, “I know you’re still here.” Mnemo-li awkwardly runs her hand through the ash. “Still here,” she replies.
Mnemo-li thinks for a minute, stitching together words. Then she says, “Go stop thirsty because yelling. Please?” She rubs her sore throat.
Shikammu sighs and slowly stands up. “Okay. But let me do it.” Mnemo-li replies back, “Okay. Still here.”
So Shikammu walks herself and Mnemo-li around the wastes, looking for water.
